Turn with me to Matthew chapter
6. We're going to begin a new chapter in Matthew today. I tried
to capture some closing thoughts on Matthew chapter 5 in the handout
today, if you want to look at that. It doesn't summarize the
whole chapter of Matthew, but it does try to touch on some
of the things that were in the latter part. But today I want to look at Matthew
chapter six. I want to look especially at
the first four verses. And I would like to cover quite
a bit more than that, but I know from experience we'll never get
there, so I'm just going to do this much. And when we look at
these first four verses of Matthew six, we're actually going to
be looking back at Matthew chapter five and verse 42, so that will
tie these things together. We're still dealing with the
Sermon on the Mount. The Lord Jesus Christ's Sermon
on the Mount. Now, we've spent a long time
just looking at his sermon, and I'm sure it didn't take that
long for him to preach it. I don't know how long it must
have taken. Sometimes the people would hear him and come out and
be there all day long. They didn't get tired of hearing
Him. May God give us that grace not to tire of hearing Christ.
The only way that can happen is if we understand what He's
saying. And if we find in our heart a need for the life, for
the words of life that He's giving here. As sinners, life comes
to us when we see what Christ has done. The Spirit of God gives
us that life when He speaks Just like He did in creation, speaks
light, commands the light to shine out of darkness, He shines
in our hearts. So let's read together in Matthew chapter six,
verse one through four. Take heed that you do not your
alms before men to be seen of them. Otherwise you have no reward
of your Father which is in heaven. Therefore, when thou doest thine
alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee. as the hypocrites
do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory
of men." Evidently, in those days when someone wanted to give
something, either inside the synagogue as part to a contribution
to the treasury or to poor people, they would make a big to-do of
it. They would even sound a trumpet and let everyone know that they
were actually making a contribution. So he says here, don't do that.
Don't do that. In fact, one of the things you
see here in just the first verse is that the way that he starts
the instruction on almsgiving is that he says what not to do.
And this is the hardest thing for us to do, is not to give
to be seen of men. Not to give in order to get. And that's what he first lays
that down. Don't do what you do to be seen
of men, and don't sound a trumpet as the hypocrites do in the synagogues
and in the streets, that they may have glory of men." Why would
Jesus spend so much time talking about that? Because we're so
naturally inclined to do what we do in order that we might
commend ourselves or someone else could give us commendations
for it. Or we think that God somehow
will give us commendations and rewards for what we do. That's
all false, as we'll see as we go through this. Anyway, he says,
don't do as the hypocrites do, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you that they
have their reward. Verse three, but when thou doest
alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth, that
thine alms may be seen in secret, and thy father which seeth in
secret himself shall reward thee openly. How do you not let your
left hand know what your right hand is doing? Well, you don't
talk about it to yourself. You don't reflect on it and say,
wow, that was pretty nice, I did that. You don't think in your
heart that God's going to take notice of that so that you will
receive a reward from your Father in Heaven. That's not how you
give alms. So these verses are teaching
us here about giving. I've never preached a sermon
on giving before. I know that it was always one
of those sad things when you bring visitors to church, it
seems like the only thing the preacher teaches on is giving.
That's an odd thing, isn't it? That's not what I intend to do
today as has been traditionally done. When we preach from God's
word, we have to preach the gospel. If we find in the Scripture a
subject that doesn't lead us to Christ, then we haven't yet
understood the Scripture. Jesus said that all of Scripture
speaks of Him, and so this preeminently speaks of Him. Look back at Matthew
chapter 5 and verse 42. Listen to this command. Jesus
says, give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would
borrow of thee turn thou not away. Give to him that asks,
and if someone wants to borrow, don't turn away. In the book
of Luke, chapter 6, the same subject is being taught, and
he says, if someone asks to borrow from you, lend, and don't ask
for it again. Don't even expect it back. And
when you read these things about giving, when someone asks, lending
when someone asks you to borrow from you, or when you read what
Jesus says here about giving alms, What does it do to you? I know whenever I read these
things to you, whenever I read these things from scripture,
I immediately think of what I don't do and what I'm not. And I can't help it because in
all honesty, I have to say that these things don't describe me,
what I naturally am. They don't describe my heart
naturally wants to hold on to all that I have. I want to protect
what is mine. I don't want to give it away,
but that's not the heart of God's grace. Look with me at 1 Chronicles. The book of 1 Chronicles is after
Kings, 2 Kings, 1 Chronicles. In the Old Testament, David was
dedicating all that he had prepared to build the house of God, the
temple. And what he had done is he had
accumulated vast amounts of wealth. I had to look this up. I've wondered
about it before, but they speak of these different quantities
in the Old Testament. One of them is a measure. It's
called a talent, a talent of this or a talent of that. And
a talent, it turns out, it's hard to know precisely what it
is, but a talent in our measure would be approximately 75 pounds. A talent, a single talent. And
so when David was preparing for the, look in verse 4 of 1 Chronicles
29, it says that he had prepared 3,000 talents of gold, of the
gold of Ophir. Now that's, the gold of Ophir
was considered the finest gold that you could find. And he had
prepared 3,000 talents of that. Well, 3,000 talents is, as I
said, if you multiply it by 75 pounds per talent, you get about
225,000 pounds of gold. And in today's dollars, that's
approximately $4 billion. So that's a lot of money. But
he prepared it for God. And then there were others in
the elders of Israel who had also contributed approximately
5,000 talents of gold, adding another huge quantity to that. But it's not so much the absolute.
quantity that impresses us here. When you read that, of course
it impresses me. I'm sort of fascinated by them. There was a king that when they
conquered him, they took the crown off his head, and his crown
was said to weigh one talent of gold, and they placed it on
David's head. I imagine that that was a hard
load to carry. I don't know how he did it. So
those kinds of things always impress me, but God teaches us
these things for a reason. I want to read to you here in
verse 10. David blessed the Lord in his
prayer. And he said, before all the congregation,
David said, Blessed be thou, Lord God of Israel, our Father,
forever and ever. Thine, O Lord, is the greatness
and the power the glory and the victory and the majesty for all
that is in the heaven and in the earth is thine thine is the
kingdom O Lord and thou art exalted as head above all he wanted to
make sure that the people understood don't look at me don't look at
the gifts all of this is the Lord's It's... He's the one who's
great. He has all power. All glory goes
to Him. And it's His kingdom forever
and ever. He's the one who's exalted. In
verse 12, He says, "...both riches and honor come of Thee, and Thou
reignest..." That means He rules over all. "...and in Thine hand
is power and might, and in Thine hand is to make great and to
give strength to all." This verse tells us everything we have is
given to us by God. And then he goes on, he says, But who am I, and what is my
people, that we should be able to offer so willingly after this
sort? For all things come of thee,
of thine own have we given thee. If we give alms, what are we
giving? We're giving nothing of ourselves. What we're giving is we're giving
to God what God has given to us. That's a very basic principle,
isn't it? And so I want to think about
these things with you. I want to think about almsgiving. Almsgiving, the word alms is
a derivative from the word mercy. When you think of alms, we naturally
think of money. But that's not specifically what
it's talking about. It's talking about showing mercy. Showing mercy. When you give
alms, it's a way of showing mercy. And so when David and all of
Israel gave these huge quantities, they were simply giving to God
what God had placed in their hands. And what has God put in
our hands? He's given us mercy. mercy from
God, mercy from Christ, forgiveness of sins, the grace of God, to
know the living God. He's given us all that Christ
purchased for us with His own blood. He's giving that to us.
And so, He's given this to us. He's not only given us these
spiritual things, but He's given us all our life. In the book
of Daniel, Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar's son who was drinking out of the
golden vessels, you haven't honored the one in whose hand your breath
is. In God's hand is not only riches,
but our own life, our breath, everything we have is God's.
We are simply stewards of what God has given to us. He puts
it in our hand. It's ours to do with what we
want, but what we do with it is how we honor God. And so that's
what he's teaching here, to show our thankfulness to God, to show
out of faith what we think of what he's done for us in our
souls through Jesus Christ. That's what almsgiving is. And
so the first thing we think of when we think of giving is we
think of losing something, don't you? Don't want to give too much
because if I do then I won't have as much as oh man What do
I do and you start thinking about this? That's all wrong thinking
when we give something We're giving what God has placed in
our hands. And what does God have in his store? everything. There's nothing that's not the
Lord's. Everything in, we just read in 1 Chronicles, everything
is God's. All riches and honor and glory
belong to Him, and He bestows it as according to His free and
sovereign grace. And so, so what is giving? Well,
giving is is a way where we take what God has given us and with
it we show our thankfulness to God for His mercy in giving that
first to Him and then to others. So when we start talking about
almsgiving, there's a very tangible part of this. It's showing mercy
to others. And we see this in a lot of different
ways. One way is in the book of Luke,
chapter 10. Take a look with me at Luke,
chapter 10. The story of the Samaritan is
familiar, but I want to read through this with you beginning
at verse 25 so you see this, because at the very end we see
what it means to give alms. Luke 10, 25, Behold, a certain
lawyer stood up and tempted Jesus, saying, Master, what shall I
do to inherit eternal life? Do you see what he says there?
What shall I do to inherit eternal life? Do is an action. It's a work. Inherit is a gift
of grace. He was mixing his work with God's
gift. He wanted to do something to
receive God's grace. And you can't do that. You can
never receive from God because of what you do. When you think of a gift, think
of what it means to give something. You don't give something to pay
someone back, do you? That's not a gift, is it? If
I give you something to pay you back, that's a payment. That's
not a gift. A gift, by its very definition,
has to be something that you don't deserve. It's given because
the person giving it has chosen to show you kindness because
of their love or because of their goodness. It's not something
you deserve. When you receive a gift, sometimes
you think, well, people are giving me all this stuff because I'm
such a nice person. See, this is the way we naturally
think. That's not what gifts are about. And so when God gives
us anything, it's always because of His goodness. It comes out
of what is His, according to His will, and because of His
goodness. So when we give, All we're doing
is we're expressing our gratitude to God, acknowledging that it's
His, acknowledging that in giving it, we're passing along a mercy
God has given to us, so that whoever receives it can thank
not us, but God for that gift. If we give it for any other reason,
if we give it to be recognized as a generous person, then we've
already not given properly. We've lost every good benefit
in giving. We haven't given glory to God
and we don't receive any, we're not doing it acceptably before
God. So giving, first of all, is giving what God has put in
our hands out of thankfulness to His mercy for us and in honor
of His mercy we give that so that others will know God is
gracious. God is good. It's His. It's not
ours to give. It's His. He put it in our hands
simply as a loan. And the other thing we see about
giving is that fundamentally, we don't even belong to ourselves. We're not our own. We belong
to the Lord. So all of our life, not just
what we have, but our very person is God's. So listen to these words. Think of it this way. Whatever
you have, is a mercy, isn't it? Do you deserve one gift from
God? Did you deserve to be born? Do you deserve breath? Do you
deserve food or water? Do you deserve anything from
God? Absolutely not. How many times
you see somebody, you'll hear this on TV a lot, oh you deserve,
you deserve this, you've worked hard for it. Well, I don't know,
maybe. I doubt it. I don't think we
deserve anything. What we have all comes from God's
hand. And if we have it, it was God's,
and if we have it, it's God's still, and we are to give it.
Even our own bodies, in life and death, we're bought with
a price, and therefore we're to glorify God with all that
we have. And so when God gives us mercy,
it's out of God's goodness, and we owe it all back to Him. And
when we give it to someone else, we're simply doing that in God's
name, showing His goodness as a steward to what He's given
us. And then I want you to think though with me about this case
in Luke chapter 10 here, because look at this in verse 25. Behold,
a certain lawyer stood up and tempted him, saying, Master,
what shall I do to inherit eternal life? He started out on the wrong
foot. And Jesus said to him, Since you want to do something,
Jesus met him in the way he came. He says, What is written in the
law You want to do something? What did God say to do? How do
you read it? And He, answering, said, Thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy
soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind, and thy
neighbor as thyself. And He said to him, Jesus said
to the man, Thou hast answered right. This do, and thou shalt
live. That's what the law says. Do
and live. If you want to come, if you think
you can have eternal life by what you do, then do and you
will live. There's nothing wrong with that. If you can do it, then you can
live. But if you're honest, you have to start out by saying,
I have never done it, and I cannot do it. I'm a sinner, therefore
I deserve to die. But he didn't come that way.
So in verse 29 it says, but he willing to justify himself. Can
you identify with that? When you're challenged, do you
ever try to justify yourself? All the time. I can't think of
one time where I didn't justify myself. That's how we are. It's right in our character to
justify ourselves. We want others to think, I'm
right, I'm right. I know I said it this way and
he said it that way, but really, I was right, wasn't I? I had
a lot, a good part of it, at least, I was right. He wanted
others to think that he understood the law. He wanted others to
think that he had kept the law as he understood it, and therefore
he deserved eternal life. He wanted Jesus to acknowledge
him before men as someone who understood and kept the law,
and therefore deserved eternal life. What greater honor would
he have than for the master to acknowledge that this man had
kept the law? He wanted to justify himself.
So he said, who's my neighbor? It's almost a smart aleck remark,
isn't it? It's kind of like, this is the
way we do, or theologians especially seem to do it. We have to define
the word to understand what it means, and thereby, by defining
it, we can get out from under the true meaning of it. But here
he says, Jesus said, okay, Let me explain it to you. So he says
in verse 30, "...a certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho
and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment,
and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead." So you
know the story. Here he is, a man coming from
Jericho to Jerusalem, and when he comes down the way, men jump
him, thieves, strip him, take his clothes, wound him, And then
left him, without anything, half dead. Lying there on the roadside. Maybe no clothes at all. And
dying. And he is absolutely helpless. Wounded on the side of the road.
And by chance there came down a certain priest that way. And
when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. The priest
couldn't help the man. Or wouldn't. And likewise, a
Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him. And he
passed on the other side. But, a certain Samaritan. So, the Levite came, and the
priests came. And these men were, in the Old
Testament, the ministers of God. And they couldn't help him. Because,
fundamentally, perfection doesn't come by the Levitical priesthood. Perfection doesn't come by the
law. The law can't help us. We need something better. So,
a Samaritan came. A Samaritan was a stranger. A
stranger to the Levite. A stranger to the priest. And
he came. And he journeyed on his journey.
And when he came, he came where he was. Do you see that? The
Samaritan came to where the man was. If you're ever going to
be saved, the Lord Jesus Christ has to come where you are. He
came where He was. And then it says, not only did
He come where He was, but He saw Him. When He saw Him, He
looked at Him when He came where He was. And He didn't just look. He had compassion in His look.
He had compassion on Him. That's mercy. And he went to
him, having compassion on him. He went close. He came near to
him and he bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine. Now
these things are the gospel. This is what our Lord Jesus Christ
has done. He came where we were. He looked
on us with compassion. He Himself came to us and He
took our wounds and He poured in oil and wine. What does it
mean? The wine means the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Isaiah
53 says, By His stripes we're healed. And the oil means that
the Spirit of God is given to us to know what Christ has done
for us. He came to us. He bound up our
wounds. And that's why we are saved.
And then he carried him. He put him on his own beast.
That means he was walking and the man was on his beast. going
to an inn where he could take care of him. And when he gets
to the inn, he tells the man there to care for him, and he
gives him money. He says, after he put him on
his knees, he brought him to an inn and took care of him.
And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence and gave
them to the host, the man at the inn. And he said to him,
take care of him, and whatever you spend more, when I come again,
I will repay thee. So here, Christ, in the parable,
is meeting our needs. Every need we have, He meets.
He takes care of our wounds. We're lying there half dead.
We're going to die unless He does something. And He puts us
on His own beast and takes us to the inn. And He pays. He does
everything. The Samaritan does everything
for this man. The man does nothing and no one
else helps. He even pays the innkeeper for
taking care of him. Because Christ sends His ministers
and at the end of the world He's going to pay them for ministering
to His people and binding up their wounds. The innkeeper is
nothing more than the preachers of the gospel, the teachers,
the apostles, the prophets, who give the Word of God to his people,
telling them about Christ and what he's done, so that they
can see him. And in seeing him, see that all
their needs are met in him before God. All their wounds are healed
because of his blood. And the Spirit of God is given
to us to teach us that. Now, at the end of this, it says, In verse 36, Jesus asks the man,
he says, which now of these three, the Levite, the priest, or the
Samaritan, thinkest thou was neighbor unto him that fell among
thieves? And the lawyer had to say this,
he said, he that showed mercy on him. Then Jesus said to him,
go thou and do likewise. Here is what almsgiving is all
about. It's showing mercy because he
was given mercy and Christ is the one who is shown here. Look
at Luke chapter 19, another case. So there's the Samaritan and
now there's a man named Zacchaeus. Look at verse 1 of Luke 19. Jesus entered and passed through
Jericho and behold there was a man named Zacchaeus, which
was the chief among the publicans, and he was rich. He was the chief
publican. A publican was a collector who
got taxes from people, but he also took more than the taxes
to pay himself. And so he was very rich because
he collected much, much more than the government required.
And he sought, and the people hated this. The people hated
tax collectors in those days. It's like we hate them now, but
even in those days it was worse because they could take whatever
they wanted on top of what they required. And so he sought, Zacchaeus
sought to see Jesus who he was. And he could not see him for
the press because he was little of stature. Zacchaeus was small,
much smaller than the other people. It's funny, you see this small
person and you think, he's so rich and he's small. That's the
way we are. Naturally, we think we have a
lot. In our own eyes, we're rich before
God. But we're really small and we
can do nothing about our stature. In verse 4, And so, because he
was small and he couldn't see over the crowd, he ran before
and he climbed up into a sycamore tree to see Jesus. For he was
to pass that way. You can see him sitting in the
tree. Maybe there are some kids up there sitting in the tree
with him. Here's Zacchaeus among the kids in the tree with his
fine clothes on and his turban on, waiting for Jesus to come.
A man, a grown man, sitting in the tree. Quite a spectacle. Verse 5, and when Jesus came
to the place, Jesus looked up. That's a strange picture, isn't
it? The Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, who is higher
than the heavens, looking up at a sinner. And he looked up,
and saw him, and said to him, Zacchaeus, hurry up, make haste,
and come down. Come down, Zacchaeus. You're
too high. Come down. For today I must abide
at your house. It wasn't like I'm going to if
you let me. I must. I must come to your place. And I'm going to stay there.
This is the gospel again, isn't it? The Lord Jesus Christ comes
to a sinner, exalted in his mind, possessing much, and yet, wanting
to see Jesus, God, in his irresistible grace, has drawn this man to
see him. He can't help himself, he wants
to see him, and Jesus had put him there, in his path, and walks
to him, and looks up at him, and all of his Christ, having humbled himself,
coming to save sinners, to serve sinners in himself, and giving
himself to them, and showing himself to them, and he says
to him, Zacchaeus, hurry up and come down, because I must abide
at your house today. What a blessing! And verse 6,
and he made haste, and he came down, and he received Jesus joyfully. Of course, when they saw it,
everyone in the crowd, they all murmured saying that he was gone
in to be a guest with a man that is a sinner. No doubt he was
a sinner. A great one. And Zacchaeus stood,
this sinner, stood and said to the Lord, Behold, Lord, half
my goods I give to the poor, and if I've taken anything from
any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold. I always
wondered, how is he going to have anything left? Everything
he had he must have taken by fraud. And here he's going to
restore it all. He's given everything he has.
And Jesus said, listen to what he says in verse 9. This day
is salvation come to this house for as much as he also is a son
of Abraham. Salvation has come to this house.
Why was Zacchaeus willing to give everything he had? He had
salvation. He had everything when having
salvation. Salvation had come to him. Christ
had come to him. Everything he had, it was counted
for nothing. He wanted to give everything
to the Lord for the Lord's sake. That's what he did. Now look
at 2nd Corinthians. Chapter 8. There's many, many,
many places in the Bible that teach the giving like this. Actually, before we get there,
I want you to see, before we go to 2 Corinthians 8, and we'll
read that in a minute here, I want you to see how in all of our
giving, we're only following our Master, the Lord Jesus Christ.
I want you to see this before we read 2 Corinthians 8, because
when we do give, When we give whatever we give, whether it
be of our substance, or of our time, of our listening to someone,
our friendship, whatever we give, it's going
to be something that is going to cost us. When we give that
out of mercy, because God has given us, all we're doing is
we're following our Master. And if you keep that in everything
you do, if you don't do it in faith toward Christ, it does
you no good. And of course, if you do it in
faith toward Christ, it's not like it's doing you good, earning
you a better place before God, but it's allowing you to take
the goodness of God and lavish it on others because God has
given it so freely to you. Remember what Jesus told his
disciples? Freely you have received, freely give. So in all of our
giving we're only following our Master. Now think about this.
Look at 2 Corinthians 8 verse 12. I just want to read this
one verse. We'll read more later. He says, If there be first a
willing mind, it is accepted according to that a man hath,
and not according to what he hath not." I know that's kind
of hard to understand, but what Paul is saying here to the Corinthians,
if you want to give something, but you don't have very much,
then what you give is accepted not in proportion to what you
have, but in proportion to what you don't have. In other words,
it's not, and God's estimation of your gift is not in absolute
measure. King David gave 3,000 talents
of gold, 7,000 talents of silver, an enormous wealth. But the measure
of his gift wasn't how much that was, it was how much he had in
proportion to what he gave. So when Jesus gives the parable
of the widow with two mites, remember that? She comes and
she, all these men, Jesus is standing there watching as they
cast their money into the treasury. And he sees the rich casting
in much. And then this woman comes who
had no husband because her husband died and she throws in two mites. And he says, this woman has given
more than all that the rich men have given. Why? Because she
gave not in absolute terms much, but because she gave all of her
living. And so he says here, When you
give, it's not accepted for what a man has, but for what he has
not. Because God doesn't judge you. The Macedonian churches wanted
to give more, but they couldn't because they didn't have more
to give. And God looked at their heart and they were received,
their gift was received because God knew that they were willing
to give all that they had. And they did give whatever they
could. But I mention that because I want you to see what our master
did. The widow woman gave all that she had. She only had two
mites. King David had a ton, literally
a ton of gold. He had so much gold it was unfathomable. I mean we wouldn't even be able
to imagine how much gold and silver he had and he gave it
for the building of the temple. But it was how much he, not so
much how much he gave, but how much he gave in proportion to
what he had. And that's what our Lord Jesus
Christ did. He had much. He had all things. He is God himself. Everything
in heaven and earth is his. And he gave everything. This
is giving. He gave all that He had. For
you know, look at verse, well you don't have to look at it,
listen to this, 2 Corinthians 8, 9. 2 Corinthians 8, 9. For
you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He
was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor. He emptied Himself. He emptied Himself of everything
that He had. And he made himself of no reputation. And he stooped even lower. He
took upon him the form of a man. And as a man, he took our sin. And then, with our sin, he paid
the punishment our crimes deserved. And then he gave freely out of
that the forgiveness of sins to us. And he did it out of love,
because he wanted to. It wasn't constraint. He did
it. He voluntarily and willingly
gave all that he had from his heart. And it cost him everything,
but he did it with a joyful heart. That's what the widow did. She
gave all that she had. And did not our Lord Jesus Christ
do that? Did he not cast in all his living? 2 Corinthians 9.15 says this,
Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable gift. God Himself can't even
describe how great the gift of Christ is. The gift of God is
the Lord Jesus Christ. God gave His Son. 1 John 3.16 says, Hereby perceive
we the love of God, because He laid down His life for us, and
we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. Jesus commanded
the rich young ruler, go sell all that you have and give to
the poor. Isn't that what our Lord Jesus
did? He sold everything. It says the parable of the field
and there was a pearl of great price in the field and the man
wanted the pearl so he bought the whole field. That's what
Christ did. He gave everything that he had, paid it all. God,
He says in John 17, God had given Him power over all flesh that
He might give eternal life to as many as thou hast given Him.
He paid the price of His blood. God gave Him as heir of all things
in order for Him to have a people and save them by His own gift
of His own blood. Would the Lord Jesus Christ give
everything like that and God not reward Him? Could that be, could someone
give to God more than God would give? Could someone out give
God? Could the Lord Jesus Christ lay
down his life, humble himself, take our sin and pay with his
own life under the wrath of God and God not reward him for that?
Not give him in proportion to what he gave? It can't happen. God absolutely has given eternal
life to His people because of the Lord Jesus Christ's gift
of Himself to God in obedience to His law and in enduring the
wrath of God for His people. And there's no possibility that
His gift will go to waste. You hear that all the time. Well,
if you don't believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, His gift is a waste.
His life is a waste. He sacrificed Himself for nothing.
It's not possible. God cannot give, Christ could
not give of himself without God rewarding him for it. He has
all that he purchased. He didn't spend money for the
field and not get the field. He didn't lay down his life and
purchase the church and not get the church. He gave himself and
was given all because of that. And so you see the way the Lord
Jesus Christ gives. It says in 2 Corinthians 9-7,
the Lord loves a cheerful giver. And our Lord Jesus endured the
cross with joy. The joy that was set before Him,
He endured the cross. And we read this a minute ago
in Matthew chapter 5. Look at this again with me. Hold
your place in 2 Corinthians 8. I want to get back to that. But
Matthew chapter 5. Look at this again. Sometimes we pass over
these things we don't realize because we're so aware of our
own lack and guilt and our need of grace to do what Christ has
said here that we miss the bigger point. But in Matthew 5.42 he
says, Give to him that asks you. And from him that would borrow
of you, turn not away." What does that mean now? Well, when
we do this, we're following our Master. Therefore, our Master,
the Lord Jesus Christ, is the One. And He says, when He says,
give to him that asks you, what does that immediately prompt
you to want to do? Lord, I'm poor, I'm needy, I'm
a beggar, I need from you salvation from my sins. I need the forgiveness
of sins. I need a righteousness that is
acceptable to God to escape not only the wrath of God, but to
enter heaven. I need to know you. I don't know you. I need
to know you. I need life. I need faith. I need repentance. I need all
these things. I need, like we sang in the song
a minute ago, all my help. From thee I bring everything
I need and have has to come from you. And it has to be given to
me freely by your grace. And you said ask. ask and here
you said that you give to all who ask and to him that wants
to borrow you don't turn away and you don't even ask for it
again Lord I need everything from you what do you need ask
him for it he has all riches and glory and so we see in these
all these things how the Lord Jesus Christ ultimately fulfills
what it means to give alms and our almsgiving is nothing nothing
more then following our master and what he's done. And we have
to see it that way. Another place in scripture in
Ephesians 4.28 it says, let him that stole, steal no more. And you know, this is a very
practical verse. If you've been a thief, then
don't be a thief anymore. Instead, go get a job. Let him
labor, working with his hands the thing which is good, that
he may have to give to him that needeth. So here's a thief. What does he do when the gospel
comes to him? Stop stealing, get a job and
work and take what you earn and give it to the poor because now
God has saved you. Give it to the poor, the poor
and needy, spiritually poor and needy, whatever they are. And
here, We see again our master, didn't he labor with his hands
that he might have to give to him that needeth? It was his
bloody sweat in the garden, wasn't it? That purchased our eternal
forgiveness and our life. And then there's other things
you see in giving. And I just mentioned these in
passing. Remember the Sidonian widow in the Old Testament when
Elijah came to her and she had only one meal left for her and
her son. And he says, first make a cake for me. I always wondered
about that. It was a good purpose in doing
this. Remember, he's the prophet of God. And she did. She went
in and she made a cake for him first. And she gave it to him.
And he says, the meal is never going to run out. The oil will
never run out. Because when you first give to
the Lord, when you first give to the Lord, It's an endless
supply. When you've been given grace
and mercy, can you give away the grace and mercy God has given
you? No. By giving grace and mercy,
You multiply the blessing God has given you so that your faith
in Christ increases. This is the amazing thing about
giving. When you're able, by God's grace, to show mercy and
kindness and forgive others, to overlook their faults, to
pray for the brother who falls into sin, and to encourage him
in the Lord, or whatever it is, to tell about how God has saved
you. How has God saved you? He chose
me. He redeemed me. He gave me a
new heart. He gave me His own spirit to
live and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. He turned me from
my sins and turned me in faith to Christ to look to Him. And
this is what God has done for me. And so you tell what He's
done and it's a blessing. It just multiplies. It multiplies
in your heart. And so all these things we see
in our Lord Jesus Christ. Hannah gave her son to the Lord,
but when she gave Samuel to the Lord, it was in giving him that
she was able to serve the Lord, because Samuel was a servant
of God. Her son served God, and she, in her son, was serving
God. Do you see? Everything we give,
God multiplies. in His grace because it's His
gift. It's His gift. It says in Scripture, He that
sowed sparingly, reaped sparingly. So what do you do? You take the
seeds of the gospel and you sow them without limit. You want
them to multiply exceedingly because you know it's God's seed.
And so you throw it out there. But look at 2 Corinthians chapter
8. Look at what these churches of Macedonia did. It's amazing.
He says here in 2 Corinthians 8 verse 1, "...Moreover, brethren,"
he's speaking to the Corinthians, "...we do you to wit," that means
we want you to know, we're going to inform you of something, "...the
grace of God that was bestowed on the churches of Macedonia."
God's grace was given to these churches in Macedonia in such
a way that it made them liberal. Liberal, not like we think of
liberal today, but liberality. They were generous. how that
in a great trial of affliction the abundance of their joy and
their deep out of the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty
abounded unto the riches of their liberality a complicated sentence
but what it means is they were suffering in affliction themselves
But they had such a joy in the thought of being able to give
to the churches in Jerusalem, even in their deep poverty, their
joy exceeded their poverty so that it was a richness in liberality. A lot of people have a lot of
money in the bank, and they're thought of as rich. They have
a lot of wealth, maybe in lands and things, and we tend to be
rich in this country. But here these people were poor,
and yet they were rich, because they were rich in liberality.
They were rich in their desire to give to God's people. He says, "...for to their power
I bear record, yea, and beyond their power they were willing
of themselves." praying us with much entreaty that we would receive
the gift and take upon us the fellowship of the ministering
to the saints. So what they did is they wanted
to give something to these poor churches in Jerusalem. They gathered
it together and they begged. They literally pleaded with Paul
to take it and not only take the gift but take the gospel
with the gift so that they would know that the gift was from God
and they would be blessed by the gospel and receiving it.
And this delighted them. They didn't even think about
this. They thought, This is the greatest thing we can do. Someone
has a need. We can meet that need. And we
want them to have what they need in this life. But along with
that, we want them to have the gospel. And so they sent the
gift with the ministers of the gospel to minister to them so
they would see and thank God for His mercy. Thank God for
the gift and thank Him for His grace. It was His grace on the
Macedonian churches that enabled them to do this. And so it says
in verse 5, And this they did, not as we had hoped, but first
gave their own selves to the Lord and to us by the will of
God. These people weren't just interested
in writing a check. Remember, it's not in giving
alms in absolute terms, and it's not doing it in order to assuage
a guilt in our conscience, or to try to receive a blessing
from God. These people wanted to give,
and even in their poverty, they were constrained by poverty,
but their liberality overflowed even in the midst of their poverty,
so that they wanted to give in any case. And so, Not only did
they want to give, but they first gave themselves to the Lord.
What they gave with their hands and out of their treasure was
just an evidence that they were already giving themselves to
the Lord. They wanted to serve the Lord
in whatever way they could. Whatever way they could. And
they found a way. Ha! I can give this as a gift. I'll
do that. Maybe they didn't have other
gifts that they could give. And this is one of them. And
so they were like a wine bottle filled up and tight and ready
to burst and found a way to give and they just poured out. Because
they had already given themselves to the Lord. Verse 6, And so
much that we desired Titus that As He had begun, so He would
also finish in you the same grace also. Therefore, as you abound
in everything in faith and utterance and knowledge and in all diligence
and in your love to us, see that you abound in this grace also. Now He's teaching us. He's taught
us through pattern what our Lord Jesus Christ has done. He's teaching
us what that grace has done in these churches in Macedonia.
And it wasn't just one individual. It wasn't like they had a rich
guy there who was giving. All the churches, multiple churches,
and the people in those churches, they gathered together with one
mind and one accord with the purpose of heart to do this thing. And so he teaches the Corinthians.
He says, I want you also to abound in this grace also. Be merciful. Be generous. Not in order to
get something by it. Don't do your alms to be seen
of men. Don't let your left hand know
what your right hand is doing. Just give out of a cheerful,
thankful heart, knowing that everything you have is God's.
And when you give it, Don't even worry that you're going to impoverish
yourself by doing it, but give liberally. That's what faith
does. Faith knows that God is gonna
take care of me. And if I give, it's gonna be
only passing through the pipe of my hands, which the Lord's
already, and he can enlarge the pipe and give me more. Don't
you want that attitude? I do. and how far away I am from
having what I want. So he says, I speak not by commandment,
but by occasion of the forwardness of others, and to prove the sincerity
of your love. For you know the grace of our
Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes
he became poor, that you, through his poverty, might be rich. I'm just looking to see if I
wanted to read any of these other verses. I think that's enough
on that point. You can read the whole chapter. In fact, read
chapter 9 as well. Chapter 9 ends with this. Thanks
be unto God for His unspeakable gift. His unspeakable gift. And so, the result of the giving
of the Macedonian churches to the churches in Jerusalem, and
then the giving of the Corinthians to those who had need also, Paul
says there would be an abundance of thanksgiving, giving, given
back to God. And so you see that in our giving,
in our almsgiving, our goal is that God would be glorified for
his gift to us. And the gift he's given to us
is the Lord Jesus Christ. Remember when Peter and John
were walking into the temple and there's a man sitting there
begging? They didn't have welfare in those
days. And he was lame, he couldn't work. But he was begging because
that's the only way he could live. And so he's begging, he's
begging, he's begged all his life, all the time he was lame.
And Peter comes by, and John comes by, and they looked upon
him. And Peter said, look at me. And
he did, and he said, silver and gold have I none. But such as
I have, give I thee. And he told him, in the name
of Jesus Christ, rise up and walk. And he rose up and he was
so happy. It says he went walking and leaping
and praising God. I love to jump. Sometimes when
I'm dreaming I think I can jump. I can't jump anymore. But I like
to jump. I can see this man. He's like
got a new set of legs. Like he's been working on his
legs all his life. He just springs in his legs. Bouncing! Look at
me! Tigger! I just like jumping up
and down. He was so happy. Peter and John
didn't have money to give, but they had something more important.
It was the gospel of the grace of God. And they spoke on the
authority of that gospel to this man and he was healed. When we
see someone in need, We can meet their physical needs in some
sense. But ultimately, our prayers and our efforts are to be towards
their salvation. If that's not our goal, then
what are we doing? We're just paying taxes basically. And I think about this a lot
because a lot of times you run into people who ask for money.
And you're not sure whether to give to them or not. I think
a lot of times it's easier to give money than it is to do the
right thing, isn't it? It's easier to just... And you
see them and you feel sorry for them. Sometimes money is the
right thing to give. That's an immediate fix. And sometimes
it's not the right thing to give. We have to think about giving
of ourselves to the Lord first. And then what He has given to
us, giving that. We should always be ready to
give an answer to Him that asks us of the hope that lies within
us. So that what we have to give
is the gift of life. The gift of life. Because a lot
of people throughout time have given a lot of things that didn't
have anything to do with the truth of the gospel. But that
doesn't do any good. God gave his son. God emptied
heaven. Christ emptied himself. God gave
all that he had. Christ gave all that he had.
And in giving what we have, we don't lose anything. We don't
lose a thing because what we have is all things in Christ. Everything we have is in Him.
We can never out give God in giving the gospel of his grace. We multiply it. It's like a seed
sown that springs up and produces more after that. We want to sow
it with liberality. And in our sowing the gospel,
we want to be generous people in our heart, forgiving one another,
merciful to others. We want to receive sinners for
Christ's sake in order that they might hear. and learn and love
and come to saving knowledge of him. Let's pray. Father, we
pray that we would give as you've given to us freely. That we would
give the gospel of your grace because that's what you've given
to us. We don't have a lot of things that we can help people
with. But we do have this, you've saved us who are sinners by your
grace. You've given us this faith. We
were poor in faith, bankrupt in faith, and you've made us
rich in faith. Lord, help us to give. Cause
us to understand your word and cause that word to be in us so
deeply that it would become the way we think. We would be gracious
to others. We wouldn't snap back and try
to stay even and defend ourselves and justify ourselves, but we
would make ourselves as the Lord Jesus Christ, the object of whatever
scorn and ridicule and persecution was necessary in order to give
the gospel to them. Give us this grace, Lord. We
cannot produce it. It's way, way higher than we
could ever achieve in ourselves. But we know, Lord, that you have
all grace, and we can do all things through you that strengthens
us. So give us this grace, first, to believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ, and second, to give as He has given to us freely the
message of the gospel and all that we have in order that sinners
might be saved. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.