Sermon Transcript
When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance and have taken possession of it and live in it, you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground which you harvest from your land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket, and you shall go to the place that the Lord your God will choose to make his name to dwell there. And you shall go to the priest who is in office at that time and say to him, I declare today to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our fathers to give us. Then the priest shall take the basket from your hand and set it down before the altar of the Lord your God. And you shall make response before the Lord your God, a wandering Aramean was my father, and he went down into Egypt and sojourned there. Few in number, and there he became a nation, great, mighty, and populous.
And the Egyptians treated us harshly and humiliated us and laid on us hard labor. Then we cried to the Lord, the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. And the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great deeds of terror, with signs and wonders, And he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. And behold, now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground which you, O Lord, have given me. And you shall set it down before the Lord your God and worship before the Lord your God.
And you shall rejoice in all the good that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house, you and the Levite and the sojourner who is among you. When you have finished paying all the tithe of your produce in the 3rd year, which is the year of tithing, giving it to the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, so that they may eat within your towns and be filled, then you shall say before the Lord your God, I have removed the sacred portion out of my house, and moreover, I have given it to the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, according to all your commandment that you have commanded me. I have not transgressed any of your commandments, nor have I forgotten them.
We’re coming to the end of our 6-week all-church focus entitled Use It Well: Stewarding God’s Many Gifts. Next week we begin a new series that will take us all the way to Easter, focusing on the 5 chapters in John’s Gospel when Jesus met with his disciples privately for the very last time. It’s when they had their last meal together in an upper room before Jesus was arrested, and John details what was on Jesus’ mind at that time? What, what was the last thing he wanted to convey? How did he act while he was, in a sense, saying goodbye to his closest friends and to the one who would betray him?
That starts next week. Today, if you haven’t been here for the past few weeks of our current series, we’ve been discussing various gifts that God gives us and how to interact with those gifts in a way that honors God, adds to human flourishing, good for us, good for others. So over the course of this series, we’ve studied the gifts of time, work, children, words, even trials, all of which are good gifts that God gives to all of us. And now to close our series this morning, we’re looking at the gift of finances. We intentionally held this topic all the way to the end because often when people hear the word stewardship in a church, they automatically think of money, and sometimes their defenses go up.
You know, some, some people sometimes believe all the church ever talks about is money. So we wanted to make it as clear as possible by putting the stewardship of finances all the way at the end of the series That’s sure, of course money is one of the gifts God gives us, but it certainly isn’t the only one. It’s not the only one that we need to steward well. It’s not the only one that we need to stop and reflect and ask, like, how does God want me to grow? You know, each and every week during this series, with every one of these gifts, we hope God has revealed to all of us the next step he has for us.
I mean, when we talked about time, did any of us realize that we could make better use of our time? Well, I sure did. Same with our relationship to work and how we use our God-given abilities to help those around us flourish, right? Same with the gift of children, even if we don’t have children ourselves. How are we helping the next generation step into faith feel honored and valued, find their place in the world.
Like, we all have room to grow on that topic, right? Same with how we use our words, same with how we understand the trials that we’ve been given. We have not reached the finish line, completed the race, totally mastered stewardship in any of those categories, right? We all have a next in all of them. So today, as we talk about finances and in particular generosity with our finances, it’s not really any different than all these other gifts that we have discussed.
Many of us will hopefully realize there are ways that we can grow, ways we can honor God better with our wealth, how we can use it more wisely, you know, for human flourishing. So I’m going to share what we believe about giving and generosity here at Bridges and why many of us, especially those of us in leadership, why we love to give. How we have discovered generosity to be such a blessing, not just for those around us, but also actually a blessing for ourselves. To do that, we’re looking at one passage from the Old Testament, but really what we believe here about giving can be found throughout the entire Bible. And here it is, here’s what we believe.
One, God has been richly generous to us already. 2, he invites us to join him in his generous work. And then 3, giving and generosity is— it’s a journey, it’s a lifestyle, it develops, it grows. God has been richly generous to us, therefore we join him in his generous work, and lastly, it’s a journey. That’s what we believe.
So we’ll look at those one at a time. First, God has been richly generous to us. When God gave to us, God gave first and God gave best. He has already been richly generous to us. In this text, before Moses instructs the Israelites anything about their own financial resources, he recounts to them what God has already done for them, how God saved the Israelite people out of slavery.
And if you don’t know the story, the entire nation of Israel had been in cruel oppression in Egypt under Pharaoh For 400 years, there was no Israelite alive who knew anyone who had known anyone who had known anyone who remembered when they were free as a nation. Their history before slavery probably seemed like a dream to them. It would have been easy to believe that oppression is all that there has ever been. They had no hope of changing their future, no feasible plan for escape. From Egypt, probably couldn’t even imagine a different type of life.
But into that hopeless, desperate situation, God stepped in. God intervened on their behalf and he liberated them out of slavery. And more than that, he brought them into a land of plenty, a land flowing with milk and honey, Moses writes, and most significantly, a land of their own. These slaves who had never had anything suddenly had everything. Moses reminds them what God had done for them.
He also reminds them long before they were slaves in Egypt. He recounts how their nation even began in the first place, all the way back to one man, Abraham, this unsuspecting patriarch. Moses gives this very brief version of a long miraculous story of Abraham, who had Isaac, who had Jacob, and Jacob had 12 sons who became a nation. But the question is, uh, that Moses brings to mind, why did God choose this small family to take from nothing to everything? Moses says, our father was a wandering Aramean who came down to Jesus— came down to Egypt.
He was just some guy. There’s no evidence that Abraham or Isaac or Jacob were, you know, uniquely worthy or particularly righteous or good. All of them were just like everybody else. But God jumped into their lives. He promised them an unbelievable future.
He made them into a great nation, and then he liberated that nation out of slavery. In other words, the Israelites had never done anything to earn what God had given them. None of them could ever claim, God blessed me because of my obedience, not the story. Instead, they were to understand everything they have is just by sheer grace. It’s just a story of total unmerited favor.
And Moses reminds them of that story as a precursor to what he instructs them about their giving. In other words, okay, and this is important because some people have this idea. Moses does not frame Israelite tithes, offering, or generosity as a way to get something in return from God. He does not say in this passage, whatever you give God, God will give you 10 times back. Doesn’t say that.
Instead, Moses frames it as God has already given them everything. They would be nowhere without him. He gave them life and a future even before they knew him, but long before they were able to do anything for him. He just came in and gave. So even if they end up giving something in response to what God did, they are only giving what he had provided to them in the first place.
They did not produce it on their own. All they have is just by sheer grace. That’s where Moses starts his instruction on giving. And our story is similar, right? Like them, God has given us everything we have— life, breath.
You know, we wouldn’t be here without him. All the gifts we’ve covered in this series— time, the days we have on earth— those are given to us. None of us have ever created a day. Have we? Our ability to work, our skills, it’s, it’s gifts, right?
Sure, we participate. We don’t just lay here like bumps on the log. We get up and do something with what God has provided, just like these Israelites would have had to go out and harvest the crops, right? They, they participated, but they— but that’s with an understanding of where did these crops come from? You know, we didn’t make them ourselves.
It’s just It’s just all a gift. Where did we come from? We didn’t make ourselves, right? It’s all a gift, just like us. All we have is a gift.
And ultimately, of course, for us, God provides an unshakable hope and an unshakable future because he gave us Jesus. We can look forward. We can right now look forward to endless blessings forever. Not because of what we’ve done, not because we’ve participated the right way, not because we’ve made something out of ourselves. We have an unshakable hope because of what Jesus did on our behalf, because of what he has already done.
We are forgiven, we are brought into his kingdom, we are granted favor from him, not because we’ve been good enough, right enough, long enough. That is not it. Instead, we are forgiven, we are favored, we are blessed because of what Christ did for us. We talk about this all the time in here because we need to hear it all the time. When we have failed, when we feel unworthy, when we think we’ve made a terrible mess of things, when we haven’t measured up, When we are embarrassed, when we are ashamed, when we feel like there is no hope, especially if it’s our fault, we need to hear, need to hear, there is no condemnation for us.
We need to hear that we are still highly favored, highly esteemed, cherished, honored, celebrated as much as we ever were, as much as we are on our best day. We are still highly favored on our worst day. Why?
We don’t deserve it, so why?
Because of Jesus. Because Jesus takes the condemnation we deserve on the cross, all of it, and he gives us all the favor, honor, celebration, esteem that he deserves, the future that he deserves. We receive all that is his. He carries all that should be ours. We switch places just because he wanted to, not because we’re special, not because we earned it, just because he loves us, because he delights to free us from the weight of our failures, just like he delighted to free the Israelites and give them a future.
He has given us a future. He loves to shower us with the best that he has. I mean, when God gives, he gives it all. I mean, John 3:16, right? For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son.
He gave us first, his only, his best. God didn’t hold back. He didn’t give us leftovers— not even that he has leftovers— but he didn’t give us what was convenient. He didn’t give us what was easy. He didn’t give us what wouldn’t be missed.
When he gave to us, he gave what was costly. In a sense, he gave us all that he had when he gave us Jesus. That’s what he put on the table for us, just by grace. When we say God has been richly generous to us, that’s what we mean. He was supremely generous.
At supreme cost to himself. The best gift that he could ever give to any of us, he gave to all of us before we could have ever done anything for him. He just gave. Now, what’s our response? Since he has done that for us, what, what, what do we do in return, if anything?
We believe our role is to join him in his generous work. To make his goodness and his redemption known to the ends of the earth. We want everyone everywhere to know what God has provided. We want everyone to take part in the future that God bought for all of us, to taste and see that the Lord is good. I want everyone to hear that, especially— we especially want those on the margins to hear that.
We especially want it for those who may have difficulty believing that God’s promises are for them. We especially want them to receive what God has provided. So our giving is an effort to further that mission. And actually, those are the exact same reasons Moses instructed the Israelites to give. In our Old Testament text, text here, Moses instructed the people to bring their gifts to, at that time it was the tabernacle, eventually it would be the temple.
He says bring tithes, offerings, gifts to the temple, both for the work of the temple, talk about that in a minute, and also to distribute to those in need, these people that are kind of on the margins.
The work of the temple really was to further the mission of displaying God to the world, to tell everyone the future God provides, the hope he provides, that God hasn’t left us, that, that God is still with us even in our sin and wandering. He still pursues us. The temple communicated that because first God’s presence would dwell in the temple. So the idea was to show God comes here to be with us even though we’re a mess. He still comes here.
So, it shows His pursuit. But more, secondly, the Temple demonstrated not only is He coming here, but He is coming here to reconcile with us. Because the Temple is where they offered sacrifices, of course, for their forgiveness. But ultimately they knew, even when they were offering the sacrifices back then, they knew the blood of bulls and goats isn’t what would take away their sin. That is Hebrews 10.
That is not how they would end up being reconciled child with God. Instead, the deeper meaning of the sacrifices they offered at the temple, those were a way to point forward to one day when God would provide the sacrifice. When God Himself, not them, they wouldn’t do it, but God would somehow make possible total, complete, always and forever reconciliation with Him. Where they could be with Him on and on and on with no end. When they came to the temple, the idea was to look forward to that day when God would finally do it, which of course is Jesus.
So the temple’s job ultimately was to talk about Jesus, talk about what God would one day do, which means the reason they gave to the work of the priest and the temple, that was to proclaim that future, to proclaim God’s goodness, his restoration, his pursuit of us, his desire to be with us, that he will make it possible for us to be together. The temple was a way to display that, not only to the people of Israel, but also to the people of the whole world. The plan was never, ever, the plan was never for God only to be with Israel, only to bless Israel to the exclusion of everyone else. That was not the plan. Rather, the plan was for God to be with Israel in a way that could display God to the rest of the world.
It goes all the way back to God’s promise to Abraham. He said, I’ll bless all nations through you. That’s Genesis 22. Or later, Isaiah 49, God says this to Israel, I think we have a slide. He says, I will make you a light for the nations that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.
That’s what Israel as a whole was supposed to display. Every individual should have been sharing God’s goodness. The temple should have certainly been doing the same thing. The priests needed to do it. The sacrifices, all of it supposed to tell the whole world God has not abandoned us.
He has pursued us to be with us, and he will make a way for us to be reunited with him forever. That’s what they were supposed to do, but that’s not what happened. Throughout the entire Old Testament, and particularly in places like the book of Jonah, we see Israel wanting to keep God to themselves. You know, Jonah did not want Assyria to find forgiveness. He explicitly said he didn’t want God to forgive them, be with them, make a future for them.
Didn’t want it. Just for me. And similarly, Israel at large failed to fulfill God’s mandate of taking salvation to the ends of the earth. Not entirely. It was not a complete failure.
Just mostly they failed. But then Jesus comes, and Jesus is everything that Israel should have been. He fulfills Isaiah 49 in their place. Just like he measures up on our behalf for our own individual failures, he also measures up for Israel. He fulfills her mission for her.
He says, come to me all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. He proclaims God’s reconciliation, redemption, hope for a future. He’s— that God will never leave us or forsake us. He carried that mantle in Israel’s place, and now he has given that mission to the church. It’s Matthew 28.
Many of you know it. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, to the ends of the earth. So where Israel failed, Jesus redeemed, and then he hands the work to us to tell everyone everywhere of God’s goodness, that Jesus has already done all that is required for God to be pleased with us, for God to give us favor, to experience his blessings. Jesus earned it for us. Jesus lifts the weight of all of our failures.
It’s not about what we must do. It’s about what he has done. And through him, we want everyone to know that they are wanted. They are included. They are cherished.
They are pursued by God himself. Tell everyone, everywhere, to the ends of the earth that. And especially go tell, help, share. With people who are on the margins, who may have lost hope, people who might fear that God has forgotten about them, people who might question if someone like them could ever be included. Maybe life has been so difficult that they can’t imagine there is a good God who loves them.
Moses says, and this continues in the New Testament of course, but he says take extra special measures for people in those kinds of circumstances to hear and experience what is available to them in Jesus by telling them and by providing for physical needs. So, in our Old Testament text today, Moses mentions specifically, be generous to the immigrant, to the fatherless, to the widow, these groups that are especially vulnerable, which those are similar categories that get repeated throughout the whole Bible. You know, in the New Testament, of course, James writes, religion that God our Father accepts as pure and spotless is this, to look after orphans and widows in their distress. Right, which is, it is telling them with words, but it’s more than that. It’s doing for people in those circumstances.
So the work of the people of God, this is whether it’s through the Old Testament temple or New Testament church, is to communicate and to tangibly express, especially to people who might feel forgotten or excluded.
God sees you. God loves you. God has a plan for you. God made it possible for you to be royalty in his kingdom. God brought you back from the dead.
He paid the debt you owe for your sins. He’s given you a seat of honor in eternal realms of glory. He will never leave you or forsake you, not because of what you’ve done, not because you’ve earned it, but because Jesus gives us his status. He gives us his sonship, as it were, his inheritance, his forever. We get what is his.
It was supposed to be Israel’s mission, point forward to him.
It’s why they were instructed to give to the temple for that purpose. It is now our mission, and it’s why we love to give to the church, to join God in this generous work, to tell and show and share what he has done. Make sure everyone knows it. Make sure everyone hears it. Make sure everyone is physically provided for.
Especially those who might fear like there is no hope for them. That’s, that’s why we give and love to give, to participate in this rescue mission. Now here’s the question. I’d love responses. Come talk to me.
Have you found that kind of life through church?
Have you found it through this church?
Do you believe God is at work here?
Do you believe people can find redemption, restoration, hope, future in Christ here? Are we fulfilling the mission that we’re supposed to fulfill? Not just generally displaying Christ to everyone, but also Especially communicating it to people who fear maybe they can’t be included, like orphan, immigrant, widow.
Are we doing that?
If we aren’t, tell me about it. But if we are, then you have an opportunity to join God in what he is doing here. And for the many of us who give to this church, that’s why we love to give. We see a connection between our generosity and people finding life and wholeness. Okay, now lastly, generosity is a journey, not a destination.
Just like every other area of our spiritual lives, our generosity is more about growth progress, what’s next. It’s more that than if we’ve done enough and can stop. Just like God will always have more to teach us about prayer, or, or just like our love and service both to him and others, just like that continues to grow throughout our whole lives, right? Those aren’t destinations we can check off our list as done, over with, right? No, those are continuing practices.
We started somewhere, like with prayer. I mean, think about how you learned to pray. You just started somewhere, any random point you started, then you kept at it, and then you grew, and then you continue to grow, right? It’s, it’s a journey. Every area of our spiritual lives is more about progress.
What’s next? Building off the last step to get to the next step. So how we give to God’s mission in the world isn’t any different. We start somewhere, we keep at it, and then we grow. Even in the Old Testament, we can see the idea of giving as a progression.
You know, some of us may have the idea that back then, you know, they gave 10% and that’s all there was to it. And as I’m sure many of you know, that understanding at least partially comes from the word tithe. Which means tenth, 10%. But Old Testament giving is actually a lot more complex than 10%. Even in the past, even in our passage today, we can see a bit of a progression.
Moses says, when you get into the land, yes, when you first get in there, take the first of what is produced, give that to God. As God gives us his first and best, we give him what comes in first. That’s just day one. But then later in the passage, verse 12, 12, Moses talks about when you get to the 3rd year, then you do more. Maybe because they had more by then.
If you know your Old Testament history, Israel didn’t move into all the land all at once. It was a process. And as their resources grew, then they were able to do more to display God and the fulfillment of his promises. They were also able to do more to reach out and serve these vulnerable groups that were around them. So for instance, okay, in terms of helping the downcast, elsewhere in the Old Testament they were instructed not to harvest their crops all the way to the edge of their fields.
They’re supposed to leave some of their crops out there in the field. Why? So that— this is Leviticus 19— so that the poor, the foreigner, the immigrant so that they could go out into the fields and harvest it for themselves so they could have something for them. Don’t harvest all your crops, okay? That was the rule.
But a field owner might ask, how many crops should I leave out there? Is it okay to leave one singular stalk of wheat on the very edge of the field? Or do I need to leave an entire acre that I don’t harvest? It doesn’t say, which means it’s up to you. It’s generosity, right?
It wasn’t even part of the tithe. There weren’t fixed rules about all this. The Old Testament is actually much less about fixed rules than we might assume. They even actually had a sliding scale for what sacrifice to bring to the temple. You know, people with different amounts of wealth were required to give different types of sacrifices.
This is Leviticus 5. I think we have another slide. Anyone who cannot afford a lamb is to bring 2 doves or 2 young pigeons. If, however, they cannot afford 2 doves or 2 young pigeons, they just bring your flour. Ah, that makes sense, right?
But here’s the question: which I’m sure someone asked, what constitutes can’t afford?
How did they know if they were in the can’t afford income bracket and therefore they didn’t need to bring a lamb, they could bring, you know, 2 doves? How do you know?
Scripture doesn’t say, doesn’t specify, which means it’s up to you. So could have someone with many resources claim, well, I can’t afford to bring a lamb. No, I got 10,000 lambs, but I can’t afford to bring one. Nope. I’m sure that happened.
Or could someone with very little choose to give the bigger offering? I’m sure that happened too, just like today. But regardless of what they gave as their sacrifice, that also wasn’t part of their tithe, just like whatever portion they didn’t harvest harvest from their fields, that wasn’t part of their tithe. So this concept of 10%, it gets lost pretty quickly. There wasn’t one percentage even in the Old Testament.
The point was not a precise amount. It was much more about their heart to give and then growing in that generosity even in the Old Testament. Then of course we get to the New Testament, that same concept is even more clarified. This is 2 Corinthians 9. 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.
It’s about what’s in your heart. It’s about, are you growing? So, we here at Bridges, we will never, I promise, we will never tell anyone, ever, we will never say, you must give X amount. Absolutely not.
But we will tell you, just like we will tell you with prayer, start somewhere. Don’t avoid the practice altogether. Don’t be at zero, right? Just like you don’t pray zero, right? Don’t give zero.
That wouldn’t be healthy. Start somewhere, anywhere really. Then do that consistently and then grow. Listen to God for what’s next. Trust him.
He wants what’s best for you. The more, the more you lean into where he leads, the more you follow, the more you will understand why you need to follow, the more goodness you will find in following. So as you reflect on God’s generosity to you, how he redeemed your life, paid the debt for your sins, gave you an eternal future, and gave you some amount of financial resources. What is he placing on your heart for your next step in financial stewardship? How can you better use what he has given you to make much of him, to make him known?
To help others find wholeness, the wholeness that you have experienced. He has a next step for all of us. We just need to listen. Let’s pray. Father, thank you for being richly generous.
Thank you for all the gifts that we have talked through during this series, Lord. You, you have given us an abundance and we are grateful. I pray that we discern how best to steward what you have provided in all these areas: time, work, children, words, trials, financial resources. Lord, thank you for what you have provided. May we use it well for your purposes and for your glory, that others may find you and know you and experience your wholeness, forgiveness, Redemption.
We pray those things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
