Principles for Giving in the New Testament Church

The Church as Christ’s Body and the Call to Biblical Functioning

You may be seated. I want to invite you to take out your Bible and turn to the book of 2 Corinthians. Find your way there to chapter 9. In the past few months, we have been examining the subject of the church and the relationship that the church has with its members and the members with the church in regard to how the leadership is supposed to function, how the membership is supposed to function.

What is a biblically functioning church? Is the church even something that Christ intended to be in the world? And we know that it is because he said from his own mouth, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

So the reality is we know that the church is the only God-ordained, Christ-instituted organization in the world. There are other organizations that do good work. There are several organizations that partner with the church to do good things.

But the church, the body of Christ, is the only Christ-instituted organization in the entire world. This is it. This is what Christ came to do. He came to establish his body and to build his church. And so if we're going to function as a church, we ought to function as God intended us to function.

We ought to function biblically. The God of the universe has given us His Word. Through prophets and apostles, He's had His Word written down. And through faithful men down through the centuries, He's had His Word brought to the way that we have it now.

Back in the first couple centuries of the church, they didn't have a book that they could simply open. They had vellum scrolls and papyrus scrolls and they were separated. And sometimes they would be combined, sometimes they wouldn't.

But it took a while for it to really come together and for them to finally have what we have before us today, and that's to be able to look at all 66 books that God has inspired and to be able to learn His Word.

And so we ought to apply that Word to His church, and we try to do that. And we've looked at what the church should expect from its members. That's what we've been talking about. Because we said when members come into the church, when people come into the church, they have expectations.

Church Membership Expectations and the Problem of Consumer Christianity

And that's not wrong. You should expect when you come into the church that you're going to get right teaching, that you're going to get good fellowship, that you're going to be inspired and encouraged, that you're going to be prayed for, that your needs are going to be met.

That's not wrong to expect when you come into the church, that the church is a body and that the body has responsibilities. But likewise, when you come into the church, there are things that are expected of you.

And this is the part where a lot of people say, okay, slow down. It's okay for me to come in expecting things, but I don't want to have anything expected of me because we live in a consumer society where everything is gauged by how much I can get by how little I can put in.

How much can I receive with the least amount of effort? And we sort of treat churches sort of the way we treat car dealerships. I want to spend the least and get the most. I want to give the least and get the most.

Well, the church should have some expectations, and it does. We have expectations for our members. We expect you to participate in worship. We expect you to participate in fellowship. We expect you to participate in ministry.

We expect you to use your spiritual gifts that God has given to you for the building up of the body to be in prayer for the congregation and for the lost. Those are the things we've looked at so far. Those are the expectations we've looked at so far.

Well, today we come to the least popular one. The one that I will say is the least comfortable for the average preacher to talk about. Because when I tell you you need to come to church and be in worship and you need to fellowship and you need to minister to one another and you need to use your spiritual gifts and you need to pray for one another, everybody's like, all right, I'm with you.

We're good. Okay. And then when I say we got to give, everybody goes, ooh, I came to the wrong church today. Because now we're going to talk about giving. And yeah, we're going to talk about money. And this is, as I said, one of the least popular subjects for a minister to discuss in the pulpit.

And it's due in part to the mishandling of the subject by so many ministers or those who would call themselves ministers. God's Word has been used by some to amass a fortune by fleecing the flock. And I would be wrong to not point that out.

There are men and women who make the pulpit their personal ATM machine. And they use it to transact funds from the congregation for themselves, building, as it were, their own kingdom here on earth by robbing from the people of God.

And in doing so, they have made it difficult for ministers who are seeking to be faithful to God's Word to talk about giving without first having to add the caveat there are people who misuse your money.

There are people who take more than they should and use it for things that they shouldn't. As a result, there's often a discomfort which accompanies the discussion when sound teachers address the subject.

I remember R .C. Sproul tells a story when he was a little boy. He went to a baseball game with his, I think it was his uncle that he went with, and he'd never seen a priest or preacher before. He didn't know what that was as a small boy.

And he was going into the baseball game and he saw the man walk by with a preacher's collar. It might have been a Catholic priest. It may have been an Episcopalian. A lot of guys wear that collar. And he sees the guy walk by in the collar and little R .C. Sproul, a little boy who doesn't know anything, he looks up at his uncle and he says, well, what's that mean?

What's that? That's different. I've never seen that. And his uncle looked down and said, that means watch your wallet. So it has... Among unbelievers, oftentimes the way that the church is seen is just another place that's trying to beg for your money or trying to take your money or trying to steal your money, trying to misuse your money.

So when we discuss the responsibilities of church membership and we get around to giving, I always want to just say, you have to understand, this is what I'm going to give you, are biblical principles for giving.

And giving to God is part of our responsibility as part of his body. Giving to God's work, giving to his service, giving to the ministry of the church, it's not something that is really a debate as to whether or not we should.

Now, how we do, and that's what we're going to talk about today. But it shouldn't be an embarrassing thing to talk about. And I always like it when a person comes first time. This guy always talks about money.

They only heard me one time. So if today's your first day, know that this isn't the always message. But having said all that, let's read the text. We're going to read, it says verse 7. Verse 7 is the primary text, but to really kind of get the swath of the text, let's read verses 6 down through verse 9.

And we're going to stand in honor of reverence to God's word. Paul's been talking about giving all through chapter 8, and in the beginning part of chapter 9, and here he gets really to the heart of the issue.

Because he says, the point is this, whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things and at all times, you may abound in every good work. As it is written, he has distributed freely, he has given to the poor, his righteousness endures forever.

Father, I thank you for your word. I pray that you would first and foremost keep me from error. For I know how easy it is for me to slip into error, to wander off into error. I pray that you would sanctify my mind and heart for the task at hand.

I pray that you would open the hearts of the people to hear your word. I pray that we will see today that giving is an act of worship, and that when we give, we're not doing so to meet some minimum standard whereby we can satisfy you and your demands, but that we're giving cheerfully and sacrificially of the blessings that you've given to us that we might bless others in your name.

Father, we thank you. And we bless you and praise you in Jesus' name. Amen. The goal of preaching is to preach the text, to speak what God has spoken, to provide an understanding of what he has said. And when we come to the discussion of giving, we know that this is a subject that has been fraught with misunderstanding, so our goal is to be as clear as possible.

And today it might seem like I'm going to give you a lesson more than a sermon, because I'm going to be looking at principles and things throughout the scripture, and it may not seem so much like a sermon as much as it might seem like a Sunday school lesson, but I hope that you'll see that the difference, as Mike mentioned a few weeks ago in his sermon, the difference between a Sunday school lesson or a lesson and a sermon is there's an application.

In the sermon there's always that sermonic thrust or thesis at the end, where now you do this, you know, based on what you've learned. So I hope there is that in this message, and I hope you'll see. But there is going to be somewhat of a scholastic attempt, because I want to show you some things that are very important.

I was recently sitting in a seminary class. I was auditing a Greek class at the seminary, and before the class there was always these little kind of discussions that started among the men that were there, and that one would say something, well, what do you think about this?

And then everybody would sort of chime in, and I always kind of sat back and listened. I'm the older man in the group, if you can imagine. I'm the old man now. So I'd sort of sit back and let the young guys talk.

Amazing. I'm getting older. And so I'd sit back and let them talk, and the subject of giving came up, and it was the subject of the tithe. It's always the tithe is the argument. And they were back and forth and arguing, and those who believed in the tithe as a New Testament command were making their arguments.

Those who didn't were making their arguments, and then there was those who sort of came down in between. And I just remember listening and thinking, how much of this that I'm listening to is based on Scripture, and how much is based on tradition and what people have heard?

Because that's what I was hearing more than Scripture. Very few of them were opening the Bible and saying, well, this is what Jesus said, or this is what the Apostle Paul said, or this is what the Scripture says.

They were saying, well, you know, well, if 10 was good enough for God, it's good enough for that. No, they weren't saying that. But I'm saying they were throwing out all these colloquialisms. Very, very clear that they were more concerned with being right than they were with being biblical.

And I think oftentimes that's where we stand on issues, is we'd rather just be right with whatever we believe and not be challenged. And if we are challenged, we go to find a Bible verse that agrees with us rather than finding the 15 that don't.

So today we're going to look at giving, and I'm going to try to explain some things to you that you might not have ever heard before. And if at the end of this message you disagree with me, I'm not above correction, but I'm going to tell you what I believe that the Bible teaches in regard to giving, and I think it's some things that we need to understand.

Compulsory Giving in the Old Testament: Taxes and the Tithe

The first is this, and I didn't put any notes on your outline, so if you want to write some things down, I'll give you the first thing you might want to write down. There are two types of giving that are described in the Bible.

There are two types of giving that are described in the Bible. The first one is compulsory giving, and the second one is voluntary giving. Two types of giving are described in the Bible. The first one is compulsory giving.

The second one is voluntary giving. Compulsory giving would be things like taxes. You know what the Bible says about taxes? Pay them. I mean, in a very simple way, the Bible says in Romans chapter 13, verse 6, it says, for because of this you also pay taxes.

Because of what? Well, if you go back up to verse 1, it says, let every person be subject to the governing authorities. As a result, we pay taxes. And guess what? The government don't ask for it. The government makes a demand of it.

And if you don't pay it, guess what happens? They will come and take it. If you don't have it, they might take you. But the point is, it's compulsory. It's not optional. I know some guys who like to argue that it is optional.

Some of them try to make an argument, you know, that they shouldn't have to pay taxes and it's optional. Some of them have landed in jail as a result. But taxes are talked about in the Bible, both in the Old and New Testament, as a type of compulsory giving.

But there's another type of compulsory giving that is mentioned in the Scripture, and that is called the tithe. The tithe was the practice of giving one-tenth of one's increase to God, and that's what the word tithe means.

By the way, if you don't know what the word tithe means, tithe means a tenth. One-tenth of the increase was given to God, and it was not optional. It was commanded that it be given. The first tenth was considered to be holy to God.

It was devoted to Him. It could not be held back. It was a compulsory offering. But what most people do not understand is because of the nature of the nation of Israel in the Old Testament, the tithe was very similar to the tax of today, the governmental taxes of today.

Israel was a theocracy. You say, well, she was a monarchy. Well, yes, but she began as a theocracy. The Levites made up the royal holy priesthood, and this priesthood performed the duties of the civil government, including judging and things like that.

They had a role as civil leaders, and this government was financed through the tithing of the people. Something a lot of people don't realize is that Israel was commanded to tithe, but it wasn't like the tithing that people practice today.

People often argue, well, we have to tithe today to the church, and we're going to talk about that in a minute, but they argue for the tithe to the church based on the percentage that Israel gave. But here's the reality.

People today will say you've got to give a tithe. That's 10%. In Israel, there were two tithes per year. Leviticus 27 is the Levitical tithe. Deuteronomy 14 is the festival tithe. So there was two tithes per year.

That's 2 times 10 is 20. And then there was also a smaller amount that was required by the people. Leviticus 19 and Exodus 23 talks about smaller amounts. When you add up the amount that was given throughout the year by the people of Israel, it added up to 23 or so percent.

This revenue was used to operate the nation, to maintain civil government, and to aid in the needs of the poor. And it was compulsory. It was stipulated regarding when and how much was to be given, and the people could not choose not to give it.

It was demanded in Israel that the tithe be given. Now, the second type of giving I mentioned earlier is voluntary. Voluntary giving is based upon the desire of the giver. It is described in the Old Testament in a few places.

If you want to write it down, Exodus 25, the Lord says to Moses in verse 1, Speak to the people of Israel that they may take from Me a contribution from every man whose heart moves him, you shall receive this contribution from Me.

So what does that say about the offering? It's voluntary. Every man whose heart moves him, you take that offering from him. 1 Chronicles 29, verses 6 -9, it says the leaders of the fathers' houses made their freewill offerings.

By the way, that's the only time freewill is seen in the Bible, is when it's related to an offering. Just throwing that out there. It says that they made their freewill offerings, as did also the leaders of the tribes, the commanders of thousands and of hundreds, and the officers over the king's work.

They gave for the service of the house of God 5 ,000 talents, 10 ,000 derricks of gold, 10 ,000 talents of silver, 18 ,000 talents of bronze, 100 ,000 talents of iron. And whoever had precious stones gave them to the treasury of the house of the Lord in the care of Jehiel the Gershonite.

Then the people rejoiced because they had given willingly, for with a whole heart they had offered freely to the Lord. David the king also rejoiced greatly. Again, this offering was voluntary. It wasn't compulsory.

It wasn't based on a percentage. It was a voluntary offering. Now my point in making a distinction between that which is compulsory and that which is voluntary is this. In the New Testament, there is only described voluntary giving.

The New Testament never describes a compulsory gift or a compulsory amount. Now some of you grew up in churches and some of you may have been in a church and some of you maybe even have said it yourself.

If you don't give your 10%, you're robbing God. You base that on Malachi who talks about not giving the tithe and you're robbing God. But I want to explain some things to you and I hope that what you take away from here today is not this.

Well, pastor told me I didn't have to tithe. Please don't take that away as the heart of the message because that is not what your pastor is teaching you. What I am telling you is that compulsory offerings that were intended for the establishment and the sustenance of the nation of Israel is not the model for giving in the New Testament church.

It's not the model for giving in the New Testament church. People say, what about the tithe? Well, some of us again were taught 10%. That's the command. That's what you have to give. And what I want you to understand immediately is I don't have any problem with that if that is your heart.

If you believe that God has put on your heart 10 and you give 10 of your income to the church, that's wonderful and I will share. My wife and I practice giving 10 to the church as a beginning point because we believe it's a good foundational start for giving.

But what you don't need to confuse is the voluntary with the compulsory because the compulsory requirements of the Old Testament do not carry over to the New. I know some of you that 7 of your income would be a large portion of your family's income and your ability to sustain your family.

And I know some of you that 20 probably wouldn't be that big a deal. I don't know how much anybody gives. That's the one beautiful thing about this church. Pat knows. The assistant treasurer knows. Nobody else knows.

Even the elders. We don't go in and audit the books so we can come to your house and tell you you're not giving. There's some churches that happens. There's some churches that they got to see your bank statements to know that you're giving right.

We leave that between you and the Lord. But I will say this. When we talk about the tithe, some people use the tithe as an escape from giving what they really should be giving. And some people use the tithe as a noose around their neck because they feel like if they don't do that, they're robbing God.

Both are the wrong heart because both are based on compulsory understandings of giving. If you're only giving 10 but God has encouraged you in your heart to give 20, are we not wrong? And if you're giving 10 to your church but your bills are going unpaid, is that wrong?

You say, well, that would never happen because I've been told if I pay my tithe, I can always pay my bills. Well, when you got six kids and I know some of you do have six kids, so I'm not talking about anybody individual.

I have four. But when you got six kids in one income, sometimes things are a little tight. And when somebody tells you you're robbing God, they'll go to Malachi 3 .8 and it says, well, a man robbed God, you're robbing him in your tithes and contributions.

You need to understand immediately that the parallel that they're making between the old covenant and the new covenant is not an absolute parallel. The tithes and contributions, the offerings described in that passage were part of the compulsory giving to the nation of Israel.

Holding back those was considered theft from God because His command to the nation was to give them. And this is much the same way as a person would be penalized if he were caught evading his taxes because he would be essentially robbing the government.

Furthermore, the contributions or offerings here would have included animal sacrifices which are no longer part of the new covenant. Anybody here bring a goat today? I hope not. Every passage sits within a context and if you don't understand the context regarding who it's talking about and who Malachi is talking to, then you're not going to understand.

I will say there are some people who rob God. Don't get me wrong. We're going to get to that in a minute. We're going to talk about how we give and what we give. There are people who rob God but it's not based on some numerical standard.

It's based on the heart. If God lays it on our heart to give an amount and we harden our heart against that, then that's how we're robbing God. And I have heard this argument and just in case I don't want to get an email.

Some people say, well the tithe preceded the nation of Israel. The tithe preceded the nation of Israel because if you go all the way back to the time before Moses to the time of Abraham, in Genesis chapter 14, you'll see a little man by the name of Melchizedek.

And what did Melchizedek do? He was the priest of Salem. He was the one who blessed Abraham after Abraham went to battle over Lot and then when he brought back, what did he bring to Melchizedek? Ten percent.

People say, right there. Proof positive. The tithe is the standard because it predates the law. You know those same people could make the argument for the Sabbath because the Sabbath predated the law but they still worship on Sunday.

But that's another story. That's a whole other argument. What I'm saying is this. One of the things you need to understand, Abraham didn't do that because Melchizedek told him to. That was a voluntary offering.

The amount is inconsequential. It was a voluntary offering. And I already told you, if you bring ten percent voluntarily, God bless you. Melchizedek didn't have a law that he gave to Abraham and said you've got to bring me ten percent.

Abraham did it because it was what God put on his heart to do. And I do think it's a good example. I will say this. If everybody gave ten percent, we'd never have to worry about nothing. I will say that.

As a standard, if everybody could give ten percent of what they had, we wouldn't ever have to worry about whether or not the lights are going to get paid, new air conditioners are going to get bought, or whether or not we're going to be able to pay for Walter Heaton's missionary work or anybody else.

Ten percent, if everybody did that, it does make for a good balancing act. And it does have that. And again, I hope that I'm being clear because my point is not that you shouldn't tithe. My point is this, is that if you are looking at the Old Covenant and saying this is the standard that God has carried into the New Covenant and this is the percentile that I must meet to satisfy God, then I think that you're looking at your giving wrong.

Giving in the New Covenant is not compulsory. You know one of the greatest stories that proved this in the New Testament? If you go back to the book of Acts and you look up Ananias and Sapphira. Remember Ananias and Sapphira?

What did they do? Ananias and Sapphira sold their property and gave the money to the church to be distributed among the poor. When they sold their property and gave the money to the church to be distributed among the poor, they held back a portion for themselves.

And the Apostle Peter knew that. He had been told by the Spirit and he knew that these people were lying. The Holy Spirit knew that they were lying. And he says to Ananias, why have you lied to God? Why have you lied to the Holy Spirit?

Ananias fell dead. Sapphira comes in a little later, didn't know what happened. She says the same thing. She dies, falls right dead right there. Do you know what the part of the story most people miss and the part that always has been an encouragement to me?

When Peter looked at Ananias, he says, was it not yours to do with what you will? Your property to go out and do that. You know why they sold their property? If you read the story right before Ananias and Sapphira, Barnabas had sold his property and given the money to the church and the church lauded his generosity.

Ananias and Sapphira see a man give. They see him being lauded for his generosity and they say, we like that. I want to be lauded for my generosity, but let's not be too generous. We'll tell them we're giving all of it, but we won't.

Ananias and Sapphira didn't die because they didn't give the whole amount because they weren't asked to give any of it at all. They weren't required to give anything at all. Peter says they died because they lied to God.

Giving in the New Testament is voluntary, but that doesn't mean there's not a standard. They say, now wait a minute, did you just contradict yourself? No, because I want to go now to our text. I really want to spend some time looking at this, because when we look at giving, we look at things like amount, purpose, manner, motivation, but let's look first at the text.

Beginning in verse 6, the Apostle Paul says, the point is this, whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Now, right away, it's interesting that the Apostle Paul does use sowing and reaping as the example of the motivation for giving.

He says, you know that if you're a person who is stingy, that you're going to also not have a lot. If you're a person who doesn't give, you're not going to receive, and I know a lot of people, that kind of bothers them, because they say, well, that's sort of self-motivated.

That's sort of selfish. If we're just giving, so we'll get. But that's not the point here. That's not the point that Paul's making. Paul's not saying you need to give so you can get. His point is in regard to how God deals with our heart.

When we are generous, when we are open-hearted and open-handed, God sees our heart, and as a result, will use that open-handedness and open-heartedness in His service, and there will be a blessing that comes as a result of that.

But if we are close-handed and close-hearted, we are on the opposite side. Well, why would God bless us if we are not using our blessings to bless others? And that's a simple question. Why would God bless me if I'm not using my blessings to bless others?

And you say, now, wait a minute. I know plenty of greedy people who have plenty of money, but doesn't Jesus warn us about that? Doesn't He talk about the fact that there is in the world a love of money which is the root of all kinds of evil?

Yeah, a person can have monetary wealth but without the blessing of God. You see, back in the ancient world, back in the time of Jesus, they didn't understand that. They saw a person who was rich and they said that person is blessed by God.

And they saw a person who was poor and they said that person is not blessed by God. And that's how they measured blessedness. There was a time in which people actually believed you could earn your way into heaven by giving alms.

In fact, if you look back through some of the ancient Talmudic writings, that was the extra-biblical writings of the Jews, there was a belief that you could actually atone for sins by giving alms. In fact, that's the way Jews believe today because, you know, they can't sacrifice anymore.

They don't have a temple to sacrifice animals anymore. So, if you ask a Jewish person, how do you atone for your sins? How are your sins atoned for? The answer, almsgiving. We give a portion of what we have away and that purchases our righteousness.

It purchases our atonement. So, think about it. In Jesus' day, when you looked out and you saw a rich man, well, that guy can purchase all the atonement he wants. And then you see a guy who has nothing.

You say, that guy, man, he's got to be hellbound because he ain't got money to buy to get to the doorstep of heaven. And Jesus came in and confused everybody when he said it's harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God than it is for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.

You see, don't think that just because you have money that that's automatically God's blessing. I've heard people say that. Well, I'm blessed because God gave me this or that. If we're not using it in God's service, if we're not being faithful with what God has given us, our money can be a curse.

That woman who only had two pennies and nothing else to her name was the most blessed giver in all the Bible. She was told by the people, this woman is the greatest giver here today because she didn't give what she had to spare.

She gave everything she owned to God. And that's what it means here when it says whoever sows sparingly will reap sparingly. Again, a person can have a ton and he might give a little bit here or a little bit there, but his blessings will not reap bountifully.

You know, there are other blessings than money. There's the blessing of knowing that you helped someone. There's the blessing of knowing that you reached out to someone. There used to be a song, and I'm not touting the theology of the song because honestly, I don't remember all the words and there might be something in it that's a little hokey and maybe a little off, but there was a song that said thank you for giving to the Lord.

You ever heard that song? It was talking about a guy who went to heaven and he saw people as he was there and he said I was the missionary that you gave and that money sent me to reach people and I was this.

And it says thank you for giving to the Lord. I am a life that was changed. You might not see what God does with what you do, but there is a blessing that is reaped from what we sow. And it might not be a blessing that's necessarily immediately seen.

It might not be a blessing that you know about until you get to glory. But when we sow in God's kingdom, we cannot walk away without a blessing because God has promised to bless that which is sown in His kingdom.

But don't think I'm telling you that when you give to the church, you automatically are going to have that BMW. Whatever. People think if I'm going to get that big house, I better give to God. I've heard people talk.

I've heard the TV guys talk. Well, if you really want to have that nice house, you better start giving money to God first. If your motivation for giving that money to God is so you'll get that nice house, just keep it.

Because that's the wrong motivation. The motivation is the blessings of God, but the blessings of God are otherworldly, folks. The blessings of God are not meant to be housed in this world alone. That's not saying you can't have that BMW.

If you're faithful with what God gives you and He just happens to give you that, hey, bless the Lord. But I'll say this, if it's keeping you in debt to the point where you can't give to the Lord, it might be what needs to go.

There are things that we need to consider in regard to our giving. And when he says, the point is this, whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly. Whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.

There is a principle. And when I say there's not a numerical number, that 10 that you're trying to meet, I'm not saying there's not a standard. I'm just saying it's not a number standard. The standard is are we sowing bountifully or are we not?

And we know it. And it's different for you than for me. Because I might give more than you, but I might be giving less than you. I might give more money than you, but I might be giving less of what I could give than you are.

He goes on to say, each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves the true forgiver. Now I want to say this, when it says each one must give as he has decided in his heart, you need to understand our heart is wicked.

And even though we've been saved, our sanctification is a process whereby we are made like Christ. We'll always have to fight the battle with the heart. So he gives us a little test to go along with the heart.

He says each one must give what he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly. And I think that's how the heart works in this. Because the heart works as whether or not we're giving something reluctantly is based on how we feel in our heart.

You know whether or not, when you're going to put that offering in, you know whether or not you want to do that. This story, Billy Graham tells this story. He and his wife went to preach at a church back when he wasn't who he is as far as known.