Sermonette: Do We See God In This Picture?

Offeratory
#575As
John W. Ritenbaugh (1932-2023)
Given 07-Sep-02; 21 minutes

We are going to begin in a place that we are very familiar with in regard to taking up an offering.

Deuteronomy 16:16 "Three times a year all your males shall appear before the LORD your God in the place which He chooses: at the Feast of Unleavened Bread, at the Feast of Weeks, and at the Feast of Tabernacles; and they shall not appear before the LORD empty-handed.”

The Feast of Trumpets is not mentioned, but it is included within the context there of the Feast of Tabernacles, meaning that season. And the word empty means empty-handed, and it is implying an offering.

Verse 17 confirms that

Deuteronomy 16:17 “Every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of the LORD your God which He has given you.”

More modern translations translate that last verse, “in proportion to the way the Lord our God has blessed.” He is implying a comparative part or share of what it is that we have been blessed with.

Now, it does not say that we should give according to what we can safely afford. No, although that must be considered, because one cannot give what one does not have. So before one can give five dollars, one must have five dollars to give. But the important thing here is the evaluation of our resources must be made.

So what we are dealing with here is going to be a matter of emphasis, and this is because for every person who would over-give, it is more likely that human nature would want to force us to under-give. Now some might be in this under-giving category because of fearfulness; others because of a natural self-centeredness. And then there is a third group. I think that this is the one that God is aiming at. It includes all those who fail to honestly consider God's blessings.

The directive that God gives here is in the context of what one has already received. So to evaluate what one has already received requires some thoughtful meditation. It requires the disciplining of one's mind to honestly and thoroughly reflect.

Now this we should do anyway, because as Proverbs 27:23 admonishes us that we should always know the state of our flocks. It is just plain good business to do that. That is not something that we do only occasionally, but something fairly often. And so part of the implication of what God is saying here is that it is good business for us even to consider offerings at times of the year in which there is no offering being taken up.

Now the difficulties in doing this fall into four areas. One is to just thoughtlessly accept things as though they came only because of the natural order of things. This is probably one of the most common circumstances. Number 2 is to vainly think that we deserved the blessings anyway. Number 3 is to fail to honestly consider that we are not managing our money well; that is, being proportioned too much to the wrong things throughout the year. Number 4 is because we passively forget.

It is the last one that I want to concentrate on because I think this is what God concentrates on as well. The people that God spoke this to were the covenant makers—Israel—with God. They had a great deal of trouble remembering. If one does not remember, then one is going to have a very difficult time connecting God with virtually anything in his life.

The Bible goes so far as to say in Psalm 78 that Israel forgot the Holy One of God. They remembered not His hand, that is, the hand with which He gives blessings, nor the day that He delivered them from their enemy. I think in modern terminology we would say that they were afflicted with the “what-have-you-done-for-me-lately” syndrome. As long as He was doing something spectacular, they remembered Him, and they worshipped Him. But if He seemed to be off somewhere, having forgotten about them, they forgot about Him, but He had not forgotten about them.

Now if one does not relate and remember, I can tell you this from my own experience that one's giving back to God is going to be insignificant, because that one can find no reason why he should give.

Now let us go to Exodus 35.

Exodus 35:20 And all the congregation of the children of Israel departed from the presence of Moses.

Now this sets the stage for something.

Exodus 36:5-7 And they spoke to Moses, saying, "The people bring much more than enough for the service of the work which the LORD commanded us to do." So Moses gave a commandment, and they caused it to be proclaimed throughout the camp, saying, "Let neither man nor woman do any more work for the offering of the sanctuary." And the people were restrained from bringing, for the material they had was sufficient for all the work to be done—indeed too much.

This has not occurred very often in the history of mankind where people gave too much. And I think that is one reason why it was recorded. God says, “This is really significant, and we are going to write this down as an example.” It was a tremendous offering.

Now we have to consider something here. Where did that offering come from? Where did it have its beginning? We are going to consider here a basic fact of spiritual life. It was very obvious for anybody that knows that the offering that they gave came from God. It was part of the spoils that He made available to them as they came out of Egypt. They were a slave people, and they had little more than their own lives. They had nothing to give back to Him until He first gave them something that they might give back to Him in thanksgiving.

There is a principle here. God blessed His people. The blessing was not a matter of circumstance, and it was not because they deserved it. He blessed His people, at least partly for the sake of His work (He had the building of the Tabernacle in mind). And in this case, it then prepared them to make an appropriate offering. Now the Tabernacle was a type of the spiritual tabernacle that is the church.

Let us go back to Deuteronomy and pick up another piece here. This time it is going to be in Deuteronomy 8. We are going to read from verses 10 through 19. God knows human nature better than anybody.

Deuteronomy 8:10 When you have eaten and are full, then you shall bless the LORD your God for the good land which He has given you.

I want you to think about this. How in the world can we bless God? But yet that is what He is saying here.

Deuteronomy 8:11-19 "Beware that you do not forget the LORD your God by not keeping His commandments, His judgments, and His statutes which I command you today, lest when you have eaten and are full, and have built beautiful houses and dwell in them; and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and your gold are multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied; when your heart is lifted up, and you forget the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage; who led you through that great and terrible wilderness, in which were fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty land where there was no water; who brought water for you out of the flinty rock; who fed you in the wilderness with manna, which your fathers did not know, that He might humble you and that He might test you, to do you good in the end—then you say in your heart, 'My power and the might of my hand have gained me this wealth.' And you shall remember the LORD your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth, that He may establish His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day. Then it shall be, if you by any means forget the LORD your God, and follow other gods, and serve them and worship them, I testify against you this day that you shall surely perish.”

To bless means to favor. It means to do kindness toward. It means to pay respect to. So when God says, “You are to bless Me,” means that, “You are to be kind back to Me. You are to show Me favor, and you are to pay respect to Me, because after all” (He is reminding them), “it was I who made it possible for you to have this. And if I didn’t do this, you wouldn’t be able to bless Me at all.”

Now it is very clear in the Old Testament that one of the major causes of Israel's problem was that they did not relate what was happening in their lives to their relationship with God. And they forgot.

The result of this was that the lessons that normally would have been learned through cause-and-effect, and all the experiences of life were not. They were not relating what was happening to them, and others within their fellowship on a day-to-day basis to God. They were just things that were happening. And God was not in the picture.

Now, does this apply to us in the end time? Well, it is interesting that at least two of the messages to the seven churches in Revelation mention this very thing.

Revelation 2:4-5 “Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works.”

And in Revelation 3,

Revelation 3:2 “Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die, for I have not found your works perfect before God. Remember therefore how you have received and heard; hold fast and repent.”

I think that if we did a thorough examination of those seven letters, we would probably find other implications of a failure to remember at the end time that God is involved in our life day by day.

So seven times a year, God commands us to reflect upon what we have received and heard, and attempt as best we can to show appreciation and kindness and blessing back to Him by placing a monetary value on it.

David understood a principle very important to what we are involved in, and we are not going to turn to it, but II Samuel 24:24, David said, “I will offer nothing to God that costs me nothing.” In other words, the principle of not just merely showing kindness back to God but actually sacrificing in so doing.

We are going to go to an event in Jesus' life in Mark 10 that I know that you all are familiar with, because it is really instructive.

Mark 10:28-30 Then Peter began to say to Him, "See, we have left all and followed You." So Jesus answered and said, "Assuredly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for My sake and the gospel's, who shall not receive a hundredfold now in this time—houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions—and in the age to come, eternal life.”

Now you know this follows right on the heels of Jesus' encounter with the rich young man who wanted to follow Christ, but he did not want to give anything to do it. He wanted to follow Christ on his own terms. And so when Jesus said, “Well, you're going to have to get rid of your money, get rid of your wealth,” he could not make that sacrifice.

There is no indication that this young man thought that all that he had was a result of God's beneficence to him. And that God made it possible in the first place. He looked upon it as his and that he owed God nothing for it. Therefore, he would keep it all.

But we do not want to follow his example because we have a tremendous promise that came out of that instance about all that we are going to receive because we bless God back. We recognize Him as a part of our life and that we come to the place where we are willing to sacrifice for it, because we want others to have the same blessing.

And so seven times a year, God asks us to relate what is going on in our life to what He has given.

How much is the knowledge of God's plan worth? It is priceless!

We cannot put a dollar figure on it. But nonetheless, it is there.

How about the forgiveness of sin?

How about being able to watch world news with more understanding than the experts, because the experts do not take God's plans into mind at all?

What about peace of mind regarding death, protection by angels watching over you and over yours? How about healings that you may have experienced? How about the knowledge of how to have a happy marriage? Or how to rear your children? Or knowing that the trials of life, which everybody has, can actually be a blessing because they are tied directly to the knowledge of God's plan. They do not have to be merely a burden, but actually a means to understanding and to growth.

Now, these are things that can have a mighty impact on our lives if we allow them to be used.

How about the development of qualities in you that would never have occurred had God not been a part of your life? How about something like this—all of the traveling that you have had made available to you because of going to the Feast of Tabernacles?

Now, like the Israelite slaves, we would have nothing to offer back to God if we were not aware that He gave us these things in the first place in an overflowing abundance as a part of His creative program.

So have you honestly considered God's blessings? I will hazard a guess that there is a lot more there than you would have ever believed. Enough like the Israelites of old when they were beginning to build the Tabernacle so we can make an overflowing offering on our own little level.

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