GIVING AND RECEIVING – PART TWO
Friends, we are discussing Giving and Receiving. And our text is from 2 Corinthians 8:1-7. We read it last time. We don’t have time to reread it.
We are trying to answer three questions:
- Why should Christians give,
- What do Christians give or what does God expect Christians to give, and
- How do Christians give?
We’ve seen that Christians give because that is the nature of God. God is a giving God. He gave us the world and everything in it. But best of all, He gave us His only begotten Son. All of life depends on giving and receiving.
And then God has designed giving as a means of enriching or blessing His people. Some people, with their world knowledge, say that: you don’t become rich by giving; you don’t receive and give and expect to get rich. But that is the opposite of what the scripture says.
Today, we want to look at: What Does God Expect Us to Give? What does a Christian give?
PRAYER:
Father, help us as we get into this discussion now, that You may grant us understanding and cause our hearts to be receptive. That is more important. Cause our hearts to be receptive…we pray in the Name of Jesus. Amen!
What does God Expect the Christians to Give?
Firstly,
The first thing God expects us to give is ourselves.
2 Corinthians 8:5
5 And not only as we had hoped, but they first gave themselves to the Lord, and then to us by the will of God.
They first gave themselves to the Lord.
1 Corinthians 6:19-20
19 Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? 20 For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.
Give God to yourself. That’s where to start.
There was a foolish son, a story goes, who disappointed his father so much. And the father was a very wealthy man. And the father had a slave. So before he died he willed everything he had to the slave. And he told his son what he had done, and asked him to choose just one thing out of the things that he owned. Of course the son for the first time became wise. The foolish son became wise for the first time. He reasoned, since the slave belongs to my father, I choose the slave. And in taking the slave he got everything his father owned back.
If you do not give yourself to God He will not have access to whatever you have.
Secondly God wants us to give our treasures.
Matthew 6:19-21
“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; 20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. ..“
Matthew 19:21
21 Jesus said to him, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.”
This was to the rich young man. And he went home sad, because he was rich; and did not want to part with his wealth.
We are familiar with the 3Ts: time, talent and treasures. But according to Jesus Christ in that passage in Matthew 19:21, a lasting treasure appears to be that which has been converted into the currency of heaven – that which has been channeled to eternal purposes. Lasting treasure (as used by Jesus) is like a value added product or service: a product that has increased in value due to processing or due to what has been done to it.
If you get your cassava (that is, the tubers), you can sell them that way. But when you process it you have added value to it. And you will make out of it, garri. It has greater value. In a spiritual sense, the processing of your service or whatever you give to God is done by passing it through the hands of Jesus Christ. And passing it through the hands of Jesus Christ means serving God or giving to God out of love for Him.
A.W Tozer who lived sometime in the past, a very prominent servant of God, he wrote so many books. He lived from 1893 – 1963. He said,
“As base a thing as money often is, yet it can be transmuted into everlasting treasure. It can be converted into food for the hungry and clothing for the poor. It can keep a missionary actively winning lost men to the light of the gospel and thus transmute itself into heavenly values. Any temporal possession can be turned into everlasting wealth. Whatever is given to Christ is immediately touched with immortality.”
I love that! J
Whatever is given to Christ is immediately touched with immortality. That’s why Jesus said, send your treasure ahead of you to heaven and there you will meet it when you go to see God face to face. Time is our most valuable asset in producing treasures. But your time is of little or no value until it passes through the hand of Christ. Like every other thing that pertains to a Christian, time does not belong to you. Time belongs to God.
Psalms 31:15
15 My times are in Your hand;
Deliver me from the hand of my enemies,
And from those who persecute me.
My times are in your hands. One William Ward once said, “God gave you a gift of 86400 seconds. Have you used one to say thank You?” What he is saying in effect is, we have 86400 seconds in 24 hours. But have you used one second to say thank you to God? To have the right perspective on time, to have biblical perspective on time we must take note of the following, friend:
- Know that life is short.
James 4:14b
For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.
- Be sensitive to opportunities so as to make the most of them.
Colossians 4:5
5Walk in wisdom toward those who are outside, redeeming the time.
Ephesians 5:15-16
15See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, 16redeeming
the time, because the days are evil.
- Stop often to evaluate how you have spent your time.
Let me conclude with two quotes, one from a challenge in the Daily Bread, a devotional; and the other one, from Billy Graham.
In the Daily Bread, we have this:
“It has occurred to me that when I myself account for my early stay Jesus won’t measure me by the car I drove, the clothes I wore, or the salary I received. Such riches have no value in God’s Kingdom except to the extent that they were used to further God’s Holy Name. Did I use my job to help improve someone’s life? Did I share my possessions with those in need? Did I use what I learned to spread the Good News?”
A more basic question would be:
“Did my works on earth have eternal value?”
And Billy Graham, who is still alive, said:
“If a person gets his attitude toward money straight, it will help straighten out almost every other area in his life”
What Billy Graham is saying is that your attitude towards money determines the kind of person you are.
Friends, what kind of person are you? The greed in our nation today is the root of much of the evil we have in this nation: people’s attitude towards material things. How I pray that you would give your life to the Lord Jesus Christ who would change your perspective on thins; your perspective on life.
PRAYER:
Father, thank You again for this hour or the few minutes we have spent in Your Word. May You, dear Lord, by Your Spirit, keep ministering the truth that we have examined today to the hearts of my friends, until they come to the point where they will yield themselves and all they have to Him, in Jesus Name we pray. Amen!