Our Beliefs : Sermons : Sermon Archive - 2004 : February 29, 2004
God Gave Us the Reason to Give
Lent 1
When I looked at this portion of Scripture, a common saying came to my mind that I'm sure you're familiar with: "Tis better to give than to receive." I thought about that for a while, and I understand what the saying is talking about -- it makes you feel better inside when you give someone something than when someone gives something to you. There's something about giving something away that makes us feel good. But is that always true? If little 2-year-old Matthew's favorite toy is a Thomas the Tank Engine, just try convincing him that giving Thomas away to his brother is better than being able to play with it himself. A person has to learn how giving is better than receiving -- it's called wisdom, and most never learn that nugget of wisdom. Instead most people are perfectly content accumulating as much as they can in this life; in fact, that is what some people live by. It reminds me of a very worldly bumper sticker -- "Whoever dies with the most toys wins." Instead of concentrating on the amount of toys they can accumulate, that person should be thinking more of the dying part, and where they'll spend their eternity. That really puts all our "toys," all our possessions and wealth and cars and houses and clothes and TVs and everything else the world has to offer into perspective.
The perspective of eternity -- that's the perspective God wants you to be viewing this world from this morning and every day of our lives. That perspective will help us to see not only the fact that "to give is better than to receive," but also why we want to give in the first place. God never told us to give for no reason. This morning we will see that God Gave Us the Reason to Give: God gave us his Son -- the firstfruits of his grace, so we gladly give him our firstfruits.
In our reading, we find ourselves among the Israelites in the Old Testament as they were listening to their leader, Moses. But this was no ordinary speech that Moses was making to the Israelites -- this was part of his last speech to them before he died and Joshua would lead the Israelites into the promised land of Canaan, the land flowing with milk and honey that God had promised 500 years earlier to Abraham and his descendants. Moses wanted to make sure that the Israelites knew how they had gotten this far, so he reminded them of some of the problems they had endured during those last 500 years. He reminded them about how Jacob, their forefather, also named "Israel," had been a wanderer and had even lived in Aram, to the north of Canaan for 20 years, where he found Rachel and Leah who would become his wives. He reminded them how the Israelites had only been a handful of people when they had gone down to Egypt; how they had been mistreated as slaves and how they had suffered in Egypt as a result of that.
What a difference a few hundred years makes when the Lord is blessing you. They were no longer going to be wanderers with no place to call their own, but they were now about to cross into the promised land of Canaan. They were no longer a small nation, but in the years that they lived in Egypt, the Lord had increased them from 70 people to two million people. They were powerful. They were numerous. They were no longer slaves and in suffering, but they were now brought out of Egypt by the Lord who would drive out the pagan nations of Canaan before them and give them the Promised Land.
Things had definitely changed for the Israelites. But did you notice who had brought about that change? It was God, and God alone. Verse 8 describes one instance quite well: "The LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great terror and with miraculous signs and wonders." The Israelites had done nothing to deserve it. It was only God's grace that they had become what they were.
It is only by God's grace that we have become what we are as well. Did you notice the many parallels between the blessings that God showered on the Israelites of old and the blessings that he continues to shower on his believers today? Certainly we have been blessed physically. Even though the economy has faltered a bit of late, I don't think any of us is wondering where we'll spend the night or where we'll get our next meal from, as millions of people in this world do every day. We don't wander from place to place, but we have a roof over our heads in the most prosperous and most powerful nation in the world. We are like a hulking giant -- the weapons in our military arsenal could wipe out an entire nation and all its people if we wanted it to, maybe even the entire world, so we have to use wisdom in using and not using that power. In fact, most of us have never known what it's like to be anything other than the most powerful nation in the world. Even though we are at war in Afghanistan and Iraq, our homeland has been spared. And the list goes on and on. God's grace alone gave us all these things.
But one gift he has given us outshines them all -- he gave his Son, the firstfruits of his grace, and through the work of the Spirit caused us to believe in him. Why is that so important? Because before God called us to faith, we were actually citizens of another country: the devil's. The devil's country is the world. The Bible calls the devil "the ruler of this world." We loved that citizenship because we could do whatever we wanted. If we wanted to be selfish and live only for ourselves, the devil would gladly let us do it. If we wanted to live it up and worry about the consequences later, the devil would say, "This is my kind of guy or girl!" Unfortunately, the consequence for having that citizenship in the world was a lifetime of pain in hell.
But our God didn't and doesn't want us to go there, and he didn't and doesn't want us to have our citizenship in the devil's country, this world, even though that's the only place we wanted to be. Instead, God gave us citizenship in another country: heaven. Listen to how Paul describes the differences of people in those two "countries."
As I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ. (Philippians 3:18-20)
There was nothing we could have done for citizenship in that country of heaven, the Promised Land of heaven, or which Canaan was an earthly picture. There was nothing that we did do for it. But the price God paid to bring us there was amazing. God gave up his own Son to death and hell so that we wouldn't have to suffer in hell for eternity. That is exactly what the season of Lent reminds us again, that God gave his own holy Son -- the firstfruits of his grace -- to die for all of the world's sins and all of your sins and all of my sins. Every time you treasured the things of this world more than God himself. Every time you wanted to live your life your way according to this world, instead of how God wants you to live. Every one of those sins is gone -- washed away by the blood Jesus shed on Calvary. Jesus gave us the perfection that he had earned with his perfect life and took for himself all the shame and punishment of our sins. Then he died in our place and suffered hell in our place so that we could live with God forever. Paul told the Ephesians, "Remember at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ." (Ephesians 2:12-13) He goes on to say that because of the cross where Jesus gave up his life for you, "Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household." (Ephesians 2:19)
In other words, God Gave Us the Reason to Give. God gave us his Son -- the firstfruits of his grace. We never can praise him enough. But Jesus is the reason why we can give gladly of our firstfruits.
God through Moses told the Israelites to say these words when they had received their first produce from the soil of Canaan: "Now I bring the firstfruits of the soil that you, O LORD, have given me." God wants the best from us. He wants the firstfruits because the firstfruits are the best that we have to give. When we give of our firstfruits, we are showing trust in God that he will bless us with even more. Listen to God's promise on the subject from Malachi: "'Test me in this,' says the LORD Almighty, 'and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.'" (Malachi 3:10).
What have you given back to your Lord as a thank you for what he has given to you? Do you give the first of your paycheck regularly, or do you give what is left over at the end of the month after you pay off bills that are more important, sometimes having to say, "Well, I guess God doesn't get anything this week"? Maybe you tell yourself, "I already give such and such percentage of my money to the church. I don't have to give any more." Did God only redeem such and such percentage of you? Of course not. Remember, everything we have and are is the Lord's. And even if you do give regularly and proportionately of the firstfruits of your money, what about your time and what about your talent? Have you given of those to spread God's kingdom to neighbors and friends? Of course, we have all failed to give God the firstfruits of everything we have.
But that is where we again see that God is a loving God full of mercy for sinners. We can rejoice that God's mercy is not like our thankfulness, which is often forced and half-hearted. God's mercy showed in God sending his Son to suffer eternal death for us so that we can have eternal life. A priceless gift that we could never have done for ourselves, and it is all-sufficient. Jesus' blood didn't just save us from a few sins and then stop, thus limiting God's mercy. No. "The blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from every sin." That is how we can give of our firstfruits, and really all that we have, back to God.
"'Tis better to give than to receive." Is that true? In one most important way it's not true -- we have received forgiveness through Jesus' blood, and heaven is our Promised Land where we will go because God gave us the firstfruits of his grace -- Jesus Christ. What can be better than receiving that? From that perspective of heaven, even as we live our lives here on earth, we gladly give all we are and all we have to our Savior. What can be better for the Christian than to give to our Savior so others will know him and join us in heaven? Amen.
