Reboot: Generosity

Introduction

This morning we are taking a break from preaching through the lectionary to finish a series we kicked off this fall all about rebooting our spiritual lives. We have talked about rebooting our spiritual lives by connecting with God, by re-engaging with scripture, by digging back into prayer, and by connecting with other people. And now today, we are going to think about how our generosity impacts our spiritual life.

The message is that giving, financial generosity is a key component if a healthy spiritual life.

Before we dive into scripture today, Let’s pray asking for God’s blessing on the reading of his word.

Lord God, help us turn our hearts to you and hear what you will speak, for you speak peace to your people through Christ, our Lord. Amen.

Text

1 Chronicles 29:6–20 NIV

Then the leaders of families, the officers of the tribes of Israel, the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds, and the officials in charge of the king’s work gave willingly. They gave toward the work on the temple of God five thousand talents and ten thousand darics of gold, ten thousand talents of silver, eighteen thousand talents of bronze and a hundred thousand talents of iron. Anyone who had precious stones gave them to the treasury of the temple of the Lord in the custody of Jehiel the Gershonite. The people rejoiced at the willing response of their leaders, for they had given freely and wholeheartedly to the Lord. David the king also rejoiced greatly. David praised the Lord in the presence of the whole assembly, saying, “Praise be to you, Lord, the God of our father Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. Yours, Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours. Yours, Lord, is the kingdom; you are exalted as head over all. Wealth and honor come from you; you are the ruler of all things. In your hands are strength and power to exalt and give strength to all. Now, our God, we give you thanks, and praise your glorious name. “But who am I, and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as this? Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand. We are foreigners and strangers in your sight, as were all our ancestors. Our days on earth are like a shadow, without hope. Lord our God, all this abundance that we have provided for building you a temple for your Holy Name comes from your hand, and all of it belongs to you. I know, my God, that you test the heart and are pleased with integrity. All these things I have given willingly and with honest intent. And now I have seen with joy how willingly your people who are here have given to you. Lord, the God of our fathers Abraham, Isaac and Israel, keep these desires and thoughts in the hearts of your people forever, and keep their hearts loyal to you. And give my son Solomon the wholehearted devotion to keep your commands, statutes and decrees and to do everything to build the palatial structure for which I have provided.” Then David said to the whole assembly, “Praise the Lord your God.” So they all praised the Lord, the God of their fathers; they bowed down, prostrating themselves before the Lord and the king.

L: This is the word of our Lord!

P: Thanks be to God!

What David Wanted for his People

If you read the whole book of 1 Chronicles, the passion and purpose of David’s life is to get the presence of God into the midst of his people. For example, the ark of the covenant, which was a chest. It was overlaid with gold, and it had two cherubim facing each other over it. It was the only piece of furniture in the tabernacle, the place of worship.

In the tabernacle, over the ark, the shekinah glory, of God appeared. God’s presence, the shekinah glory, the heavenly brilliance, the immediate royal presence, the face of the transcendent God appeared over the ark in the midst of the tabernacle in the Holy of Holies. But all of this had been lost to Israel by the time David became king.

The Israelites, many years before (probably because they watched too many Indiana Jones movies), took the ark off into battle. They took the ark out of the tabernacle, and they took it into battle, because they watched the movies and they felt like anybody who got near it would melt.

God doesn’t work that way, he is a person. He’s not a force or some power you can manipulate with the right words or incantations. He’s a person, and you can’t treat him like that. Because they did, they lost the battle and they lost the ark. For many, many years, the ark actually had been in a remote place right on the border of Israel, between Israel and the land of the Philistines. All during King Saul’s reign, which was the predecessor of David, it had been out there.

It’s almost an image, a metaphor, for the relationship Saul had with God, that the Israelites had with God, and frankly, that many have with God. The Israelites believed in God, they believed all the right doctrines, and they obeyed God, they followed the Ten Commandments, but God himself was actually very remote. God was their boss, but he wasn’t their friend, their father, their lover, or their shepherd. Why? The reason is something like this.

Something else had their heart. It happens in marriages where one spouse is faithful and dutiful, but their true passion in life is not their spouse, but their job or their friends or just something other than their spouse. And the spouse can tell. They do all the right things, but there is not real love there.

That’s how almost everybody is who believes in God. They believe in God, they obey God, but something else has their heart, something else holds the title of their heart. God is out on the periphery, sort of in the suburbs of their lives, but downtown there’s something else they really look to for their significance and security and hope and joy. That was the way it was with the Israelites, and that’s what David wanted to change.

When David became king, he brought the ark back to Jerusalem, back into the center of the lives of the people. As he did so, he sang a song. It was a great procession, and he sang a song and danced half-naked down the street.

He wasn’t dancing and singing because they were bringing a great relic back into Jerusalem, but because God was coming to dwell with the people. He longed for the people to be with God, to seek his face, to know his joy, to bring him into the center of their lives. To give their heart to him.

That’s what he wanted for his people. But just bringing the ark back wasn’t enough. There was no great revival. So he had another idea.

So David decided to build a temple for God and raise the money from his treasury and the people. In order to build the temple, right before the verse we read, very old David gets up and gives speech:

1 Chronicles 29:2–5 NIV

With all my resources I have provided for the temple of my God—gold for the gold work, silver for the silver, bronze for the bronze, iron for the iron and wood for the wood, as well as onyx for the settings, turquoise, stones of various colors, and all kinds of fine stone and marble—all of these in large quantities. Besides, in my devotion to the temple of my God I now give my personal treasures of gold and silver for the temple of my God, over and above everything I have provided for this holy temple: three thousand talents of gold (gold of Ophir) and seven thousand talents of refined silver, for the overlaying of the walls of the buildings, for the gold work and the silver work, and for all the work to be done by the craftsmen. Now, who is willing to consecrate themselves to the Lord today?”

What’s going on here? David is endowing the temple. Remember, the temple isn’t just a building. It is the place God dwells, the place the people gather to worship, the place they learn about God, and the place the poor of the community are cared for.

David is endowing all this work so it can thrive and continue after he is gone. But notice, he doesn’t say I am giving some of my treasures, he says I am giving my personal treasure, 3,000 talents of gold and 7,000 talents of silver. This could be all his treasure.

How much was that? There are two ways in which this gift is remarkable. First, in its size. It’s difficult, by the way, to assess value in antiquity and say, but it was on the order of $5-10 billion. The people are astounded.

Sometimes you can give without affecting your life, but other times people give in a way that requires sacrifice. Giving up a vacation. Giving up eating out. Giving up upgrading your car. Giving up buying new clothes. Choosing to live in a smaller home, drive an older car, and wear clothes even when they are way out of style. David is making that king of gift.

The second thing that’s amazing about the gift was its motivation. The motivation comes out in the prayer where he says in verse 14, “Who am I? I’m not worthy to give this money.” This is a king saying this in a world where most kings claimed to be gods!

Why isn’t he worthy? Because everything comes from god and it was God’s to begin with. Now if you’ve read the biography of David up to now, this is astounding, because you say if there’s one person who earned what he had, it was David. Against incredible odds, he accomplished what he accomplished. If there was somebody who, in a sense, earned his kingship, earned his status, earned his popularity, and earned his wealth, it would be David.

You say, “Look at what he has and look at where he is, but he earned it; it’s his.” Do you know what David is saying to you? “You don’t know anything.” He’s saying, “Yeah, yeah, I did a lot of things, but I did it with talent, with athletic prowess, with mental and various other abilities that were given to me at birth. I didn’t earn them. Everything you have is a gift of God. Everything good in you is a gift of God. We give him but his own.”

In response to the grace of God, David gave. The result was absolutely astounding. First of all, we see the leaders began to give. That’s up in verse 6. Then in response to the leaders, the people began to give, and look at their amounts. It hard to put it in contest in todays dollars but when it talks about eighteen thousand talents of bronze, a hundred thousand talents of iron … These are just huge sums.

Basically, what’s happening is the people of God are diverting a great part of their national economy and gross national product into ministry, into care for the poor, into ministry of the Word. Why? Verse 9 tells you. Their hearts changed. This is the beginning of what David wanted. Their hearts began to change. Those words are much more significant than they look. It says they gave freely and wholeheartedly.

Freely because they were liberated from their need for this wealth. For many of us money is a way to feel significant or secure in life. Money helps us make friends. Money helps us get experiences. Money gives us power. Enough money can make us feel safe.

But when we use money for power or security or popularity, we are always going to need more money. Because you can always be more powerful, more secure, more popular. We soon become enslaved to the need for money.

But now they were free. When David modeled that money didn’t give him worth or significance or security, it broke the spell money had on everyone else. And their hearts were drawn more to God instead so they could give and the more they gave the more the power of money shattered in their lives. So they could give with their whole hearts. None of who they were was held back from God.

This is huge. They could give because the power of money was broken and as they gave the power of money was broken all the more.

Now can we have any of that? Can we have that power over our illusions about money? Can we start to put God more in the center? Can we have any of that? The answer is yes, and I’ll show you why. It’ takes a little thinking so let me walk you through out.

So, David never actually gets to build the temple. He wants to, but God tells him he can’t because he has shed so much blood. The temple is supposed to be a window into the reality of heaven, what earth will be like when God has redeemed, healed, and claimed it all. That’s why we see all these miracles of Jesus in the gospel of Luke. They are not odd or unusual, it is just what happens when God’s reign comes into the world. The broken, the beat down, the excluded, get healed, restored and included. They are just a glimpse of what God will do when Jesus returns and death is defeated once and for all.

See, the temple also is a miracle, as it were. That is, the temple was not just a building with a lot of rituals in it. In all of its ministries and all of its worship and all of its caring for the poor, it was a sign of the future healed world God was going to bring about. The presence of God in the world always points forward to what God is going to do.

And there would be no war in this world and this world could not come by war, so David can’t build the temple.

So instead, we read in 1 Chronicles 28:

1 Chronicles 28:6–7 NIV

He said to me: ‘Solomon your son is the one who will build my house and my courts, for I have chosen him to be my son, and I will be his father. I will establish his kingdom forever if he is unswerving in carrying out my commands and laws, as is being done at this time.’

Which is the second reason this is such an intriguing turndown. When God turns David down and says, “No, I want a man of peace to build my temple, and he will be my son and I will be his father, and his throne will last forever …” When you read that, you say, “Wait a minute. Solomon’s throne didn’t last forever.” And neither did his dynasty.

Well, then, the prophecy wasn’t fulfilled, was it?

Yes, it was. Do you know what the temple is? The temple is a bridge.

C.S. Lewis, in The Weight of Glory talks about this. He argues we all have a deep longing in us to connect with something beyond us. We know there is more than what we can see and touch, but we can’t reach that divine.

“We’re cut off,” says Lewis. We all sense we’re cut off from something in the universe. What is it? He says. Here’s what we’re looking for: “It’s acceptance by God… a welcome into the heart of things. When we get that, then the door on which we have been knocking all of our lives will open at last.”

A gap between us and God. That’s what the temple is. It bridges this chasm. We try to obey, we try to believe, but he’s remote. Who is going to bridge the chasm? The answer is someone God once spoke about from heaven saying, “This is my Son,” someone whose throne God literally established forever. Who is it? It’s the One who didn’t just build the temple, but who said, “I am the temple. Tear my body down, and in three days I’ll raise it up again.” His body was the temple. His body is the bridge.

In John 1, he said, “You will see angels ascend and descend on the Son of Man.” What is that? Jacob’s stairway. He is the link,. The connection between heaven and earth. He’s the bridge. So first of all, Jesus doesn’t just build the temple; he is the temple.

Secondly, he doesn’t just accomplish this by losing his lifestyle but by losing his life.

Thirdly, what Jesus Christ did on the cross was not just pointing to God’s grace, like David did, but he was creating grace. This is how God can accept us because on the cross Jesus Christ paid our debt, our infinite spiritual debt.

Though he was rich he became poor that through his poverty we might become rich. He’s paying our debt so we can be accepted.

What does this mean? It means if the sacrificial generosity of their king moved those ancient Israelites into life-changing, heartfelt generosity and grace, what should the infinitely greater sacrificial generosity of our King do for us?

First, it will change forever your approach to God. In the ancient world, you approached your god by bringing sacrifices offered by some priest, but that is no longer necessary in Jesus. He is the priest and the sacrifice. You do not have to be good enough or live up to some moral code to be loved. There is nothing you need to do to earn God’s love or favor. He has already done it all.

Secondly, it changes your attitude toward your money. Once you understand the gospel, you know what you’re worth because of the infinite love of Jesus’ life-sacrifice generosity, and you know you’re secure now, don’t you? You know he’s totally committed to you unconditionally forever because of the infinite value of his life-giving sacrifice.

Once you see his generosity to you, your self-image is no longer based on what people think, it’s no longer based on control of your world, it’s no longer based on power, and the money just becomes money. It’s no longer the currency of significance and security, and you can give it. When you start to give your money in proportions everybody else in the world is going to think is nuts …

Anyone else who doesn’t have God as the foundation of their life, anyone else who doesn’t have grace at the foundation of their self-image is going to think the amount of money you’re giving away is nuts, but when you start to do it, people who otherwise wouldn’t have good educations are going to get them, people who otherwise wouldn’t hear the Word of God are going to hear it, and people who otherwise would never get job skills and would be locked in poverty are going to get them and get out.

You will be, in your life and through your giving, a visible sign of the presence of God in the world. You will be part of the temple. You will be built in like living stones into the very temple. You’ll be showing the world the future world God is going to be bringing about.

So look at our greater David, and look at his sacrificial sacrifice, and look at what he has done for us, and let that move you and so fill your heart with shalom that money is just money, and by giving in proportions you never thought you were capable of, you will be part of making the presence of God visible in this world.

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit amen.