Ecclesiology: Supporting the Church

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Alright, open your Bibles with me and turn to 2 Corinthians chapter 9.
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We're going to read a very familiar passage, one that you hear me read a lot.
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I read this just about every Sunday right before we receive the offering.
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And I want to say before we read the text that if there is a subject that I do not like to preach on, it is the subject of giving.
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The reason for that is not because I think giving is wrong or bad, but it is so misused and so mistreated.
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And I know as soon as I plan a sermon on giving, we're going to have at least four visitors.
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Most of them are not going to be believers.
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And they're going to leave thinking the only thing the pastor ever does is ask people for money.
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And I have heard pastors who do that.
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Who every message is about how much you're not giving and how much you should be giving and how much needs to be given.
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And I have seen the Scripture mistreated.
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But I want to say something tonight as we begin, sort of make a personal appeal here.
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We're ending our study of ecclesiology.
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This is the last lesson on the subject of the doctrine of the church.
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Next week we'll have Thanksgiving, which means all of our evening events are canceled.
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No karate, no anything for the week.
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We just take the whole week off because so many people are preparing for Thanksgiving.
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So we will not have Wednesday night next week.
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When we come back in December, I'm going to take a break from the theology.
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I'm going to teach on the birth narratives of Christ for several weeks.
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Luke and Matthew.
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I just want to do that.
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Take a little break.
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But when we come back in January, we'll be in eschatology, which is the study of the last things.
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And that's going to be exciting.
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I hope we'll have several new people come and visit because people like to hear that subject.
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So tonight's the end of eschatology.
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Ecclesiology, sorry.
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Tonight's the end of ecclesiology, the end of the study of the doctrine of the church.
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And we're ending on the subject of giving because it's necessary.
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Supporting the ministry is not optional.
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It is necessary.
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You guys like that you can come to this building and it's nice and comfortable and the lights are on and the air is blowing nicely.
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And you have men who are able to teach and those things and time given to study and all those things.
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All of this is part of ministry and we like that we can support missionaries and we like that we can help people who are hurting.
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All those things are part of giving to the ministry.
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So this is not something that we should ever be ashamed to talk about.
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Neither should I ever be ashamed to teach on it and I'm not.
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As I said, my only fear is that people would think this is all I ever talk about.
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And you can look, I have over a thousand sermons on Sermon Audio ranging from a ton of different subjects.
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Brother Andy's on there, Brother Mike's on there.
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And in those thousand sermons you may find less than ten where I've addressed this subject.
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So if you're here tonight and I know we only have visitors.
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Lewis, it's good to see you guys again.
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Just know that this isn't the normal thing but it is necessary.
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Though it's not the norm, it's a necessary conversation.
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And so what we're going to look at tonight, we're going to look first at this passage and then we're going to discuss the different types of giving, the amount of giving, purpose of giving, and the manner of giving.
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So let's read the text.
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2 Corinthians 9, 7 Each one must give as he has decided in his heart to give not reluctantly or under compulsion for God loves a cheerful giver.
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That last phrase is an encouragement to me.
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We're going to talk later about what it means to give cheerfully but just for a moment can't we just meditate on what God loves.
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You know this week I'm preaching Psalm 92 if you want to prepare for Sunday morning and it says in the beginning of Psalm 92 that it is good to give thanks to the Lord.
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And I've been bathing in that passage all week because it's such an understatement.
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I almost titled the sermon the biggest understatement in the Bible.
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It is good to give thanks to the Lord.
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It's such an understatement isn't it? And isn't it also an understatement to say that what what is what God loves we should love.
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Isn't that an understatement? What God loves we should love.
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And if God loves cheerful givers we ought to love being cheerful givers.
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You know that's a meditation of the heart.
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If God loves it when I give cheerfully then I should never want to give begrudgingly.
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I should always want to give cheerfully because God loves that.
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And if God loves the cheerful giver then my goal in life should be to give him everything I can cheerfully.
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My wife and I watched a documentary.
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I'm actually thinking about showing it here in church maybe next year sometime after the Christmas season is over but it's called The Insanity of God.
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It's about missionaries who go to the deepest darkest places on earth and give their lives for ministry and man you know it's hard to watch some of the things but the miracles that God does and the cheerfulness with which these people give their lives and the joy.
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I posted something on Facebook.
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I think some of you who are on Facebook saw it.
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I said you know some people have way more trials than we do and yet they have way more joy than we do.
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Their trials are so much more than ours and yet their joy is so much more than ours.
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How can that be? That someone can have so many more problems and yet so much more joy because they're so close to God and they're giving themselves cheerfully to God.
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And so when God says God loves a cheerful giver we should want to be that.
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We should want to give cheerfully everything not just money.
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Not everybody has a lot of money but we can give to God so much.
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We can give to God our service.
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We can give to God our time.
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And I've been so thankful the last few weeks we've had some people who have really stepped up around here and given God a lot of extra time for some of the things that need to be done.
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I've been so grateful just to see the doors open and people come in and doing things that just need to be done.
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What a blessing.
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And they're doing it cheerfully.
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Nobody's demanding anything for it.
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They're doing it because they want to do it.
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They know it needs to be done.
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And they're laughing and smiling while they do it.
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What a blessing.
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So that being said we're going to look at two types of giving that are described in the Bible.
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This is the only blanks that you have on your sheet so I will give you the blanks.
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The two types of giving that are described in the Bible the first is compulsory giving and the second is voluntary giving.
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So that is the two types of giving that are described in the Bible.
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Under or besides since the line goes this way you don't have much room underneath it.
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Off to the side of compulsory giving you can put two words to remind yourself what I'm referring to.
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Under compulsory giving the first one would be taxes.
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Taxes are compulsory.
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You want to write a verse for that.
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Romans 13 1-6 It says that let every person be subject to governing authorities.
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There's no authority except from God.
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Those that exist are instituted by God.
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Then in verse 6 it says you also because of this pay taxes and it says in verse 7 pay to all what is owed to them.
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There's a lot of people who don't want to pay taxes.
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I don't love it.
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I don't enjoy the fact that we're just now fixing to move.
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For those of you who don't know we're moving to Callahan.
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We're in the process of purchasing a home and they sent me a letter.
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This is what your annual taxes are going to be.
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I'm like huh.
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It's just more money.
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We don't have to be cheerful do we? Well we're going to talk about that in a minute.
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But we do it right? Because it's obligatory.
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It's compulsory.
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I'm supposed to pay my taxes as a Christian.
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I'm not supposed to cheat on my taxes.
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Even if I want to argue the whole, I don't know if you've ever heard of this phrase taxation is theft.
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That's a big thing that's argued right now that all taxation is a form of theft.
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That's a libertarian phrase that's very popular right now and we could have that conversation later but the point is it's a compulsory thing.
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The Bible says we pay it.
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The other compulsory giving if you will is the tithe.
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Now when I say the tithe I am particularly referring to the old covenant tithe and I'm going to explain the difference and how I understand the new covenant in just a moment but under the old covenant the tithe and all the word tithe means is 10%.
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The word tithe actually predates the law.
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Anybody know the first time the tithe was given in scripture? Melchizedek.
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When Melchizedek was, when Abraham came back from war and he had the spoils of war it says he gave a tithe to Melchizedek and so that's the first time we see an example of a 10% offering being given as something of a religious observance.
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The priest of Salem was what Melchizedek was called and so he was given that that tithe and so 10% becomes a becomes a foundational sort of standard you know and you've probably heard it, if 10% is enough for God it's enough for the IRS.
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But the 10% sort of becomes the baseline and then we get to the law and we find though that the 10% is not always the, it's a baseline but there's multiple times where we have this come up and the Levitical tithe actually turned out to be more like 23% depending on your amount of produce and how much your how productive you are.
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And there were some people who didn't give because some of the tithe was used to give to rather than take from and so the tithe was universal and it was based on the amount that was that you were prospering and so there were rules and all kinds of established things but it was compulsory.
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You were not allowed to not tithe.
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And the way that I describe the tithing of the Old Testament is I say it's a lot like the taxation of today.
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It was what caused the system of government with the theocratic system which became a monarchy it was theocratic under Moses and Joshua and then through the judges but then you have the kings and the tithe is essentially how the nation is funded and so we have this tithing system that's compulsory.
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So we have compulsory giving and there's various passages I wish we had time to read we don't have time to read all these just like Brother Andy I'm going to be giving you some passages tonight but we're not going to be reading all of them.
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You can look up the Levitical tithe which was Leviticus chapter 27 verses 30 to 33.
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The festival tithe which is Deuteronomy 14 22 to 29 and then there were smaller amounts that were required at different times in the year.
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Leviticus 19 9 and 10 there was an offering and then Exodus 23 10 and 11 there was an offering and that's why I say you start adding them up and it gets to be more like 23% versus just as flat flat tax.
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It's not a flat tax.
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And this revenue was used to operate the nation to maintain the civil government and to aid in the needs of meeting the needs of the poor and it was compulsory.
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So all of these we've talked about are compulsory giving.
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Now the second type of biblical giving is voluntary giving and in the Old Testament there was voluntary giving.
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I'll read to you one passage Exodus 25 verses 1 and 2.
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Exodus 25 1 and 2.
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The Lord said to Moses speak to the people of Israel that they take for me a contribution from every man whose heart moves him you shall receive the contribution for me.
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Notice what that's saying.
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It's saying that it's a voluntary offering.
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It's not there's no percentage mentioned.
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There's no standard.
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It's as his heart moves him take the offering.
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Also we see this in 1 Chronicles 29 and here's where we the only time in the Bible where we get the words free will is in regard to an offering and it says this 1 Chronicles 29 verse 6 it says the leaders of fathers houses made their free will 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 derricks of gold 10,000 derricks of gold 10,000 talents of silver and it goes on to give the numbers it said and whoever had precious stones gave them to the treasury to the house of the Lord in the care of Jahiel 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 so notice they gave freely they gave with their whole heart they still gave a lot which is interesting they still gave I mean thousands and thousands of talents and derricks but the point is there was compulsory giving there was voluntary giving and we see this all throughout the Old Testament now when we come to the New Testament here is where some debate comes in and I'm willing to have the debate when time allows for now I'm going to say my thoughts on the subject if you want to ask a question I'm willing to entertain it but it is my opinion that when we come to the New Testament that we are dealing exclusively with the voluntary gift and the reason why is because the New Testament does not provide for us the same standards of the compulsory gifts as the Old Testament provides so some people say well what are you saying you're saying we're not supposed to tithe I think tithing is a basic standard of measurement one tenth but the New Testament is actually never says if you don't tithe it's a sin in fact I would say this within the New Testament paradigm I think more not less than the tithe is really what is expected think of it like this who is the person who was considered to be the greatest giver in the New Testament she only gave a penny yeah the widow what did Jesus say this woman gave more than all the rest because she didn't give out of her abundance but she gave all that she had to live on right so what happens I think often with the tithe is people feel like that's all I have to give and they're thinking in terms of compulsory giving and rather than what do I get to give what do I what should I give you know what should I be giving and if somebody says well you should give a tithe I think that that's a good foundational place but I do know this there for some people who have very little income a tithe would be very difficult a whole 10% of their income and for some people a tithe is nothing you see what I'm saying well if everybody gives a tithe everybody's giving the same I understand the logic behind that and that is in a sense true but when we go back to the old covenant there were poor people that were the recipients of the benefits of the tithe rather than the giving side see that's the point we miss that part and so I do think that we have to be careful telling somebody Daisy you didn't give 10% you're a sinner I don't know what you give I have no idea Daisy I pick on you every week yeah yeah y'all remember J.C.
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Penney J.C.
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Penney gave well above a tithe some say he gave 90% of what he earned to the lord and he was a very wealthy man and I don't know that that number is entirely accurate but J.C.
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Penney was a wealthy man who gave and gave and gave and gave and he could have stuck with 10% and said that's good enough for me good enough for God good enough for me but that wasn't what he was to give it wasn't what God laid on his heart to give and so I do think that it's dangerous to say this is the standard I think it's a good foundational starting point and you know my wife and I we do we work through our giving in such a way that we try to give at least 10% we do I mean this is my heart I'm not telling you what you should do I'm telling you what we do as an example that's the only example I know because I don't know what anybody else gives right I know what I give so I'm able to say okay I know how much I make and the good thing is I make an annual salary by God's grace I know exactly what I'm going to make and so I'm able to at the beginning of the year say okay I know how much I'm going to make therefore I know how much I want to give as my base but that's not all I give that's just the starting point for me right and somebody may do it differently but that's the you know and it's easy to start there and then to do what else I can as the Lord prospers or as I'm able so there is my thoughts on the tithe is I do not believe tithing as a as a compulsory gift is a new covenant command but I do think that it's a good example and a good way to start thinking about giving and so I think that's a you know if we want to talk about because if you look at the first note is the amount of giving how much should you give right if you want to ask how much should you give here's here's some ways I can answer that I'll give you the scriptures to answer that from a New Testament perspective 1st Corinthians 16 1 and 2 1st Corinthians 16 1 and 2 now concerning the collection for the saints as I directed the churches in Galatia so also I direct you on the first day of each week each of you should put something aside and store it up as he may prosper so that there will be no collecting when I come note the amount given is determined by what the amount you prosper right so so right there is a beginning point alright so you have you have earned this much you have you have prospered this much therefore there's your you give proportionately to that now let me let's talk about that for a minute because like you know I mentioned the 90 percent that J.C.