Sermonette: Keep It Clean!

The Source of Our Offerings Matters
#FT00-08s
John W. Ritenbaugh (1932-2023)
Given 21-Oct-00; 22 minutes

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We are here to give a gift to God, and there is a place here that I want to begin in Psalm 96 where one of the psalmists said something about Him that I think needs to be considered.

Psalm 96:6-8 Honor and majesty are before Him; strength and beauty are in His sanctuary. Give to the LORD, O families of the peoples, give to the LORD glory and strength. Give to the LORD the glory due His name; bring an offering, and come into His courts.

I will give just a bit of explanation on some of the words. Honor and majesty indicate that everything that constitutes honor, glory, and majesty are in His presence wherever He happens to be. Strength and beauty mean that He is the source of power; all power emanates from Him, from where He is. And He is, of course, in His sanctuary in the context of this psalm.

Reference to beauty means that whatever is charming, lovely, attractive, proceeds from Him, be it in terms of character, the majesty of a mountain, or maybe the delicate fragility of a flower.

When all taken together, it means that we are here to give a gift to Somebody who has everything.

You have probably racked your brain from time to time over what you might give to a friend or relative who seemingly has everything. You do not want to offend them by giving something that is insignificant or give too much for fear of being taken as though you are trying to buy their friendship.

Now, even if the monetary value issue is resolved in your mind, the issue of appropriateness has to be settled. You do not want to give anything to a person that gives the appearance of being gaudy or tacky. You want to show thoughtfulness by giving something that fits within the person's personality, maybe their clothing, or the decor of their home.

But God has everything. I mean, we think some people have it all. Their homes are beautiful. They wear nice clothing, drive a nice automobile. What can you give people like that?

But when we consider God against this, it seems virtually impossible.

In Isaiah 66:1 to add some confirmation to this:

Isaiah 66:1 Thus says the LORD: "Heaven is My throne, and earth is My footstool. Where is the house that you will build Me? And where is the place of My rest?"

Well, it seems to me that He is certainly giving the impression there that under the circumstance that it would take a great deal to impress Him. That is the way it appears. And after all, the Israelites built Him a pretty fine building, and yet here He is referring to it as being something that is really a mere almost nothing, just a mere little bobble compared to what He already has.

In Psalm 50 we can add just a bit more to this so that we understand this Being a little bit better, this Being to whom we are now going to give a gift.

Psalm 50:9-12 “I will not take a bull from your house, nor goats out of your folds. For every beast of the forest is Mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the mountains, and the wild beasts of the field are Mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world is Mine, and all its fullness.”

The whole world; and of course we know this all expands out to include the entirety of creation. Yet there is also no doubt that He requires that we give gifts to Him. And we are to do it fairly often out of the resources which we have, which He has given to us.

Now giving an offering is an aspect of our stewardship. And I would think that He would require of us that we give as much thought to giving Him a gift as we do in giving a fellow human being a gift.

We are going to look at two very well known gifts that were given to God, and are recorded in the Bible, and we are going to see that in some ways they were very much the same, and yet in another way, they were very much different.

Now we pay tithe at a set rate. But we give offerings of our own estimation. And in some ways that is a great deal more difficult than paying tithe. So I am going to show you some principles that can be extracted from these two examples that we are going to look at.

The first one is in I Chronicles 29. We are going to read verses 1 through 6. Actually, we are going to read a couple more verses after that because something comes up a little bit after verse 5.

I Chronicles 29:1-6 Furthermore King David said to all the assembly: "My son Solomon, whom alone God has chosen, is young and inexperienced; and the work is great, because the temple is not for man but for the LORD God. Now for the house of my God I have prepared with all my might: gold for things to be made of gold, silver for things of silver, bronze for things of bronze, iron for things of iron, wood for things of wood, onyx stones, stones to be set, glistening stones of various colors, all kinds of precious stones, and marble slabs in abundance. Moreover, because I have set my affection on the house of my God, I have given to the house of my God, over and above all that I have prepared for the holy house, my own special treasure of gold and silver: three thousand talents of gold, of the gold of Ophir, and seven thousand talents of refined silver, to overlay the walls of the houses; the gold for things of gold and the silver for things of silver, and for all kinds of work to be done by the hands of craftsmen. Who then is willing to consecrate himself this day to the LORD?" Then the leaders of the fathers' houses, leaders of the tribes of Israel, the captains of thousands and of hundreds, with the officers over the king's work, offered willingly.

They joined with David in offering willingly. And then it tells how much.

I Chronicles 29:9 Then the people rejoiced, for they had offered willingly, because with a loyal heart they had offered willingly to the LORD; and King David also rejoiced greatly.

What we just read here was David's own offerings. Now just trying to give us a little bit of a handle on how much money is involved here, a talent is, according to those who research into these things, about 100 pounds. Well, he gave 3,000 talents of gold times 100, so there were 300,000 pounds. Now, in order to make this a little bit more conservative, I have used the Avoirdupois weight. So multiplying that by 12 ounces, we have 3,600,000 ounces. If you multiply that out by $300 an ounce, which is a little bit high compared to the price of gold today, it still comes out to $1billion, 80 million that David gave just in gold. Silver, 7,000 talents times 100 equals 700,000 ounces, times 12 is about 8,400,000 ounces avoirdupois, times $4.30 per ounce, $36,120,000. So that is a grand total of $1,116,120,000. But wait a minute. Go back a few chapters to chapter 22, because what was given there is clouded somewhat by what it states here in verse 14, which occurred timewise earlier than what we just read in chapter 29.

I Chronicles 22:14 “Indeed I have taken much trouble to prepare for the house of the LORD one hundred thousand talents of gold and one million talents of silver, and bronze and iron beyond measure, for it is so abundant. I have prepared timber and stone also, and you may add to them.”

Within the context, this gives the appearance that it was also David's offering. It is entirely possible that it was what the nation came up with out of its treasury. But if we add the two of them together, His own offering could have been $72 billion. It is out of sight.

Now we are going to compare that with another well-known gift. The widow's mite back there in Luke 21.

Luke 21:1-4 And He looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury, and He saw also a certain poor widow putting in two mites. So He said, "Truly I say to you that this poor widow has put in more than all; for all these out of their abundance have put in offerings for God, but she out of her poverty put in all the livelihood that she had."

There is, first of all, a similarity with David's offering in this that they made their offering in the company of others who were also wealthy. Now there is no indication in either case the rich who made their offerings were stingy in what they gave. Those who were with David, it said that they offered willingly, and it gives an indication there of how much they gave and it was not stingy in what they gave. Now Jesus does not criticize those who gave the offerings there before the widow as being stingy either. So, in both cases, the offerings of those who were also in the presence of these two other offerings appear to be generous.

Now there is another similarity. Jesus' statement in Luke 21:3 indicates that the widow, like David, gave more than everybody else. In fact, according to Jesus, it can be interpreted that she gave more than the total of what all the others gave, even though it was only two mites.

There is a saying that goes like this: It is not the amount that one gives, but the amount that one keeps for himself that determines the size of the offering. The rich have much left over. She apparently had nothing left for herself. She gave all that she had.

Now I think it is good to point out that Jesus nowhere told the woman that she ought not give such an extravagant amount considering her poverty. I want you to think about that. Two mites were an extravagant amount for her because she had nothing left. That was an awesome sacrifice, as small as it was. It was an awesome sacrifice.

So proportionate to her total worth, her gift was far more valuable than what the others gave, and as I mentioned, it could be considered that it was worth more than the total of all the others gave.

I have no doubt that David's offering was also very acceptable to God. Both kinds of offerings are commendable to God. I want you to notice that Jesus in no way denounced the rich. He only pointed out that hers was proportionately greater. You will also notice that He did not stop her. He knew what she was giving. He did not stop her, nor did He in any way disparage her sacrifice by remarking that she should not have done such a thing.

What was the most valuable thing that she gave? It was the exercise of her faith that God would provide regardless.

Let us go back to II Samuel 24, verse 24. This time we have another major principle here that David understood well.

II Samuel 24:24 Then the king said to Araunah, . . .

This is when he was purchasing the ground that the Temple came to be built on. This shows you how far in advance David was preparing, at least God was preparing David to build the Temple.

II Samuel 24:24 "No, but I will surely buy it from you for a price [now listen to this!], nor will I offer burnt offerings to the LORD my God with that which costs me nothing." [It is not a sacrifice unless it costs us something.] So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver.

Now this is important to understand in terms of understanding love and the action of faith. Because, you see, sacrifice is the essence of love. It is the heart and core of love.

I do not think that we need to be concerned that there was considerable sacrifice involved in David's offering. There was. He could no doubt afford to give it. But his fortune was undoubtedly considerably diminished by what he gave. And there was considerable sacrifice in what he did.

It is apparent from both of these examples that size is less important to God than other factors. One thing is clear about the widow's offering that it was made in faith. She had nothing left over after making it. She gave the offering fully expecting God to supply her need in spite of the offering.

David made his offering in faith too, fully expecting the work of the building of the Temple would go on right after his death. You can see in what David said there in I Chronicles 29:1-2, especially verse 1, that he expressed a measure of concern, because he felt that Solomon was so young, in this case meaning mostly inexperienced at administering the government. So the offerings were not made merely as a routine duty but thoughtfully considered.

Neither offering seems to have been given out of a grudging spirit. We might think that the person’s abundance might make it, that is, David's, more easily parted from him.

But just the opposite is very frequently true. A person who feels that he has worked hard for what he has amassed generally has a very strong proprietary interest in what is his. The constant peril that stalks the rich is this: that for all their generosity God may so readily come well toward the bottom of their list.

Now what the widow's example clearly shows is that God judges all circumstances individually in order to evaluate making it possible for a very small amount to actually be more valuable than the larger amount.

So an offering has to be thoughtfully considered.

There are five things in this sermonette.

Number 1: It has to be thoughtfully considered out of love for Him. David set his affection for what God is, what He has done, what He is doing, and what He is going to do.

Number 2: It must have a measure of sacrifice involved.

Number 3: It must be given knowing that He judges without respect of persons.

Number 4: It must be given in faith.

Number 5: It must not be given in a grudging spirit.

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