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Each week at The Shepherd’s Church, we preach short homilies on the law of God and have decided to share those here as a resource to the people of God. This week, the command to not steal.
Well, every week we look at the law of God because we wanna understand what it says to us. We want the law to search us out. We want the law to be a mirror and reflect on us and expose us. And in fact, we should want the law to expose us.
I know that the law exposing us is difficult, it's hard. We've compared it before like Eustace having his scales ripped off by Aslan. In fact, this is probably the bloodiest part of service because our sin nature is confronted and we are confronted with the holiness of God so that we would repent of all of our sins.
Well, today we are in the eighth commandment. We went to the ninth last week, we leapfrogged the eighth and now we're back at the eighth and next week we'll be on the 10th to get us back on schedule. So we're on the eighth commandment.
Exodus 20, 15, you shall not steal. That's the word of the Lord. Now, every Lord's day we can sing about how Jesus owns everything and we can also arrange our finances as if Jesus owns nothing. We can call him Lord on Sunday and spend the rest of our week protecting our assets from his authority.
And the eighth commandment won't allow us to hide behind songs that we sing. In Malachi three, for instance, God accused his own people of robbing him. This is the, he's accusing them of breaking the eighth commandment by withholding their tithes and offerings.
They had received all of his provisions. They had spent his provisions and they had withheld what they owed to God. And we need to ask whether we are doing the same thing as one of the ways that we can simply do that is just to do it.
For instance, take me up on this challenge. This week I want you to open up your financial records and just a few short weeks we're gonna be sending out financial statements for the end of the year so that you can file your tax return.
So I want you to do that. Take me up on it. Take out a sheet of paper and I want you to add up all of the income that you receive from all the various revenue sources from January until the end of the year or at least until now, and then calculate the precise amount that we've given in support of the church and the ministry of Christ's church and the advancement of his kingdom.
And then after you've wrote both of those numbers down, divide your giving by your income, multiply it by 100 and that's the percentage of your giving. Now, what that number tells us is not our intentions.
It doesn't reflect our wants and our desires. It reflects what we've done. It only shows us what we have given and what is the state of our obedience in the area of giving because the Israelites were rebuked by God for stealing the order matter to us.
Is it possible that we can rob from God as well? Like all areas of our life, we owe Christ our loyalty. We give him our bodies. We serve him with our bodies because the Lord is Lord over our bodies. We give him our mind because he's Lord over our mind.
We give him our heart because he's Lord over our heart. But when we think about the wallet, do we think about the fact that the Lord is Lord there too? And when scripture talks about the man or the woman who has given Lordship over to their wallet, the number that he continually assigns to that is 10%.
That's the number that always comes up. It's that God has given us 100 of everything that we have and to demonstrate his total Lordship over all things because the Lord doesn't need anything from us.
We talked about this this morning upstairs that we can't add anything to God. We don't come here to make God feel better by our praises. We don't come here to add to him because he's incomplete. So the Lord doesn't need anything.
He gives us this discipline of giving for us, to sanctify us, to teach us to trust him in the same way that the Israelites in the Old Testament were commanded. Do not gather manna on the Sabbath. Why?
Because God wants us to starve? No, he wants us to trust him. He wants us to gather a double portion on Friday. This is what he told the Israelites so that they would trust him on the Sabbath. Giving is not because God needs.
Giving is because we need. We give back a 10th of all that we have because God is worthy of everything we have. For instance, I'm not a mathematician. I, at a minimum, I like math core, which is a genre of metal.
But anyway, I don't know much about math, but I know 10%, it's an easy number. So if you have made $50 ,000 in a year, 10 would be $5 ,000. That's the way I base my finances. Whatever I've made in the year, 10 belongs to God.
And if we look at our records and what they actually say, we get a really clear picture of who the Lord is. Is the Lord Lord over our finances or is he not? And I want to say that some of us already know the answer to that.
We received income for 10 months and we've given nothing to God and his church. Some of us have received lavishly from our employers who do not love and care for us. And given with stinginess to the God who created and sustains us.
We've paid for things that we wanted. Our house payments were never late. Our food and our budget, our drink budget was never lacking. Our movie subscriptions never lapsed. Our Starbucks indulgence didn't cease.
Over and over and over, we can find evidence on how we spend money on things that we're excited about, which gives us a clear picture of our excitement for God. We found room, I would even say intentionally made space for things that we enjoy or the freedoms that we cherish.
When we've also repeatedly found reasons why obedience in this area to God is no longer required. And at no point have we forgotten how to spend our riches in comparison to every other human on earth or in history.
What we've forgotten is whose money we're spending. Now, if anyone here is impoverished and needs help, all you have to do is ask. Our church is seeking to be a model of generosity and how we care for our people.
So if you need help, begin by asking our deacons. If you're making $0, 10 of zero is zero. And scripture continually tells us to measure how we give by what we have. And if you do not have, ask, because we wanna care for you.
But we can also borrow the language of poverty to excuse the habits of selfishness. There's a difference between us having nothing to give and giving nothing. There's a difference between poverty and running up our bills so high and getting into so much debt from lenders and being irresponsible with our money that we actually can't be generous.
I believe that many of us are probably living paycheck to paycheck because maybe we haven't been good stewards of the things that God has given us. Maybe we've overspent sinfully, lived above our means, gotten ourself into a position where God only gets the scraps.
And when we do that, because of fear of missing out, because fear of the bill collector, because of fear of something else that's bigger, more pressing, or something that's more real to us than the fear of God, when we do that, we're in sin and we're robbing God.
And we'll have to wrestle with the obviousness of what the balance sheet says about us. If our pleasures are funded, but our obedience is not, then our budget is making a statement about how we view our God.
I can't afford to give often means I won't surrender to God in this area of my life. Now, I wanna say this very clearly. Theologically, people will disagree with me or agree with me on this, but I wanna say where I'm coming from on this.
I believe that the tithe remains a duty for the Christian. I don't believe that the tithe, the 10 has gone away. And I believe that because the New Testament never overturns the tithe. When I look at what does the New Testament teach and what Old Testament laws still remain, I look at the New Testament has to overturn an Old Testament law for that law to no longer be in operation.
I do not think that the New Testament has to affirm a law in order for us to continue it. So with that, the New Testament does not overturn the tithe. Also, Jesus affirms the tithe. He says, well, he rebukes men who tithe meticulously over their mint and their cumin and their dill.
He rebuked them for that, but he did not rebuke them for the mere act of tithing. He said that they should have done the greater aspects of the law and not forgetting the other. He said that while they were doing their tithing, they should have loved God and made God the Lord of their heart.
He doesn't say stop tithing. He told them not to neglect the weightier aspects of the law while they're doing their tithe. Jesus was not only confirming the tithe, but he was talking about principled giving.
The reason that the new covenant is better than the old is that now because of the Holy Spirit, we can give joyfully instead of giving out of compulsion. The apostles, likewise, command the support of gospel ministry and deliberate proportionate giving.
They don't say, hey, listen, guys, for thousands of years, we know you were commanded to give 10%, but Jesus is about to destroy the temple, so great, we don't have any responsibility to support ministry anymore.
He doesn't say that. The grace of God has not made God less worthy of our giving. The grace of God has not made an allowance for us to presume upon him with selfishness. Now, I realize that giving 10 does not grant us to be selfish with 90%.
Everything belongs to God. The tithe is simply there to teach us to acknowledge his ownership in every area of life. In an area, humans are especially prone, myself included, to be selfish in. In areas where we are especially prone to need sanctification.
As a general rule, I apply this to myself, as a general rule, when I hate something or when my flesh chafes at something, it's usually a good rule of thumb for me to be obedient in that area because my flesh hates it for a reason.
If the church, and we often do this too, this is another aspect, we say that we're gonna give when there's a need. Like if the church gets a building, then I'll give. Or if the church has a mission opportunity that I'm interested in, then I'll give.
If someone's child needs help, then I'll give. Or if a family is in need, then I'll give. And don't get me wrong, those are really good occasions to give additional generosity. The Bible calls that offering, which is above and beyond the ordinary tithe.
That's why the Bible says, give your tithes and your offerings. Because we're commanded to give an ordinary rhythmic obedience. And if we see a need, and the Lord puts it on our heart, we are from time to time commanded to give exceptionally above and beyond.
And I think about this purely from a goods and services perspective as well. Although this is a very crude and a very base argument, and I'm only giving it to give a point. We come here every week to receive, amen.
We come into the unique presence of Christ to receive His presence as a people. We come to receive the Word and sacrament. We come to receive the teaching and the preaching and the discipleship and the singing and the fellowship and the love and the community, the pastoral care, the support, the counseling.
We want the church to disciple us and our children visit the sick, stand beside families in suffering. We want the church to expand and to see churches planted in New England and to see the whole area that we are in right now.
Bow the knee to Jesus, amen. But in light of all we've received, are we not also willing to help support that mission? I know for a fact that there are families here and in every church who are bearing tremendous sacrifices to sustain the work of ministry, while others with the means to contribute are consuming more that they're giving.
And I'm not saying that in order to shame. I'm not saying that in order to say that you're entirely wrong. I'm even saying that I can understand that because in maturity, what happens is, is that our infants always consume more than they give.
Our toddlers consume less, but they consume more than they give. Our teenagers consume less and hopefully they're moving towards giving more than they receive. Adults always give more than they receive.
If you're a mom, if you're a dad, you always give more than you receive. There's never a time where you receive more than you give. So my point in that is, is that the curve of Christian maturity, the bend of Christian maturity bends towards being more generous the more mature you are in Christ, not less.
And because of that and in the same way, in the manner in which we consume in the church or give in the church does say something about our Christian maturity. I believe a man can know all of the doctrines of Calvin, all the maxims of Luther, be able to preach with the honey dipped tongue of Charles Spurgeon and still be an infant in his giving.
Selfish in what he expects to receive versus what he is compelled to give. Now, I do wanna be clear, sanctification is not based upon entirely our generosity. But it is a part of it. Because the Lord who is Lord over all will not look at us and say, I want this, but I don't want that.
You can have all of this, but you don't have that. The Lord doesn't outsource areas of our life and say, I'm not gonna speak there. The Lord who is sovereign over all owns every aspect of us. And if there's areas of our life where we need sanctification and growth, we ought to bow and submit to him.
So it's an invitation for all of us. What does our giving say about our love for God? What does our giving say about our maturity in Christ? What does our giving say about how committed we are to the mission of God?
What does our giving say? And if it says anything less than Christ is Lord over my life, let us repent together. Amen? Let's pray. Lord, your word is sharp like a two-edged sword and it cuts. And that's a good thing, Lord, because it also heals.
Lord, I pray that in every area of life, we would see it as a mercy that you've corrected us. We would see it as a grace that you instruct us. And we would see it as an opportunity for us to grow more in alignment with you.
Lord, we live in one of the most opulent and wealthy generations that has ever existed, probably has ever existed in human history. And Lord, we also live in a time where giving is very low among people in general.
Lord, I read a statistic that 1 of atheists or atheists give 1 of their income to charitable giving and that Christians are on par by giving the same percentage to their God. Lord, may that not ever be.
May we as Christians show the world what generosity looks like. May we as Christians show the world what it means to fund the things that we believe in. Lord, there are people who are lobbying Congress right now for the most God-hating things.
There are people who are standing outside and cheering for Lindsay Clancy murdering her children and giving money to her, millions of dollars to her for that abominable act. And Lord, your church still meets in warehouses and your church still doesn't have the resources to spread.
And make your kingdom known. Lord, may it not be. May we be the ones who take up this mantle and charge. May we see it not as that we're adding to you or that we are somehow measuring up to some bar of performance because Lord, you met all of our obedience demands.
You forgave us of all of our sins. Lord, let us not do anything under compulsion like we're earning something. But Lord, let us out of joy and out of cheer give to you who has given everything to us. And Lord, when we think about giving, let us not first think about our wallet.
Let us think about Calvary. We're on that hill. You gave us everything. You gave a hundred percent. You're one and only son. Lord, may we be generous in light of it. In Jesus name, amen. Thank you for listening to this homily on the law of God from our Covenant Renewal worship this past Lord's Day.
We publish these messages each week because we believe that God loves his law and far from throwing it away, we believe that the death and resurrection of Christ and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit will actually help us learn to love and obey God's law.
And that's our prayer for you, that as you chew on these expositions each week, that you would both learn to love and come into alignment with the law of God. And we pray that you would do that by the Spirit's power, through the finished work of Christ and to the glory of God.
And with that, God bless you.