All We Have Is Yours (Afternoon)
Download MP3Good afternoon again. It is my privilege to get to open up God's word with us today and to talk about, everybody's favorite subject, which is giving. When churches talk about giving, people get really uncomfortable. And so if that's you, you're in good company. The person sitting next to you is uncomfortable as well.
Caleb Chancey:Some of us feel guilty because we don't give, or we feel guilty because we give less than we think we should. Others are uncomfortable with the topic because they think that churches are greedy, or they don't deserve to be give to in the 1st place. Maybe you just wanna use your money for something else. But there's a lot of tension around giving, and I want to walk into that tension, and I want to see what the Bible has to say about our motivations for giving. If we can understand why the Bible says that we should give, and how the Bible says that we should give, we might feel more comfortable when it comes to this awkward topic.
Caleb Chancey:But before jumping in, I want to set up 2 possible models of giving. One of them I'm going to call the religious model. The religious mode of giving looks something like this. We are the givers, and God is the recipient. In religious giving, we assume that God wants something from us, wants us to do something.
Caleb Chancey:In religious giving, bigger gifts are better. And in this mode, we give to earn something from god or to placate an angry god or perhaps to hold up our end of some cosmic bargain. But the other mode of giving I call gospel giving, and it turns the religious view up on its head. Gospel giving focuses on God's work. Our giving is the result of that work in our hearts.
Caleb Chancey:Under gospel giving, the value of the gift comes not from its price tag, but from the posture of the heart of the giver. We do not give to motivate god to do something, but because god's actions have motivated us to respond. My thesis today is that if we're going to give well, we must discern our own hearts. Most of what the Bible says about money really isn't about money at all. It's about our hearts.
Caleb Chancey:With that in mind, I wanna turn to our text for today, which comes from 1 Chronicles, chapter 29. The whole thing's printed in your worship guide. I'm gonna start reading in verse 10, but it's probably worth summarizing verses 1 through 9. It's a long catalog of the gifts that David and the elders of Israel gave for the building and decoration of the temple. And it's a lot.
Caleb Chancey:You can go through and look. It's, tons and tons of gold and silver, bronze and iron. And then, beginning in verse 10, David prays over this offering. And I'm gonna pick up there in verse 10. Read with me, and listen carefully, for these are God's words.
Caleb Chancey:Therefore, David blessed the Lord in the presence of all the assembly. And David said, Blessed are you, O Lord, the God of Israel our father, forever and ever. Yours, oh, Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty. For all that is the in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, oh lord, and you are exalted as head above all.
Caleb Chancey:Both riches and honor come from you. You rule over all. In your hand are power and might, and in your hand it is to make great and to give strength to all. And now we thank you, our God, and praise your glorious name. But who am I, and what is my people that we should be able thus to offer willingly?
Caleb Chancey:For all things come from you, and of your own, you have we have given you. For we are strangers before you and sojourners, as all our fathers were. Our days on the earth are like a shadow, and there is no abiding. Oh, Lord our God, all this abundance that we have provided for building you a house for your holy name comes from your hand and is all your own. For I know, my god, that you test the heart and have pleasure in uprightness.
Caleb Chancey:In the uprightness of my heart, I have freely offered all these things. Now I have seen your people who are present here offering freely and joyously to you. Oh Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, our fathers, keep forever such purposes and thoughts in the hearts of your people, and direct their hearts towards you. Grant to Solomon, my son, a whole heart that he may keep your commandments, your testimonies, and your statutes, performing all, and that he may build a palace for which I have made provision. This is the word of the Lord.
Caleb Chancey:Thanks be to God. Please pray with me. God our father, would you prepare our hearts to receive your word? Now would you take that which I've prepared and redeem it, lord, but you make it enough. For it is but the words of man, and there's no life in it.
Caleb Chancey:But lord, your words are life and your words are true. So I offer it and ask that you will take and multiply it, feed these people, and instruct all of our hearts for your glory everlasting. In Christ's name, amen. So David is now an old man. He is getting ready to die.
Caleb Chancey:Now, this is kind of the last move of his life, and it's time to build the temple. But just like Moses didn't get to lead the promised or excuse me, get to lead the people of Israel into the promised land, David will not build the temple. That work will be left for his son Solomon. David's task is to give for the temple. And did he give?
Caleb Chancey:He gave so much. Depending on precise exchange rates that you might use, it gets a little fuzzy when you go back over 3000 years. David gave somewhere between $1,500,000,000 towards the construction and decoration of the temple. It's a whole lot. And there's a lot that we could say about how David led by example, and he gave far more than the rest of Israel, and that he gave first and asked them to follow along behind him.
Caleb Chancey:But I really don't want to focus there. For one thing, it's really complicated to try to map what that means for us, given that he was in an ancient, monarchical, theological society that had a completely different economy than what we what we live in now. I might be a lot more interested in those differences than the rest of you. But the other thing is that David doesn't hold up the amount of his giving as an example. Focusing on David's gifts, might lead us astray.
Caleb Chancey:I mean, look at what he says. As soon as he gives, he explains what he gave and why he gave it, and what it's worth. Starting in verse 10, David prays for himself and on behalf of the people over this offering. And he offers this 3 part prayer that I wanna take apart through this sermon today. The first part is this offering of praise to God.
Caleb Chancey:The second part contrasts the life of man with the eternal glory of God. And in the 3rd part, David pulls these two ideas together. He says, how can a people with nothing give to God who has everything? So let's jump in, starting with David's prayer of praise. The starting point for David's prayer is not the value of David's gifts, but the value of God.
Caleb Chancey:David doesn't say, look at what we've done. He does not say, look at this massive pile of gold, greater than certainly any of us have ever seen in one place before. Instead, he says, people, behold who God is. To God belongs all good things, power, glory, victory, majesty. And this is more than just an empty catalog of nice things to say about God.
Caleb Chancey:If you go through and look, the things that David chooses to bring out about God's character are all things that people might think is true about David. David, who's the king of Israel, Israel's greatest king, says, to you, oh, Lord, is the kingdom. David, the head of Israel's government says, God is head over all. David, who's known for his strength, his great fame, says that it is from the Lord's hand that strength comes, that victory comes, that fame comes. As David praises God, he's getting down off of his kingly throne, and he's telling people to look instead to the Lord, who's the true source of all these things.
Caleb Chancey:All of David's victories, he says, come not from his hand, but from the Lord's. And that's the starting place for godly giving, is getting down off the throne and recognizing the beauty and the glory of God in all things. But it doesn't stop there. David moves on to talk about his own humility before the Lord. In view of the greatness of God, he says, what is a king?
Caleb Chancey:Indeed, what is a whole nation of people? What is Israel that the Lord should accept anything from their hands? After all, they're strangers and sojourners. They're just passing through life, and God is everlasting. We see here that David has learned his lesson.
Caleb Chancey:Cast your mind back to second Samuel chapter 7, when we looked at David's first attempt at building a temple. He said, well guys, I live in a really nice house. I think God ought to have a nice house too. He said, lord, I'll build you a house. God said, you will not build me a house.
Caleb Chancey:I am the source. I am the builder. I will build for you a house, not a dead house of wood like you would make, but an everlasting dynasty, a king that will reign forever, coming from your line. And now here at the end of David's life, he sees that this is true. He recognizes that God is the source and that the people don't have anything to offer him.
Caleb Chancey:In fact, David says twice that everything that the people are giving now to God already belongs to God. Verse 14. It says, of your own, we have given you. Again in verse 16, all of this abundance, all of it, comes from your hand, and is all your own. Now people that know me well know that I am a terrible gift giver.
Caleb Chancey:I'm really bad at it. I've been married almost 20 years, and I have not gotten any better. But even I know that I should not give Melissa something out of her own closet. It's just such things are not done. And yet, that's where David is right now.
Caleb Chancey:He says, God, we can't add anything to you. We can't bring anything that you don't already have. So why does he emphasize this in his giving? Why start with the idea that, God, we can't give you anything? What does he hold up instead of an offering?
Caleb Chancey:Instead of material things, what is it that he tries to give to God instead? Where is his focus? And that brings us into the third part of his prayer, because his focus is on the heart. The heart of the giver. The word heart appears 6 times in the passage, and David knows that this is what God cares about.
Caleb Chancey:This prayer is kingly and it speaks in broad terms. But in verse 17, David says in very personal terms, I know, my God, that you test the heart. David asked God to see into his heart, into the heart of the people, and to know that they have given freely and joyfully. To know that they have given with an upright heart. We're gonna look at this idea of giving joyfully and giving out of an upright heart in more detail, but first, I think it's really interesting that in all of this section, David doesn't really talk about the temple at all.
Caleb Chancey:All of these gifts and offerings are for the temple, but David only kind of references the temple in passing. If David were standing before this offering, it would blow your mind. The amount of gold that's given is enough to make a wall 20 feet wide, 7 and a half feet tall, and 6 feet thick. It's bigger than this stage. There's twice as much silver and 3 times as much bronze.
Caleb Chancey:The iron is half as much as is in the entire Eiffel Tower. It's a huge quantity of gift. And yet, David turns his back on all of it. He does not say, Lord examine this treasure. Instead, he holds up the far more doubtful thing and says, Lord examine our hearts.
Caleb Chancey:Because the treasure you can put your hand on, it's right there. Gold is shiny. It's always shiny. But the heart is invisible and it's harder to know, and it's harder to see, and yet that is where David focuses. I can imagine offering some overly spiritualized prayer.
Caleb Chancey:I might have been tempted to do this and say, you know, God, might you take this offering and turn it into some shining beacon of your glory on a hillside for all generations to see. That's not what David prays at all. Instead, he says, keep forever such purposes and thoughts in the hearts of your people, and direct their hearts towards you. God, man looks outwardly, and you look inwardly, David prays. You are not impressed with this gold, oh god.
Caleb Chancey:Will you be pleased with our hearts? David holding up his heart instead of all this gold is the core of his prayer and is the core of their sacrifice. Because to God, the heart is the sacrifice, not the gold. Gold without the heart is nothing. And that's why there's so many examples of generosity in the bible that are poor people giving small gifts in great faith.
Caleb Chancey:Think of the widow in Luke 21. The rich came by and gave large gifts into the into the temple. But this widow drops in her last 2 small copper coins. And Jesus beholds this and tells his disciples that the widow put in more than the rich, for the rich gave out of their abundance, while the widow gave all that she had. So, yes, the rich gave more gold, but their hearts did not have to trust in the same way that the widow's heart did.
Caleb Chancey:And God's focus is always on the heart. The same pattern appears in another story about David, a story where he gives a small offering instead of a big one. You'll recall the last week's sermon about God's judgment, on David for taking the census of his fighting men. And through that judgment, God sent a plague that killed 70,000 people. But eventually, God relented over the destruction of Jerusalem, and he allowed David to see an angel standing just outside the city with its sword drawn, this kind of personification of the plague.
Caleb Chancey:And that angel stood at the threshing floor of this man, whose name comes to us as Arana. His name is given something different in 1st Chronicles, and Arana is likely just the legal title, means Lord. But we're gonna call him Arana, as if that's his name. So David went to this man Arana to get his threshing floor and make a sacrifice there, because that's where the angel came to rest. And Araana could see the angel.
Caleb Chancey:In fact, the story in 1st Chronicles tells us that Araunah's sons could see the angel too, and they were hiding in terror. This massive angel with the sword drawn, standing in judgment, about to strike down Jerusalem. So when David shows up and says, I need your threshing floor for a sacrifice, Araunah practically begs him to take it. He's like, take the floor, take the oxen. You know, whatever you need to burn is here.
Caleb Chancey:Just light it all on fire. It's okay. And David stops and says, no. I will pay for it. I am not going to offer a sacrifice to the lord that cost me nothing.
Caleb Chancey:I'm not gonna offer a sacrifice that cost me nothing. And it might seem silly that David would be kinda quibbling over a price at a time like this. I think I would be like Arana. I'd say, the sacrifice should probably happen sooner. We can do business later.
Caleb Chancey:But David is insistent because he recognizes that a sacrifice is not about God getting a burnt offering. It's not about somebody killing an ox. The sacrifice is necessary because David knows his heart needs to be made right with God. David has sinned in his heart. And David, who measured out his gold by the ton, paid about $400 to buy this floor off this man so that he could have something to put on the altar.
Caleb Chancey:So that it would not be someone else's sacrifice, but so that he could say, Lord, I have sacrificed my own for you. In addition, by buying the sacrifice, David has laid down his kingly right. As king, he can take what he wants. And certainly, Araunah is trying and to offer him the whole thing. Just take it.
Caleb Chancey:But by paying, David is saying, I'm relating to you not as a king, but just as a man, someone who has to come and to buy here. His focus is not on the mechanical performance of the sacrifice. His focus is on the posture of his heart before the Lord. What matters is that posture, not the carrying out the sacrifice in the right way. This is the same David that prayed, create in me a clean heart, oh God.
Caleb Chancey:The same David who told us in Psalm 51,16, and 17, that God does not For you will not delight in sacrifice or I would give it, For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it. You will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of god are a broken spirit. A broken and contrite heart, oh god, you will not despise. It really is the heart that matters, not the sacrifice.
Caleb Chancey:And God cares specifically that our hearts are upright and that our giving is joyful. And I really struggle with what to say about these things, because my heart is not always upright, nor am I always joyful. And I really wrestled with this. And God showed me that the reason that these things are here is so that we can be anchored always in the gospel. Because this isn't about us ginning up joy.
Caleb Chancey:We're trying to live a little bit more uprightly, Because we're we're gonna give under the gospel, not under religious giving. We're gonna give in response to God's work. So giving from an upright heart requires confessing our sins and pleading our need for Jesus. We're not offering money to buy off God's judgment. Instead, we depend upon God to make us right.
Caleb Chancey:We ask him to direct our hearts towards him, just like David prayed. And just as David prayed for his son, Solomon, we ask that God would us a whole heart that we may keep all God's commandments and testimonies and statutes. More than rejoicing in the fact that we can offer something to God, we plead that God would give us a heart that would follow after him. And because of Jesus, we know that God will do this, that he will give us upright hearts. We know that God will take away our heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh.
Caleb Chancey:For we know that God made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him, in Christ, we might become the righteousness of God. God will indeed give us strength more and more to obey his commandments, but he will also be our righteousness when we fail. And this assurance, this certainty of God's completed work on our behalf in Christ is what leads us into joyful giving. And not just joyful giving, but joy in all aspects of our life, an overwhelming, all encompassing joy that defines our lives, that we who were dead are alive, that we who were slaves are now free. We who were God's enemies have been brought in and adopted as sons and as daughters.
Caleb Chancey:The joy that responds to what God has done is the engine that drives godly giving. His provision to us becomes our measure of generosity as we give to others. Because it's impossible to give joyfully under the pattern of religious giving. If we're only giving because we expect something from God, some kind of transaction, We might expect to be joyful when we get that thing that we want, but we won't be joyful when we give. When we give is when we pay the price under religious giving, but that's not right at all.
Caleb Chancey:We give because of what God has already done. Gospel giving recognizes what Christ has done. The measure of our giving can now be the measure of God's grace to us, not the measure of what we think we can squeeze out of our budgets. We give out of God's abundance, not out of our own. The gift that honors Christ reflects his work in our hearts.
Caleb Chancey:This is Paul's encouragement when he's urging the Corinthians to give generously. He says, for you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake, he became poor. So that you by his poverty might become rich. Hear those words again. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Caleb Chancey:You know it. You've experienced it in your own life. That though he was rich, yet for your sake, he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich. So where does that leave us? What are we supposed to do?
Caleb Chancey:How are we supposed to give in light of all this? We have this prayer. We're supposed to examine our hearts. We're supposed to think about the gospel. But what are we supposed to do?
Caleb Chancey:And it's really tempting to stand up here and say, here's what you ought to do. You ought to give this much. You ought to it's this number. If you hit that number, you're doing it. If you don't hit that number, you're not.
Caleb Chancey:But I think that if I were to give you that advice, I'd be putting you back under the old law. On the one hand, I'd be giving you a standard that you might not live up to, And that can be a source of condemnation. And I'm not free to give that. I'm not the law giver. God is, and God hasn't given that law.
Caleb Chancey:But even worse, there's a danger that I could give you a number. And you could say, if I have done this, if I've met that standard, that I fulfilled what gospel generosity looks like, I've given all that God commands, When in fact, as David prayed, it all already belongs to Him. We can't give Him anything that's not already His, and there's nothing that we own that's beyond his call and his asking. So I will start with this. The first way that we should give is that we should give.
Caleb Chancey:We should just give something. You should do it. If you're not someone who gives, let me encourage you that the time to start is now. You've probably been saying later, and later is now. You've probably been saying something like, I'll give when.
Caleb Chancey:But if you're like me, when you say I'll give when, you mean I'll give if. It's some kind of conditional promise. You're waiting on God to give you something else, saying, well, God, if you'll do this, then I'll do that. And we're right back in the land of religious giving, where it's transactional and not relational. I don't want you to adopt a pattern in your life that says I'll give more if I get more, because, brother and sister, you already have everything in Christ.
Caleb Chancey:There's nothing more that God can give you that is not already yours. And yet, giving is also a discipline and a skill that requires practice. You will get stronger in it as you go. So I encourage you, if you don't give, start. And if you give some, challenge yourself.
Caleb Chancey:Give a little more. And I don't want to be too shy about this. I feel awkward up standing up here, like I'm asking for money. None of it comes to me. And so, I think it could be helpful to recognize that we sit in seats that someone else gave to build.
Caleb Chancey:This church is here because people before us gave. We're gonna sing in a few minutes out of Psalm 90, the words, establish the work of our hands. And that says the last little stanza in Psalm 90, which is a psalm of Moses. And I think it's this wonderfully complex little phrase when we ask the Lord to establish the work of our hands, because it recognizes that God works first. God, you must do something.
Caleb Chancey:You must establish something that we can then work into, that we are indeed co laborers with the Lord, that we work with him, but that his work is at the beginning. And we see that God's work has, in fact, established the work of the hands of the people that have come before. This church was, I think, opened in 1916. And in 2016, or thereabouts, we opened up a time capsule that was left in the cornerstone. And there was a letter from the pastor that was in there, and it had these words in it, which I thought were appropriate for us to hear today.
Caleb Chancey:It says this: with great faith in God our Father, this church has thus moved forward with joy and rejoicing in this task. In the midst of a great war that is touching the whole world with its blighting influence, we have not stopped. We do not expect to until this building is finished and dedicated to God, his son, our savior, even Jesus Christ, the righteous. Over a 100 years ago, brothers and sisters that we will not meet, people, all of whom are dead now, were giving such that the work of Christ would go forward. And by his grace, it goes forward to us today.
Caleb Chancey:And we have a chance to join in that task. Those that have gone before us have passed into their reward. Their treasures, such as they were, were stored up in heaven. And they now enjoy those in a way that we cannot imagine, but we also are partakers. And we do not give merely out of our own initiative, but there's a long line of faithful people behind us who can be an encouragement to us.
Caleb Chancey:And not just those that have come before, but there's those that we live in relationship with right now. Giving is a great topic of conversation between husband and wife. It's a fantastic conversation to bring up with someone that you're dating. Again, not because it's easy to talk about, but because it's important. You who are young, do you talk with someone about setting patterns of generosity in your life, trusting the sovereignty of God and the goodness of God even now, when you don't have a lot.
Caleb Chancey:So that when you grow up and when you have more money, that can only flourish. You who are rich in this life, how can you offer a sacrifice that cost you something? You who are poor, how can you trust God with what you have? Think on these things. Pray about them.
Caleb Chancey:Talk about them with your home group and with your friends. Encourage one another to give because there's not one solution that works for everybody, but all of us can be moving forward in giving. And, finally, and I'll close here, as Christians, we can't talk about giving without talking about Jesus, because we are not the givers. He is the giver. Jesus loves us.
Caleb Chancey:He gave up his life for us. He gave up his body even unto death for our sake, that we might be where he is. Though he went down into the grave, he rose up and ascended into heaven and reigns for all eternity. There is nothing that you can give to him. He did everything for you before you could ever respond.
Caleb Chancey:He did not save you so that you might try to earn it on the back end. He did not do all this for you so that you might return to him a little bit more than you did last year. If you come away from this message thinking about, you know, I should probably just give more money, and thinking that that's what really matters, then both of us have missed it. Your money is a vapor. Your very life is a mist on the earth.
Caleb Chancey:But the love of God in Christ is from everlasting to everlasting. Think on that. Drink it in deeply and daily. Remember his love always. When you rise up and when you lie down, let it fill your thoughts and your meditations.
Caleb Chancey:For I tell you this, if you live into the joy of that love, you are far more likely to find yourself giving from a joyful and upright heart than if you just focused solely on the practice of things. The source and the engine of all of our obedience in life is God's great love for us. He is always the source and the giver, and it's for us to joyfully respond to his glory and forevermore. Would you pray with me? God, thank you that, that you love us, that you love us endlessly, that you have made provision for our deepest needs, and that you have not only met those needs, but that you have seen fit in your grace to make us coheirs with Christ.
Caleb Chancey:Nor did you tell us that you go to prepare a place for us. Lord, may we live into that. May we not be people who fear to give. Maybe not be people who give with a clenched fist and a long face, but instead, that as your grace has overflowed to us, that it may overflow through us as well. For the sake of the poor around us, for the sake of our brothers and sisters inside the church and outside, for the sake of your mission all around the world.
Caleb Chancey:God, for the sake of your glory, if we gave everything that we had, it would still not be enough. So lord, would you show us that great love and may it well up inside of us that we must give and we must be generous, and that people will look to us and wonder who is this God who has so changed these people's lives that they respond as they do? That they don't love money how the world does, but they love something else, someone else so much more. How to accomplish this through and for the sake of Christ, in his name.
