Theology (the Prince of the Sciences): On Giving

Dr. Rayburn's sermon no. 9 is about the collection of all the utensils made out of precious metals that Israel would be using in the temple worship, but in this sermon Dr. Rayburn makes an excellent case for the generous spirit of a Christian when it comes to giving. Again I recommend the whole sermon, but here is a good part of it:

It is certainly worth our remembering that all of this reappears in a New Testament form. We offer sacrifices to God in our worship together – different kinds of sacrifices but sacrifices nonetheless, worship is called the giving of sacrifices in the NT; we eat a fellowship meal in the presence of the Lord – remember it is the fellowship offering or peace offering that we said was the true OT counterpart and anticipation of the Lord’s Supper – we bring our gifts to support the worship and work of the Lord’s house because we are grateful to him for what he has done for us.

And we do this for the same reason the twelve tribes did what they did in Numbers 7. We know how much we have been blessed and we know how precious is the presence of the Lord that is mediated to us in the church’s worship and introduced to others in the church’s ministry. We give what are in fact little gifts because we have received stupendous gifts. We give a little something of ourselves to God because he has given his Son for us. We give to the church because it is his church and the body of Christ his son.

How many times in Holy Scripture this principle of giving cheerfully and generously to God gifts to his house and his work is set before us. Abraham’s tithe, the Israelites generous donations first to the tabernacle and later for the building of the temple, Zacchaeus’ half of all his possessions to the poor (he no doubt gave the money to the church to be distributed to the poor) ( (and that on top of the four times the amount he had unfairly extracted from people as a tax collector), the entire bottle of perfume Mary poured over the Lord, the widow’s mite which was all she had, the generous donations of the churches of the Apostle Paul to the poor Christians in Jerusalem. The extravagance in all of this is one of the most powerful and practical embodiments of the principle of a gospel-ordered and gospel-driven life: we love him because he first loved us. Love is demonstrated in your life and mine by the giving of gifts. It always has been and always shall be.

I remember reading of a traveler in Africa years ago who wrote home of seeing a nun dressing the wounds of a leper. The wounds were revolting, disgusting. As he watched her work, he said to her, “I wouldn’t do that for ten thousand dollars.” She looked up at him and replied, “I wouldn’t either.” Love and gratitude give where the hope of reward will not.

There is something very beautiful about gratitude and about its expression and all of us instinctively recognize this. Our hearts go out to people in a very powerful way when they show gratitude to us for something we have done. I read not long ago an interesting piece of the biography of Ulysses S. Grant. You may remember that in the years before the Civil War Grant had left the army. He was never very good with money and once found himself in New York penniless, without even the funds he needed to get home to Ohio. In his embarrassment and desperation he approached a West Point classmate and comrade in the Mexican War, Simon Buckner and Buckner generously gave him the money Grant needed for the trip. Eight years later Grant won his first great victory as a general of the Union Army: the capture of Fort Donelson on the Tennessee River. The confederate fort was surrendered by its commander, General Simon Buckner. In a speech delivered years later at a birthday dinner for then President Grant, Buckner related what had happened there at Fort Donelson. “I met him on a boat [tied to the river bank],” Buckner said, “and after the formal surrender he followed me when I went to the quarters to which I had been assigned. He left his own officers behind and followed me until it was just the two of us alone in the hallway and there he handed me some money.” No words of explanation; just a gift given when it was most needed and most appropriate as a response of love for a gift given when it was desperately needed. A kindness was being repaid from the heart. Generosity was being returned.