Give Generously

Deuteronomy 15:10 Give generously to them and do so without a grudging heart; then because of this the LORD your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to. 11 There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land.

     Give generously. That is hard for so many people. We like to hold onto what we have, what we have earned, the things that demonstrate blessing. So it is counter-intuitive to give generously. And yet this is exactly what we are called to do.
     As the Israelites are preparing to enter the Promised Land, they are faced with a choice. They must choose how they are going to respond to wealth. The Promised Land is the place where God's promise meets God's people. Everything was provided for in the Land. What were they going to do with it?
     Their choice was a simple one. They could hold onto it for themselves or they could be obedient and take care of the poor, the widow and the orphan. They could build bigger barns (to borrow from a parable of Jesus) or they could give generously.
     The focus is on those who are part of the community, connected to the LORD. Fellow Israelites need to be taken care of by the people of the LORD. They are part of the covenant people, which includes foreigners who choose to align themselves with Israel.
     Too often we put labels on those less fortunate. We blast them as lazy in order to justify our unwillingness to lend a hand up. We think "they got themselves into this mess, they need to get themselves out of it."
     I am not talking about enabling bad behavior or encouraging continued wrong choices. "There will always be poor people in the land." We have an obligation as God's people to demonstrate our trust in the God who has 'blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus' in practical, tangible ways. We need to open our hands and let the blessing flow through us.

Lavish Gifts

1 John 3:1

          The season is approaching when young wealthy teenagers are thrown extravagant parties to showcase their coming of age. Tens of thousands of dollars are spent putting on an event that many of them don’t want and certainly don’t deserve. They are rebellious teenagers just like the rest of us. Quinceañera, Sweet Sixteen, and Débutante Balls are all about expending wealth on someone who hasn’t earned the right to such extravagance. They are really about showcasing the wealth of the family to other wealthy socially well connected families.

          This kind of lavish expense is not always the best thing for a young person to experience. Especially in our society today, when selfishness is being perfected as an art form, we need to bring back a sense non-entitlement. Society doesn’t owe us. The government doesn’t owe us a paycheck, rent subsidies, food stamps, welfare, or medical care.

          We are the ones who own the debt. We owe our parents for providing for us as we grew up. We owe society for the schools, police, running water, roads, malls, electricity, and climate control. We owe the government something for providing a relatively safe environment without too much violence and destruction.

          We are the ones who owe God. We broke His commands. We violated His laws. We chose to go our own way. His rights to obedience were flaunted. We shook our fits at Him in anger and despair. We turned our backs on His overtures of invitation to reconciliation. We ran away.

          And yet John tells us in our text that His love has been lavished on us. He poured it out on those who have no right to demand it. He extravagantly spent His capital, His own innocent life given on the cross, to throw us a party to welcome us back after our rebellion. He makes us part of His family, not because we worked really hard to become acceptable, but despite our total ineptness at pleasing Him.

          But He does more than just call us His children, slapping a fancy label on a cheap bottle of wine. He actually makes us His children through adoption. This isn’t some second class family members who eat in the back room on leftovers. This is the family that sits in the banquet room and is served by the angels of heaven. When we become Jesus-followers we begin to be served the best that the Creator of the Universe has to offer, both in this life and in the next. We can experience life as it was meant to be lived. Joy takes on extra shades of heightening. Everything we were designed to be now becomes possible, even in the fallen world in which we live.

Proportional Giving

Mark 12:43-44

      I think sometimes the emphasis in giving is too often on the size of the gift. I think a greater gauge of the gift given is what remains after the gift is given. A better question to ask might be how much is left after the check clears the bank account. If it doesn’t cause a change in lifestyle, then perhaps the gift wasn’t big enough to matter.

      Some folks give to their own foundations. They are giving to themselves. They get to control the money that gets spent, and on what causes it gets spent, and how fast it gets spent. It is almost like they have just moved the money from one checkbook to another. And even the money they give to their own back pocket doesn’t really amount to much of anything compared to their whole net worth.

      Others seem to live as givers. They are constantly helping other people. What is theirs is there to share. A need arises, and if they can, they meet it. No worries about the future. They just give joyfully, knowing that their needs will be taken care of. They don’t have lots to spare. No large bank accounts or overseas investments. They live modestly and give generously.

      And what makes the difference between these two kinds of people? Their heart attitude. It has been said that either you have your money or your money has you. You control it or it controls you.

      Jesus is doing something that today would be considered very rude. He is watching people put their money in the offering box. And He noticed something. People were giving different amounts, some gave large amounts, and one woman in particular gave almost nothing. Imagine that. She gave almost nothing. Why did she even bother giving? What she gave didn’t really make a difference to the maintenance of the Temple. The money she gave could be picked up off the ground in the parking lot.

      It is the big gifts that really make a difference, right? They really change things, build buildings, create vaccines, train doctors. But this is not the reality. It is not the rich who give the most in supporting charities. It is everyday people, more conservative and religious. In fact Americans give seven times more per person than any other industrialized nation. We are also more religious than any other industrialized nation. There is a correlation between the two!

      This woman who approached the offering box that day did something extra-ordinary. Jesus said she gave everything she had. She didn’t skim a little bit off the top and hand it over, she dug down deep. The offering she gave cost her something, perhaps her next meal or two. Perhaps her week’s rent. Maybe her full data plan on her cell phone. Maybe her daily drive through at her favorite coffee shop. NO! Jesus said it was everything she had to live on! What she gave was what she had, all of it.

      We don’t know what motivated her to give, but it certainly wasn’t so that her generosity would be noticed. No one would say she was generous. She gave almost nothing. But she gave everything. When was the last time you gave everything? Perhaps, if you are like most people, never. Maybe it is time to be open to the Spirit’s prompting. Perhaps He will direct you to be this kind of giver.

Bankrupt

Proverbs 11:23-28

The proverbs in today’s passage all deal with different aspects of money. Much of our lives center around getting and spending money. Money is a neutral commodity. It can be either good or evil, depending on our motives and what we do with it. It can do tremendous good, and it can bring about tremendous evil.

The changing component in the money equation is us. Are we wicked or righteous? The first example of this difference is illustrated in how we give (v24). How can the person who gives generously end up with more? How can the stingy giver end up poor? From a worldly perspective this makes no sense. Simple math goes against repeated minuses ending up with more than the beginning sum.

But when the giving is given in obedience to the LORD, then the LORD in involved in the giving. And when He gets involved in something, all His power and authority is there as well.

Now some of the benefits are not necessarily financial. Verse 25 speaks of refreshing as a benefit of generosity. A life with less stress and supportive people is a blessing. When we reach out and help other people there is a benefit that can’t be measured by a checkbook balance. We can feel good about our generosity, and the beneficiaries of our generosity feel good about us.

Verse 26 speaks of blessings rather than curses spoken over the person willing to sell their grain. Notice that the man is willing to sell his grain, not simply give it away. When people are hungry, we don’t have to give what we have away. The contrast is with a man who hoards, unwilling to even consider alleviating the hunger of another. We can still get value for what we have even in the process of being generous. We are not talking about a free handout, but a willingness to make our abundance available to meet the need of another.

The object of our search will come to us (v27). If we focus on the character of the LORD, always giving, and we allow that character to become our character, our lives will be a blessing to others, and we will be blessed in the process.

We must be careful to trust the LORD and not our paychecks. This world’s economy is not stacked in our favor. If we try to play by the world’s rules we will end up poor in more than financial ways. God’s ways are about trusting Him, not our money. A hurricane can wipe out what we have been building in a few seconds. Political turmoil can change the rules about wealth and the bank’s agreement with you can get nullified. Retirement accounts can get seized and given to others. Wealth can get shifted from one group to another, a group that does nothing to deserve the income.

Trust the LORD, not your wealth.