4/27/08 - Easter 6 - 1 Chron. 29:14

BLESSED TO GIVE
- With an attitude of joy
- What the Lord has already given us

We have been blessed, my friends. The Lord has blessed this congregation with many things over the years. And if I asked each one of you to write down the blessings the Lord has given us here at Living Word Lutheran Church, I’m sure we could come up with a fairly extensive list: from salvation by grace through faith to the banners we have hanging on the wall. From God’s love, care, and protection that he provides for us every day to the hymnals we sing out of every week. Some of you might mention the true and unchanging Word of God as a blessing here, a strong church council, or a congregation filled with faithful men and women to do the Lord’s work. And all of these are great blessings that the Lord has given to us. But along with all of these gifts and everything else in between, I want you to add one more thing to that list that most people wouldn’t remember to include. The Lord has also blessed us to be able to give. We have been blessed to give. The Lord has blessed us so tremendously and so abundantly in our lives that we are able to give back to the Lord’s work in generous proportions. And all we have to do is look at our building fund to see that it’s true.
Last February we restarted and revamped our efforts to provide for a future church building. We urged each other to support this work through the motivation and direction of God’s Word. And since then, in only a little over a year’s time, the Lord has blessed us to give over $60,000 to the building fund in addition to what we had in there before. A congregation of 50+ members has provided over $60,000 in just over a year to an aspect of ministry the results of which have yet to be seen! We have surely been blessed! How the Lord has provided us both the means and the motivation to give to his glory! Praise the Lord with me, my brothers and sisters! What a wonderful thing he has done! And what a unique blessing he has poured out on us here! Because this is a blessing that many congregations do not have. We have been blessed to give.
This was what King David and the Israelites praised God for as well. They were also blessed to give to the building of God’s house. And this is why our service today is based on their situation in 1 Chronicles 29. Because David and the Israelites along with the small group of Christians here can both praise the Lord for blessing his people to be able to give to the building of a house of God. And so this is not a service about “please give more,” it’s a service about “keep up the good work.” This is not a service about “we’re a little short,” it’s a service of “we have been blessed by the Lord.” We have been blessed to give. And to give generously. And that fact should humble you! That Jesus would bless us so extravagantly that we would be able to give to him so abundantly should make you blush! “But who am I,” David said in the same situation, “and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as this?” David was overwhelmed by the blessings of the Lord. He was almost embarrassed about how much they were blessed to give back to their Savior and to the building that would one day display his Name. And who are we that we should be able to give so generously? Who are we that the Lord should bless us to give so much to a building that will one day display his Name?
I hope that this joy about being blessed to give fills your heart. I hope that all of you are thrilled that the Lord has blessed you as an individual to such a degree that you are able to provide him and his house with such an overabundance of gifts. But I would suspect that joy isn’t usually the word you would use to describe your attitude about giving. I would suspect, and I’m speaking from personal experience here, revealing some of the thoughts and feelings of my own heart, that you usually don’t think of giving as a blessing, but more like a duty or an obligation or even a burden, right? Sometimes we actually think about giving to the Lord as a burden! Tax season has just come and gone. Did giving to the Lord become a burden during those days of extra payments and fees? Does giving to the Lord become a burden when your vehicle breaks down? When medical bills pile up? When gas prices rise? You are saving up money to pay for school, to pay for retirement, to pay for vacations and then it happens that giving to the Lord isn’t a blessing during those times, it’s a burden on your budget, it’s a burden on your mind, and it’s about as far away from a “joy” as you can get!
When was the last time you saw the offering plates being passed out here at church and you said to yourself, “Wow, the Lord is giving me yet another opportunity to give back to his kingdom, and he has even given me the means to do it in such a generous way! Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord that I am so blessed to give!” I usually don’t think that way. I’m usually not overwhelmed with joy when I’m writing out a check Saturday night to put in the offering plate Sunday morning. And the saddest part about this is: there are Christians in this world who would give their left arm to be able to give what we give. I have met Christians in different places at different times who were genuinely heartbroken that they could not give more to the Lord. They gave what they could, but they wanted so badly to give more. Of course, the Lord didn’t care what they gave, he cared why they gave it. And the same goes for us. The Lord doesn’t care what we give, he cares why we give it. And so why would the Lord be happy with those offerings that we haven’t given in joy? If we do not enjoy giving the gift, the Lord does not enjoy the gift. And to my shame I’m sure that there have been precious few of my offerings that the Lord has ever found truly praiseworthy.
It is sometimes hard to be joyful when we get caught up in the so-called “pressing needs” of this life. But finding the joy to give again is only a page away. Finding the joy to give is only as far as the nearest words about Christ. That’s why David and his people were so overjoyed. They knew what the Lord had done for them. They remembered everything he had given to them. When they were nothing but a band of wanderers in the desert, the Lord gave them the Promised Land. When they had very little battle experience, the Lord handed enemy after enemy into their hands. When they were disobedient, the Lord forgave them. When they turned away, the Lord turned them back. And every time their hope for the future began to fade, the Lord revitalized their faith with yet another promise of the coming Savior. They were overjoyed to be able to give to the Lord because they could never give back to him as much as he had given to them or what he promised to give them in the future.
And so to find that joy of giving again, you must first ask yourself this question: What has the Lord given you? I guess a simple one word answer would be: everything. The Lord has given you everything you’ve ever had and everything you ever will. And everything that he gives you in this life all stems from another gift: the life he gave up on the cross for you. He has given you freedom from your sins because of the life he gave up on the cross. He has given you victory or Satan himself because of the life he gave up on the cross. He has given you the glories of heaven because of the life he gave up on the cross. He has given you peace of mind in the midst of temptations, comfort during troubles, and joy in sorrow because of the life he gave up on the cross. He has given you everything you need for salvation, everything you need to survive in this life, and thousands upon thousands of extra blessings that you neither need nor have asked for! He has given you everything. He has even given you enough to be able to give back to him.
“Everything comes from you,” David said. “And we have given you only what comes from your hand.” And so since we receive everything from the Lord, anything that we give back is already his in the first place! We are giving to his left hand what we received from his right. We are the little child who asks his father for some money so that he can buy his father a birthday present. The Lord doesn’t gain anything from our gifts. He doesn’t need us to give at all. He wants us to give. And he’s happy with us when we do! Even though all the offerings in the world wouldn’t benefit him in any way. Even though our offerings often lack the joy that should be attached to them, the Lord is still happy with what we give. Because he forgives the sins of joylessness, he forgives the sins of treating our offerings like obligations or duties or habits or even burdens, and he accepts our gifts as pleasing and commendable in his sight. He loves that you give to him out of your love for Christ. And he loves to bless you to be able to do so.
The Lord certainly blessed David to give out of love for the Lord, but realize: David never saw that magnificent temple of the Lord that he was giving toward. After all that he did for it and after all that he gave to it, he never saw it himself. He collected gold, silver, bronze, iron, onyx, turquoise, and fine stone and marble for the Lord’s House, plus all of the offerings he gave to the Lord out of his own pocket. The gold alone that David gave himself would be worth over 3.1 billion dollars by today’s standards! But he never saw the temple for which all of his offerings were given. But he didn’t need to. David was blessed to give to the Lord and he was just glad to do it - even if he didn’t see how the Lord would use those gifts in the end.
You have been blessed to give to the Lord as well. You may not have 110 tons of gold in storage like David had, but you have been blessed to give a considerable amount compared to almost any other Christian in almost any other time in almost any other country. You have been provided a surplus by the Lord so that you can give back to him. And don’t worry about seeing how the Lord’s uses those gifts. You may never see a new church building for this congregation in your life time. I would hope you do. I would hope that we could see the fruit of those offerings by next spring. But we may all end up like David: giving and giving to the construction of the Lord’s House but never getting to see one brick laid on top of another. But even if that happens, it won’t really matter a whole lot. The Lord will use our gifts when he wants and how he wants. And it’s not about the results of our gifts anyway. It’s about the reason we give them. And we give because the Lord has given to us. We are giving to show him our love and our appreciation for everything that he has done. We are giving because we are blessed to give.
Over $60,000. This small group of Christians has been blessed to give over $60,000 to a future House of God, on top of the regular offerings provided each week, on top of the special offerings for various churches and the Synod itself that come around each year. We have been blessed to give. Blessed with the means and blessed with the motivation. I want to thank you for that. I want to encourage you to continue that visible demonstration of your love for the Lord. But most of all: I want to praise the Lord for that. Look at what the Lord has done. Look at how he has moved our hearts. Look at how he has supplied our lives. And, most importantly, look at his life that he gave up for us. Because that’s our motivation: the life he gave so that we could have life with him. We would have nothing in this life without his loss of life. But because of it we now have everything. And what a blessing it is to be able to give a little something back.
Amen.

“Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.
- Romans 11:33a,36