Dr. Rodney Plunket

This past week I pulled up all the verses in the Bible that employ the word “offering,” “offerings,” “vow,” “vows,” “tithe,” or “tithes.”  In the New Revised Standard Version those six words occur 1,277 times.  I read many of those verses, and I realized some things that I want to share this morning.

Vows, offerings, and tithes are things given to God.  Reading verses that refer to those items clarified some things for me.  First, I realized that the kinds of things that our offering goes to today are the same kinds of things that offerings went to in Old Testament (OT) times.  For example, a high percentage of our offerings today go to the support of people who serve the religious life of the people of God.  The same is true in the OT.  Numbers 18:8-22 gives the most detailed list of all the items that go to the priests and the Levites.  Please listen as I read the most relevant verses from that passage.

The Lord spoke to Aaron:  I have given you charge of the offerings made to me, all the holy gifts of the Israelites; I have given them to you and your sons as a priestly portion due you in perpetuity.  This shall be yours from the most holy things, reserved from the fire:  every offering of theirs that they render to me as a most holy thing, whether grain offering, sin offering, or guilt offering, shall belong to you and your sons.  As a most holy thing you shall eat it; every male may eat it; it shall be holy to you.  This also is yours:  I have given to you, together with your sons and daughters, as a perpetual due, whatever is set aside from the gifts of all the elevation offerings of the Israelites; everyone who is clean in your house may eat them.  All the best of the oil and all the best of the wine and of the grain, the choice produce that they give to the Lord, I have given to you.  The first fruits of all that is in their land, which they bring to the Lord, shall be yours; everyone who is clean in your house may eat of it.  Every devoted thing in Israel shall be yours.  The first issue of the womb of all creatures, . . . , which is offered to the Lord, shall be yours; . . . .  But the firstborn of a cow, or the firstborn of a sheep, or the firstborn of a goat, you shall not redeem; they are holy.  You shall dash their blood on the altar, and shall turn their fat into smoke as an offering by fire for a pleasing odor to the Lord; but their flesh shall be yours, just as the breast that is elevated and as the right thigh are yours.  All the holy offerings that the Israelites present to the Lord I have given to you, together with your sons and daughters, as a perpetual due; it is a covenant of salt forever before the Lord for you and your descendants as well . . . .

To the Levites I have given every tithe in Israel for a possession in return for the service that they perform, the service in the tent of meeting.

It could hardly be clearer.  God’s people gave offerings and tithes in OT times to support those who had given their lives to ministering to the people in the Name of the Lord.

There is at least one incident in the life of Jesus that connects back to these offerings that were used by the priests.  Please open your Bible to Luke 5:12-14 and follow along as I read.

Once, when [Jesus] was in one of the cities, there was a man covered with leprosy.  When he saw Jesus, he bowed with his face to the ground and begged him, “Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean.”  Then Jesus stretched out his hand, touched him, and said, “I do choose.  Be made clean.”  Immediately the leprosy left him.  And he ordered him to tell no one.  “Go,” he said, “and show yourself to the priest, and, as Moses commanded, make an offering for your cleansing, for a testimony to them.”

Leviticus 14 is the chapter in the OT that describes the offering to which Jesus refers.  One of the items of that offering was a lamb.  Leviticus 14:13 says this about that lamb:  “[The priest] shall slaughter the lamb in the place where the sin offering and the burnt offering are slaughtered in the holy place; for the guilt offering, like the sin offering, belongs to the priest:  it is most holy.”  Leviticus 6:26 makes clear that the priest was to eat the meat of an animal brought to the temple as a sin offering.

Even though the priests were supported by the offerings that the people brought, I cannot find any examples of God saying bring the offering for that purpose.  The underlying purpose for offerings and tithes were always greater than that.  One of the great passages on the “why” of offerings is found in the Psalms.  Please take your Bible, turn to Psalm 50, and follow along as I read:

The mighty one, God the Lord,

          speaks and summons the earth

          from the rising of the sun to its setting.

Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty,

          God shines forth.

Our God comes and does not keep silence,

          before him is a devouring fire,

          and a mighty tempest all around him.

He calls to the heavens above

          and to the earth, that he may judge his people:

“Gather to me my faithful ones,

          who made a covenant with me by sacrifice!”

The heavens declare his righteousness,

          for God himself is judge.

“Hear, O my people, and I will speak,

          O Israel, I will testify against you.

          I am God, your God.

Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you;

          your burnt offerings are continually before me.

I will not accept a bull from your house,

          or goats from your folds.

For every wild animal of the forest is mine,

          the cattle on a thousand hills.

I know all the birds of the air,

          and all that moves in the field is mine.

“If I were hungry, I would not tell you,

          for the world and all that is in it is mine.

Do I eat the flesh of bulls,

          or drink the blood of goats?

Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving,

          and pay your vows to the Most High.

Call on me in the day of trouble;

          I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.”

But to the wicked God says:

          “What right have you to recite my statutes,

          or take my covenant on your lips?

For you hate discipline,

          and you cast my words behind you.

You make friends with a thief when you see one,

          and you keep company with adulterers.

“You give your mouth free rein for evil,

          and your tongue frames deceit.

You sit and speak against your kin;

          you slander your own mother’s child.

These things you have done and I have been silent;

          you thought that I was one just like yourself.

But now I rebuke you, and lay the charge before you.

“Mark this, then, you who forget God,

          or I will tear you apart, and there will be no one to deliver.

Those who bring thanksgiving as their sacrifice honor me;

          to those who go the right way

          I will show the salvation of God.”

This is an unusual psalm.  It is not a psalm of praise.  It is not a prayer.  It is a sermon, a sermon that actually indicts its listeners.  It indicts them in verses (vv) 7-15 because they do not have the proper attitude for the sacrifices that they offer to God.  In vv 16-22 it indicts them for the kinds of lives they are living.  Due to our purpose this morning, I want to focus on the message in vv 7-15.  That message makes clear that the people were bringing their offerings to God as if meeting some divine need.  As one scholar says, “Instead of bringing their sacrificial offerings out of gratitude to God, the people were doing so as a means of asserting their own merit and self-sufficiency, as if God needed them instead of their needing God” (New Interpreter’s Bible, 882).  In verse (v) 14 God reveals the proper attitude for offering to God.  God says, “Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving.”  And in the concluding verse that summarizes the message of the psalm we read, “Those who bring thanksgiving as their sacrifice honor me (v 23).”  The proper attitude for bringing an offering is thanksgiving or gratitude.  We do not give to meet some divine need; we give to show God how thankful we are for all that God has done.

Paul supports that same motivation in 2 Corinthians 8.  In that chapter he is writing about a special offering that he is collecting for the poor and persecuted Christians in Jerusalem.  In v 9 he writes, “For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.”  Paul wants his readers to be motivated by their gratitude for all that the Lord Jesus Christ did for them.  He became poor.  He gave up the riches of heaven.  He did that so that we “might become rich.”

This morning, as was announced last Sunday and in our Bulletin, we are going to pass the offering plate a second time so that we can help make up a budget deficit that is adversely affecting the ministry of this church.  It goes without saying that I want everyone to give generously when that plate is passed the second time.  I want the generous Spirit of God to work inside of us and to triumph over that deficit.

I have given in the Bulletin some of the reasons that Broadway needs this money, and Vic Hines/David Ruebush did the same in an announcement last Sunday.  I am assuming that that our members have already prayed about and planned for this second passing of the plate.  So I do not want this morning to talk about what the money will go to.  I want to focus on the foundational reason for giving.  We should give because of all that God has done for us.  Our hearts should overflow with gratitude and thanksgiving and cause us to give generously because God has given so generously, so lavishly to us.

Moses is speaking to the people at Mount Sinai.  They have been delivered from Egyptian slavery.  They have crossed the Red Sea, and in Exodus 22:29 he says, “You shall not delay to make offerings from the fullness of your harvest and from the outflow of your presses.”  If the people of Israel should not delay to bring their offerings to God because of all that God had done for them, how much more should we be eager to bring our gifts to God?  We live in the most prosperous nation the world has ever known.  We have every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus (Eph 1:3).  Let’s show to God our gratitude.  Let’s give offerings of thanksgiving in honor of the sacrifice of Christ Jesus our Lord.

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