Sermon Tone Analysis

If you’ve been with us - you know that for the month of May, we are discussing various topics within Christianity...

Topics that I believe - if NOT discussed on a regular basis (annual for us) - that we’ll run the risk of getting ourselves OUT AHEAD of GOD...

instead of being LED - BY Him!

We started 2 weeks ago with - PRAYER

Last week - we approached Water Baptism....

Two topics that I believe - can easily be MISUNDERSTOOD - and THEREFORE - misapplied.

Today - we come to the topic of GIVING!

Another topic that - can be viewed as Controversial, or even threatening.

• This sermon today is NOT going to be about us putting you in a head-lock, trying to get you to give money to this church.

• I think we’ve preached (SPECIFICALLY) on money TWO times since we’ve been together as a group...

• AS YOU KNOW - we DO NOT pass a plate here at church.

(let me repeat that)

• NOR will we ever do so! - and we’ll get into WHY we don’t a little later...

• That’s not what today is about!

If you saw the post that I made this week in the church app - It was meant to be a PRIMER for this sermon.

I pulled that content from Desiring God and John Piper - and I’ll be pulling quite a bit from Piper in this sermon -

But...

The main point of that post was this:

SLIDE:

I seek not what is yours, but you

These words spoken by the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians....AND YET...

I believe this is God’s heart toward us...

Now i know how something like this can often be received...

Some people will read this (in terms of GIVING or TITHING) - and it will cause them to breathe of HUGE SIGH of RELIEF...

THINKING - that this means - OH, God doesn’t want or need my money....WHEW!

Well - if that’s YOU - then you should know - God DOES have something to say about this topic

And if you’re the person who believes - YOU KNOW - I give A LOT to God - I’m good - But I’m glad everyone else is here to hear this sermon...

My response would be this:

We ALL - - have room to grow in this.

God wants - ALL of us (each and every one of us - TO CHANGE regarding our giving)

And so - there’s NO ONE IN HERE - right now - who can say to God - I HEAR ya Mike - but I’m all set.

We’re SETTLED with what we give.

There’s ALWAYS a deeper resting place with the Lord!

No?

Always!

And will get into that today -

The way i want to HANDLE today is -

to first - look at the Biblical reasons to GIVE

And then finish by looking at - HOW we should give (getting back to that foundation)

And so - to start - let’s look at several reasons that we should be GIVERS of our money to the advancement of God’s Kingdom… (and John Piper is going to help us with this)

SLIDE: Reason 1 - Giving: Honors an Old Testament Principle

GIVING

SO back in the OT times, God designated one of the 12 tribes of Israel - the Tribe of Levi...

To OVERSEE the ministry of the Tabernacle and the Temple

And so instead of giving them a portion of the Land - God decided that the Levite ministers would LIVE OFF of the tithes of the other 11 tribes...

We can see here that it was God’s PLAN that the Levite priests would LIVE OFF of the giving of others...

And so we can see the connection to today!

God is still calling Pastors and Ministers - and those people do not make money in the “normal ways” of society...

They are SUPPORTED by the GIVING of others… as I am today

Now I know SOME might say - I SEE that in the OT - but what about TODAY....

a good argument for that is...

And so here we see Christ - Uphold the tithe - giving - to the church...

He says it’s NOT AS IMPORTANT as justice, mercy, and faithfulness - but He says - DON’T neglect the tithe/giving…!

Another NT example is this...

Here we see Paul POINT to the OT tithe - and say in v14 - IN THE SAME WAY - those who proclaim the gospel should get their living BY the gospel!

Paul here - supporting a TITHE in order to HELP ADVANCE God’s Kingdom by way of the Biblical Proclamation by pastors and ministers!

And so GIVING - honors the OT principle of the Tithe

Another REASON to GIVE is this...

SLIDE: Reason 2 - Giving: The Antidote to Covetousness

GIVING

Old Testament Law- #10 - Thou Shall Not Covet

And MONEY is an interesting thing isn’t it?

It can be the OBJECT OF our coveting...

AND...

It can be the means by which we ATTAIN what we covet!

Seems like Money can be dangerous no?

And so how does GIVING fight this?

It TRAINS us to - LAY DOWN what we COULD have bought with that money!

It REMINDS us of the VALUE of Jesus

But what else?

SLIDE: Reason 3: GIVING: Governs Our Ever-Expanding Spending

GIVING

I’m just going to QUOTE John Piper - as this is SOO helpful

JOHN PIPER:

There is an almost infallible human rule: spending expands to reflect the income.

This is why you could have a book a few years ago entitled Getting By on $100,000 a Year.

If you make more, you buy more, and the things you buy have to be stored and repaired and insured.

Spending begets spending.

If you have less at your disposal, you spend less.

And most of the time you don't even think about it.

I spend absolutely no time thinking about world cruises and $30,000 cars.

But if I made two or three hundred thousand dollars a year, pretty soon things like that wouldn't seem any more strange to me than all the stuff I buy now—because I could afford it.

If this is true—if expenses almost inevitably expand to reflect the income—how shall we restrain ourselves from accumulating more and more stuff and more and more expensive stuff, and looking to the world like we have all the same values they do in our little earthly prelude to eternity?

The answer is that as our income grows, we resolve to give a greater and greater percentage of our income to advance the kingdom.

This puts the brakes on our natural impulse toward luxury.

CONSISTENT Giving will always - REORIENT our hearts back to - TRUE NORTH!

TO God!

Our Money - WANTS to RULE OVER us - and so we have to FIGHT that...

And we FIGHT that - by GIVING!

Listen to this story

Take John Wesley for example.

He was one of the great evangelists of the 18th Century, born in 1703.

In 1731 he began to limit his expenses so that he would have more money to give to the poor.

In the first year his income was 30 pounds and he found he could live on 28 and so gave away two.

In the second year his income doubled but he held his expenses even, and so he had 32 pounds to give away (a comfortable year's income).

In the third year his income jumped to 90 pounds and he gave away 62 pounds.

In his long life Wesley's income advanced to as high as 1,400 pounds in a year.

But he rarely let his expenses rise above 30 pounds.

He said that he seldom had more than 100 pounds in his possession at a time.

This so baffled the English Tax Commissioners that they investigated him in 1776 insisting that for a man of his income he must have silver dishes that he was not paying excise tax on.