The Standard for Giving [A]

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When people complain about church, and people do complain about church, I’ve not heard a lot of people complain about this one, but I’ve heard people complain about church. And one of their main, one of the complaints, I shouldn’t say main complaint, but one of the complaints that comes up quite often, one of the complaints that you hear a lot is you ask people, especially who used to go to church, why don’t you go anymore? Why have you quit going?

One of the complaints that we hear over and over is that they’re always asking for money. And to my knowledge, I don’t usually get up here and ask for money. I did this morning.

If I ask for money, it’s usually money that we’re going to send someplace else instead of money that we’re going to keep here. But there’s a perception in the world that churches are just out to get your money, that we’ve got some kind of detector over the door that can tell what you’ve got in your wallet when you come through, and we’re not going to let you back out the door until you’ve given all or most of it. This is not a good perception for the world to have of us.

And we’ve seen things, I’m sure we’ve all seen things, that kind of reinforce this idea that the world has of us. Sometimes it’s funny, the things that happen that reinforce the idea that we’re all about money. The man preaching my grandmother’s funeral. She’s laying out there in front of the pulpit, and he’s praying and asking God to bless the offering.

What are they about to do to my grandmother? We’re not taking up an offering. And we kind of laughed.

You’re not supposed to laugh in prayer or at funerals, but we did. No, that’s okay. It’s all right sometimes to laugh at funerals.

But there are things like that that are funny, and I’m sure the world that isn’t involved in church would look at that and say, well, no wonder the preacher’s all about money anyway. No wonder he’s up there thinking about offering while he’s doing this poor woman’s funeral. Sometimes it’s a little more tragic, the perceptions that churches tend to give off. I’m certain you can go home and turn on any of the stations that are dedicated toward preaching and watch most of the men who are on there, and they’ll have a number at the bottom scrolling the whole time asking for the number you can call to give donations, and there’s nothing wrong with people giving support ministries.

But when they’re preaching all the time, if you’ll just send me a check and God will do this for you, and if you’ll just support me, and we find out through 2020 and things like that that it’s to support a lavish lifestyle with private jets and golden air-conditioned dog houses. That really did happen, the air-conditioned dog house. I can’t remember who it was, but you may have seen that story years ago.

I’m told that in parts of Quebec, when I went up there and did mission work with one of our BMA missionaries up there, that in the newspaper, the Catholic Church up there will run advertisements every year or so listing the names of the people in the diocese who are behind in their tithes. run an advertisement in the newspaper. Can you imagine that?

We would get sued. We would get sued if we ran an ad in the Northwest Arkansas Times saying, so-and-so is behind on their tithes. Somebody would end up owning our property for slander or something.

Things like that go on all the time. I know when I was pastoring in Oklahoma, when we would exchange letters with other churches, a lot of times they would use church letter forms, which was fine. But we would get forms from these other churches that were filled out and on the back it would ask, are they active in Sunday school?

Yes, no, regular, whatever. Sometimes twice a year, whatever. They would have different check boxes that we could fill out.

Are they active in Sunday school? Are they active in ministry? How’s their family life?

Are they a regular tither? And when we got down to that line, I told the church clerk, I said, we’re not filling that out. I’m sorry.

I as the pastor, you as the clerk, it’s not our business to know what they give. We’re not filling that out. We’re not sending out those cards either, even if we do go to the store and buy them.

We’re not sending those cards out asking other churches to tell us about. So we got to where we just send out letters that the church wrote up. But these churches would send us this wanting to know this information, and they would send us this information about people that joined.

And, you know, it’s not necessarily a bad thing, I guess, but it serves to confirm in people’s minds the idea, the perception that church is all about money. And a lot of times pastors are at fault for the way we preach, especially when we preach about giving to the church. We’re at fault for the perception that church is all about money because we get so hung up on what people give and what percent and all this.

We’re going to look at a passage today in Malachi that I think is very often misused. We’ve looked, two weeks ago, we looked at some of the New Agers and verses that they misused to support these contemplative practices. Last week, we looked at what the world throws at us, where Jesus says, Judge not that ye be not judged, and they try to use that as a gag order to keep us from speaking out against sin.

And so far, we’ve talked about what they misuse. This morning I want to talk about a passage that’s misused by a lot of conservative churches. Malachi chapter 3, starting in verse 6, says, For I am the Lord, I change not.

Therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed. Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them. Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the Lord of hosts.

But ye said, Wherein shall we return? And you’ll notice if you read throughout the book of Malachi, and even in this passage, it takes the form of a conversation, sort of a hypothetical conversation, questions and answers. And Malachi will say something or ask something on God’s behalf.

And God also provides the response. And He says, I’ve said this and you say this. And J.

Vernon McGee, I was reading what he had to say about the book of Malachi yesterday, and he talks about God’s use of sarcasm. And I thought, I knew I liked the book of Malachi. That’s my second language is sarcasm.

And here, when God says, you’ve said this, and by the way, He says, even from the days of your fathers you’ve gone away from mine ordinances and have not kept them, return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the Lord of hosts. He answers back for them and says, but you said, wherein shall we return? How shall we return?

God answers for the people of Israel and says, if you’ll return to me, this will happen. But by the way, you don’t even think you’ve gone anywhere. You don’t even realize how far you’ve wandered away from me.

And so God is carrying on both sides of this conversation and letting it play out before Israel so that they can see really how far they’ve fallen, how far they’ve drifted from God. It says in verse 8, and this is really what we’re talking about today, Will a man rob God? God asks another question and then answers it on the way that they would.

Yet ye have robbed me, but ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? God, how have we robbed you? He says in tithes and offerings.

So God says, man should not rob God. And he says, but you would say, how in the world have we robbed you, God? And God tells the people of Israel, you’ve robbed me by holding back the tithes and offerings.

He says in verse 9, you are cursed with a curse, for you have robbed me, even this whole nation. Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it. And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground.

Neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field, saith the Lord of hosts. And all nations shall call you blessed, for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the Lord of hosts. Your words have been stout against me, saith the Lord.

Yet ye say, here he goes again, yet ye say, what have we spoken so much against thee? God says on their behalf, and you don’t even think you’ve said anything bad toward me. And God says in verse 14, Now we’re going to talk, just like the last two weeks, we’re going to talk tonight about what this passage really is saying.

But this morning I want to address the misconception that we most often take from this passage. And the two verses that I think are most often quoted by any preacher out of Malachi are Malachi 3, verses 8 and 10, about will a man rob God? And then in verse 10 saying, bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse.

Now, my quarrel is not with people who believe the tithe is still for today. I know there may be some of you in the congregation this morning who say, yeah, the tithe is still in place, 10%, that’s what God expects. I don’t see that in the New Testament.

That’s my personal view. Anytime I see the tithe mentioned in the New Testament, I see it either in the gospel accounts of Christ’s life before the cross, where he’s talking about the law still being in place, or I see it later on in the book of Hebrews, when they’re giving a history and talking about what had happened in the Old Testament law. There’s this idea that we are still bound to give 10%.

Now, I’m not against giving 10%. But the problem that arises is when it becomes a legalistic standard that we judge ourselves and judge others by. That’s where it becomes a problem.

The idea that you give 10% you’re a good Christian, you don’t give 10%, you’re less than a good Christian. And we judge ourselves and we judge others by this standard that I’m not even sure is still applicable in the New Testament. But again, my quarrel is not with you if you think it still is.

My quarrel is with those who say, well, I think it still is because it hasn’t been done away with, and I’m going to use this passage to prove it. If you still think the tithe is for today, that’s all well and good, but this is not the passage that proves it. This passage is talking to a specific group of people at a specific time.

My greater concern for us as far as our giving, what we’re going to talk about today is the right standard of giving in the church. Again, if you want to give 10%, I’m not opposed to that. If you want to give more than 10%, I’m certainly not opposed to that.

But the problem arises when we use wrong text to support our position, when we take things out of context, and when we add extra laws to what God’s given us. And incidentally, I’ve heard different figures, but different people have said, you know, going back and looking at the tithes and things that they paid in the Old Testament, that there were tithes upon tithes, and we’re so focused on the 10% that if we really wanted to pay the tithe, like in the Old Testament, it would be somewhere between 23 and 33% of our income. Now, if we really want to hold legalistically to that standard, then let’s go for that.

Let’s go for a quarter to a third of the. . .

No. The question is, and it gets into legalism when we start talking about, well, does God want me to pay 10% of the net or the gross? I don’t see that principle in there where he’s given us a lot of direction.

What I do see in the New Testament is that God has, I think, God, I think, has given us an even higher standard of giving. Because our giving, God is more concerned with, from what I see in the New Testament, God is more concerned with the condition of the heart than he is with what we do with our wallets. And before you say, well, but we’re supposed to actually do something.

Yes, if our hearts are in the right place, our wallets will follow. If our hearts are in the right place, and not just wallet. There he goes talking about money.

If our hearts are in the right place, it’s not just our wallet that will follow. It’s our calendar. Our checkbook will be in the right order.

Our calendar will be in the right order. Everything else will be in the right order if our heart is in the right place with God. So the problem here is not whether or not we give 10%.

If you think, again, as I said, if you think, well, yeah, we’re still supposed to tithe. Folks, I can respect that position. If that’s what you want to do, go ahead and keep giving that.

But I believe God has set us to even a higher standard than that. Not necessarily that I’m saying, oh, God wants you to bump it up to 15%. The higher standard is that our hearts be in the right condition before God.

This passage does, I won’t tell you that this passage is not talking about tithing, because it very obviously is. This passage is encouraging people to pay the tithe, but it’s encouraging people in the day of Malachi to pay the tithe. And incidentally, as we’ll talk about tonight, it’s really getting at the heart of the matter.

The tithe is just one of the symptoms. They weren’t paying the tithe because they had basically abandoned everything that God had taught them. And if we want to use this passage as an argument why people have to pay 10%, if we want to base that on this passage, then we’ve got to go with everything else it says in this passage, all the laws, all the ordinances. And I don’t believe we want to go back to that.

Anybody want to give up the grace of Christ and go back to making our own sacrifices and trying to earn our way into heaven? Anybody here? I couldn’t do it.

And neither could you. None of us can. And as we learned in our long, long study of Galatians, that if we’re going to try to live by the law, we’ve got to live by all the law.

Instead, we’ve got grace. And we’ve been given even a higher standard of giving. I’ve heard it described that the tithe is supposed to be the training wheels of giving.

That we learn that once God entrusts us with that money, we need to learn that we can entrust Him with that 10%. Because it’s hard sometimes to give and think, where am I going to pay that bill? Where am I going to do this?

How am I going to afford that? But learning to trust God. We don’t simply stop there as a legalistic standard.

We learn to give the way it’s described in the New Testament. We’re going to look at a few passages, and I hate jumping around so much, but I went and did some studying this week. Went and did some digging on some places in the New Testament where it talks about giving.

two of Paul’s letters to Corinth and then some of Jesus’ teaching are some of the clearest places in the New Testament where it talks about giving. And when I dug into those, I found some principles that I believe apply to us today. The first principle that applies to us today is that Christians should give generously.

Christians should give generously. It would be very easy to write our check for 10% and say, there you go, God. I’m glad I got that out of the way.

It’d be easy for it to become. . .

and I don’t think we’d ever say it in those exact terms, But it would be easy to come at it and look at it as a drudgery. Well, I’ve just got to write this check so God can be happy with me, and I’m glad that’s all He asked for is 10%. We all know that there are times when we can do external religious things and our hearts not be in the right place, can’t we?

We can be at church and not feel like being at church, and we can put on the smiley face and we can look good outside, and we’re doing the right thing being here. We’re studying our Bible and we’re praising God, and on the inside, we just don’t want to be here. Now, my hope is that you don’t feel that way every week, but we all have days like that where we just don’t want to do what we’re supposed to do, but we do it anyway because it’s what’s expected of us.

Folks, our giving to God, our giving to God should not be a drudgery. Our giving to God should not be something where we mark it off and say, God, here, I’ve given you the 10% you asked for, but that’s it because that’s all you ask for. You know, when I go into restaurants, I usually try to.

. . I’m kind of like you, Brother Ted.

I don’t like to go places where they wait on me, because then you have to tip. I’d rather wait on myself, save a few extra dollars, and I don’t say that to embarrass you. You’ve told me that, and I feel the same way.

I’d rather wait on myself and save a few extra dollars. But when I do go someplace where they wait on you, I try to tip more than what’s expected, if I can afford it, more than what’s expected. But one thing that has always driven me crazy is when you go into a restaurant and they automatically add the tip onto the bill.

and usually it’s less than what I would have given anyway. And I kind of resent that. I say, you know, the tipping, that’s supposed to be what we give out of gratitude.

That’s why they call it a gratuity. That’s something we’re supposed to give out of gratitude. But fine, you want to add that 58 cents on there to make sure you get it.

That’s all she wrote, folks. You’ll get your 58 cents and I would have given you $3 or whatever. But they add that on there and it becomes, suddenly the gratuity is no longer an act of generosity.

It’s fulfilling what’s required. Not really what’s required in this case, but fulfilling what’s expected. Folks, our giving to God should not be like paying the gratuity at the restaurant, where we say, God, okay, you ask for 10%, fine, I’ll give you that.

Folks, it ought to be given out of the perspective that everything we have has been entrusted to us by God. And by the way, if you think, yeah, he’s trying to squeeze more money out of us, I’m talking to me too, because sometimes I give and my heart’s not in the right place. And as I study from the New Testament, the principles about giving, I become convicted as well.

So if you’re convicted, if you’re feeling bad, I’m right there with you. But our giving to God should not be like that gratuity where we say, fine, God, here’s your 10%, but that’s all. No, we’re taught in the Bible that we’re supposed to give generously as God has blessed.

If you’ll turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 16, we’ll be here for just a minute, look at a couple verses here. I like to try to stay in one passage when I preach, but sometimes you just can’t help it. 1 Corinthians chapter 16.

He’s writing to them dealing with problems going on in their church. And one of the problems they had was about how they conducted themselves when they got together. He says in chapter 16 verse 1, Paul writes to Corinth, Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I have given order to the churches of Galatia, even so do ye.

Upon the first day of the week, let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come. And what he’s actually talking about here, I believe, is it may be the offering that they took up historically to distribute to people who had a need. I know at one point they took up an offering among some of the other churches to send back to the church at Jerusalem because they were in the middle of a famine and the people were struggling.

They were finding it hard to get enough to eat. And so the other churches took up a collection and sent it back for them. So when he talks about concerning the collection for the saints, I don’t know if he’s talking about that historical event to send it back to Jerusalem or if he’s talking about the distribution of money and food and things to the saints there who were in need.

But he’s talking about the church taking up a collection to meet a need. He’s talking about offerings here. And he says, for the collection of the saints, as I have given order to the churches of Galatia, even so do ye.

What I want us to see here is where he says that on the first day of the week, everyone is to lay by him in store. Everybody is to set something aside. He says, as God hath prospered him.

I notice here he doesn’t give a percentage. And I don’t know about you all, there are some things that God leaves out in detail in the Bible, and He leaves them out because they’re not important, I guess. If they were important, He would have put them in.

But I would like to know the details. I would like God to spell everything out for me. That’s just kind of how I am.

I want to know the answer. I would have preferred God said, here’s the percentage. I would have preferred God to do it kind of like the tax code, only a much simpler way.

You put your income in this box, you run it through this mathematical formula, there. That’s what you’re supposed to give. That would be easier almost. But he says, lay aside as God has prospered you.

And so what he says to the people at the church at Corinth, if God has blessed you with a lot, keep that in mind when you lay something aside for the saints. If God’s blessed you with a little, he said, still put something aside for the saints. He doesn’t give them here a 15%, a 10%, 25%, 33%, whatever percent.

He says, as God has prospered you. In other words, keep in mind the generosity of God when it comes to your giving to God’s cause. God’s given generously, so you give generously as well.

We’re going to turn also to the book of 2 Corinthians. And we’re going to look at this passage for a few minutes as well. 2 Corinthians chapter 9.

2 Corinthians chapter 9 verses 6 and 7. He says, But this I say, he which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly, and he also which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully. every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give, not grudgingly or of necessity, for God loveth a cheerful giver.

Now, we shouldn’t take that also as a mathematical formula, as some teachers on TV will do, that if you sow sparingly, you’ll reap sparingly, sow bountifully, you’ll reap bountifully, as though we can give God $100 and expect He’s going to give us $10,000 in return. That God works like some kind of money, well, that God works like a printing press. Folks, God doesn’t work that way.

We’re not given a mathematical formula here that we should give just so God will bless in return. I misunderstood what I was taught as a child. We were told, we were taught even as children at church, that we were supposed to give to God’s work, and if we gave to God, we would be blessed.

The church never told me that if you give to God’s work, He’s going to give you back monetarily. We were told to give to God’s work, and He would bless. That’s what the Bible teaches.

So I got it in my little seven or eight-year-old mind. Aha, I see how this works. And one day we were at vacation Bible school, and we were out playing.

Our church was out in the country, and we were out playing in the field next to it. It was after VBS, and my parents were up there probably working, cleaning up and stuff. So we were out playing in the field afterwards, and I found a Ziploc baggie with a bunch of quarters in it.

I thought, ooh, hot dog. I thought, I could get this. And I wasn’t the kid who spent my money on soda and bubble gum and all that stuff.

I used to put it in the bank, draw interest on it. My dad works at the bank. We had savings accounts.

It drew 4%, and I thought I was just on top of the world. I thought, I can put my little quarters in the bank account. I can get some interest on them.

I’ve told you all before, I was a weird child. But I thought, I’ll put that in the bank. And then I thought, no, I remember what they taught us in church.

If we give to God, we’ll be blessed. And I thought, okay, tomorrow night at VBS, I’m going put this in the bucket and God will give me an even bigger bag of quarters. You know what?

I’m still waiting on my big bag of quarters. It doesn’t work that way. It does not work that way.

It’s not a mathematical formula that we give to God because we expect Him to do something else for us. We give to God because of what He’s already done for us. But we’re also told, if we sow sparingly, we’ll reap sparingly.

If we sow bountifully, we’ll reap bountifully. If we give generously, we’ll receive. And by the way, he doesn’t necessarily mean monetarily.

Now this can be taken to the extreme though, because I know preachers that everything is a sign you ought to give more. A few years ago, Christian’s car, my car was broken down, just like it is now, different car, but same story. Cars always break down in our family.

Christian’s car was broken down too, and I knew what the problem was and just needed to try to fix it. She had a leak in the transmission. We couldn’t drive it, and I told the pastor, I said, we’re not going to be to church tonight because there’s a 30-minute drive out there.

I said, we’re not going to be to church tonight because the car is broken down and we’ve got to fix it. And he said, well, maybe it’s a sign you’re not giving enough. And I remember standing there, I was at my parents’ house that day, and I remember standing on the front porch and thinking, maybe it’s a sign from God that I’ve got a leaky transmission.

Did you ever think about that? You know, sometimes God gets our attention to tell us what we’re doing wrong, but folks, not every bit of financial tragedy that comes our way, Not every financial setback that comes our way is a sign from God that we’re not given enough. Sometimes a leaky transmission is just a leaky transmission.

Because at that point, I mean, we weren’t given thousands of dollars to the church, but we were given more money than we’d ever been able to give before. Well, then you just got to give more and trust God. Well, maybe God’s given us the money.

We’re already giving. Maybe God’s given us the money to take care of our transmission, too. Because I’ve tried that.

I’ve tried that trick where we turn all the quarters into the VBS can, thinking God’s going to give us more. It doesn’t work that way. So if I go put the transmission money in the church coffers expecting God’s going to give me $10,000, I’ve tried this before.

I can’t trick God. He knows my motivation for giving. Folks, we’re told here, simply just the very simple principle, that because God has been generous to us, we’re to be generous back to His work.

He doesn’t need us to give anything. God could fund all of His work however He chose to do, but He chooses to use us to finance His work. is the long and the short of it.

Because we also benefit from giving. I benefit from giving. And folks, I’m not telling you these things because I want you to give more because it benefits me.

As the pastor, it would be to my benefit to tell everybody, you need to give 10%. I don’t know if it’s true here, but statistics show that in any church, in any given church, on average, 50% give nothing at all. So it would be in my best interest to stand here and tell you if you give 10% every week, God’s going to love you.

But I’m not here trying to tell you what’s going to be in my best interest necessarily. I’m telling you what the Word of God says. And the principle here is that because God has been generous to us, we’re to keep that in mind when we give to His work and be generous.

And you may think, well, God hasn’t been all that generous to me. Folks, for starters, we live in America, and the poorest of us here are better off than some of the richest in a lot of other countries. We’ve been incredibly blessed.

Our poor people here a lot of times have cars. Now, I’m not talking about the homeless, but our poor people here have cars and refrigerators and air conditioning. And folks, there are some countries in the world where the rich would kill for those things.

God’s been generous to us. We ought to keep that in mind and give generously to Him. Second of all, same passage.

Same passage that we’re on in 2 Corinthians 9. Christians should not only give generously, but Christians should give joyfully. I don’t know about you, but there’s not a whole lot of joy for me in sitting down and figuring out a mathematical formula.

As much as I would find that comforting, that yes, I know all my ducks are in a row and this is what I’m supposed to do. There’s not a lot of joy in saying, okay, how many of you enjoy doing your taxes? Okay, you may, if you’re really strange, you might enjoy the sitting down and figuring out of the taxes, but when it comes time to write the check, you don’t enjoy that.

How much joy is there in it in sitting down and saying, okay, this is the mathematical formula, this is what I’ve got to do. And I’m not saying that there’s no joy in giving 10%. If you every week fill out your check for 10% of whatever you’ve made, and you bring it to the church, and you feel good about that because I’m giving to the Lord’s work, and He’s been so good to me, and I just want to give this back to Him.

Folks, there’s not a thing in the world wrong with that. Just because it’s 10% doesn’t make it any less valid than 9% or 11%. That’s not at all what I’m saying.

But the principle here is that whatever we give, when we give generously, it should also be joyfully because it says God loves a cheerful giver. If some week I’m only able to give 5%, folks, I should bring it to God and be glad to do so. Some week, if I’ve had a really good week and I know the Bible says to be generous and I’m able to bring Him 50% of what I made that week, I still should not bring it and put it in the plate or give it wherever and say, well, I’ve given this to you, God, because you’ve been generous to me, but I still wish I could have kept it.

We’re supposed to give joyfully. Whatever we give, we give joyfully. He says here in verse 7, every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give.

As the Holy Spirit leads you, as you’re able, let him give, not grudgingly, not as though God is prying the check out of our hands or of necessity because we feel like I’ve got to. Well, God, I’ll give a little more because nobody else is going to. If I don’t give a little more, we’re not going to pay the light bill.

So I guess I’ll give you more, God. Not out of necessity, for God loveth a cheerful giver. That’s not saying that God hates you if you give grudgingly or out of necessity.

That’s saying what God really wants to see is a condition of the heart where we can give to Him and what we bring to Him we do so joyfully because we recognize how good He’s been to us. And whether you’re a millionaire and you write 10. .

. I know there’s a church somewher

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