Hezekiah was one of the good kings. There
weren’t many of them. There were kings David and Solomon at one end and at the
other end of the nation of Israel's history there were two other kings—Uzziah
and Hezekiah. In between were a lot of bit players who served as kings for a
few years at a time. A lot of them fell deeply into sin and in the process they
virtually destroyed the kingdom. But Hezekiah was an exception. In 2 Chronicles
29:2 it says this about him:
"Hezekiah did what was right in the
eyes of the Lord, just as his father David had done."
One of the things that Hezekiah did right was to put a priority on renewing the worship of Israel and one of the big events was when they celebrated the Passover again. For Jews, Passover is the time when they celebrate how God delivered them from their slavery in Egypt. Passover is a picture of salvation, just like the Lord’s Supper that we will be celebrating later this morning. But for years, people had forgotten the deliverance of God. They were no longer thankful.
[When you go to a wedding there's always
such optimism. Everybody's excited. The bride is always lovely; the groom is
always handsome. They just glow in their love for each other. Then, sometimes,
you look at that same marriage about ten or twelve years later and you see two
people who just don't like each other any more and you ask yourself, “What
happened?”]
That's what had happened in Israel, they
had forgotten why they loved God. But now it was like they we were going back
to their wedding day and recovering the joy. As they began to recover the joy,
as Passover was celebrated, more and more people started coming in, and things
started to change. For seven days they celebrated and the Passover was gaining
momentum. In verse 23 we read, "Then the whole assembly agreed to
celebrate the festival for seven more days." We can learn something
from this story about what happens when God begins to move in his church. We
can also how to sustain ministry, how to not restrict what God is doing.
When God begins to do something in a community of faith there are usually some clear signs that we can point to. One of them is celebration. In chapter 30 everybody was so caught up with the excitement of remembering and celebrating the Passover that they didn't want to leave. You know, people probably clapped when they sang. Some people might have even lifted their hands above their heads and said, "Glory." I mean, it just slipped out! People got physical and emotional with their celebration.
Church is a place of celebration, not a
funeral hall. It’s OK to let yourself go and be thankful and joyful and love
each other. That's one of the things that tells us that God is at work. People
start losing themselves in joy.
I
was at a birthday party on Friday night for a friend’s 50th. It was
full of fun and friendship and celebration. Toni Campolo says that
heaven is a party and our worship here is just practising for the real thing. I
think he’s right. After all, the image the Bible uses for our fellowship with
God is a wedding feast, and eastern wedding feasts are loud, with lots of
dancing, and they go on for days and
days. We’re seeing that sense of joy and celebration grow in our Sunday morning
worship. We’re not at the seven day celebration stage yet, but God is doing
something in our midst.
Another mark of God’s activity in peoples’
lives is cleansing. They get rid of the junk in their lives. The priests
cleaned up the temple so they could have the Passover celebration but it was
the people who went out and dealt with all the shrines and idols in the
towns and villages. They destroyed the places where pagan activity had been going
on over the last decades. No one organized it. It was a spontaneous movement.
People like you and me said, "Here's an area of life that has to change.
This is something that has to stop. This has to be rubbed out."
Now, I want you to notice that when they
came to worship they still had all this junk back home. The priests didn’t say,
“Clean up your act, get rid of your idols, and then come to worship.” No, they
came to worship and celebrate, and in the act of worship and celebration they
caught a new vision of who God is and what he’s like and as a result
they cleaned up their lives.
There was a hunger that came out of the
celebration, a hunger for a new way of living. People chose to change. They
hated sin. When God moves in a community that always happens and God is moving
in peoples’ lives here at Wentworth. I don’t know of any physical idols being
smashed but I do know that, by God’s grace, peoples’ lives are getting
straightened out.
Then, beginning in verse 3 of chapter 31 we
read, "the king contributed from his own possessions for the morning
and evening burnt offerings. He ordered the people living in Jerusalem to give
a portion due the priests and the Levites so they could devote themselves to
the law of the Lord."
Hezekiah was reorganizing the way people worshipped. There were some things that need to be put into place. There were—I hate the word—programs that had to be set into place if this was going to be more than a one off event, it the routines of celebration were to be continued. So Hezekiah reminds the people that it is their responsibility to see that the work of the temple continues.
Verse 5 says, "As soon as the order
went out, the Israelites generously gave." You see, another mark of
God at work among his people is generosity. Hezekiah said, "This needs to
happen." and the people responded generously.
Imagine the difference in tone if the verse
said, "The people gave grudgingly." It sounds to me like everybody
said, "The celebration has been so great, the cleansing has been so
powerful, and I just want to be a giver. I will give generously, joyfully,
cheerfully, enthusiastically." That's the thrust of the verse—generous
giving.
When we give our lives to Jesus he does a
makeover on us. He changes us from takers into givers. We saw that a couple of
months ago in the story of Isaiah. God touched him and cleansed him and
Isaiah’s response was, “Give me something to do!” He wanted to serve. He had
received so much from God that he wanted to generously give his time and energy
in God’s service.
It’s the same here. The people wanted to
give generously for God’s work.
“As soon as the order went out, the
Israelites generously gave the firstfruits of their grain, new wine, oil and
honey and all that the fields produced.”(2Chr31:5)
It says they generously gave the first fruits of their grain, the new wine, the oil and honey. This was a society that didn’t use money. (In fact, the very first coins in the world wouldn’t be invented for another 50 years, and that would be in Turkey.) So, just as still happens in rural areas of the third world they brought their produce. You can be in a worship service in places like Pakistan where everybody lines up and puts their offerings on the table; yams, chickens (with their legs tied - (thankfully), bags of grain. Here we do it with money.
The point is that they gave from the first fruits. They didn’t wait until everything else was taken care of then give the leftovers. Giving was a priority for them. They gave first.
There's a word used in verses 5 and 6 that
makes some of us squirm. You'll see it in verse 5: "A tithe of
everything." Verse 6: "A tithe of herds and flocks. A tithe of the
holy things dedicated to the Lord piled in heaps."
You see, the Bible has a definition for
generosity—it’s a tithe, a tenth of everything. It's a principle that’s
all the way through the Bible. Every time people are spiritually renewed, one
of the evidences is that their renewal touches their wallet. That's why this
story is here.
I’ve no doubt that some of you were taught
to tithe as children. If you grew up going to Sunday School you probably put
your 10% in the offering there.
[You’ve heard the story of the little boy
whose mother gave him two nickels on Sunday morning and said, "One's for
you and one's for God." The boy was on his way to church when one of the
nickels fell out of a hole in his pocket and went down the drain. And the kid
says, "Well, Lord, there goes your nickel."]
For those of us, like me, who weren’t
trained that way, it can be a bit of a challenge to come around to what the
Bible teaches about money. Basically, according to the Bible, we don’t own
anything. We only ever manage it or care for it on God’s behalf. That goes for
our money, but it also applies to other things, our gifts and abilities, our
homes, our families, the world around us. We don’t own them, they’re on loan
from God. In fact, if had a more Biblical view of creation as belonging to God,
not us, we probably wouldn’t be in the current environmental crisis!
One of the ways that God reminds us that he
owns everything is to ask us to return some of it to him on a regular basis.
The funny thing is that learning to give back to God actually makes you a more
generous person. If you look at the statistics you’ll find that most of the
charitable giving in North America is done by church folks, and that’s after
you take out giving to religious causes. God’s people are generous people.
Generosity is one of the keys to spiritual
life. It’s one of the “spiritual disciplines,” along with things like prayer
and bible reading and service. And generosity is defined when a person says,
"I will obey God by giving a percentage of my income, regardless of what
it is, in faithfulness to him." He owns it in the first place, and he asks
for this percentage back.
Some of you are saying, "Giving 10% would break me." All I can suggest is that you begin to promise God a percentage, whatever it is, and build up to a tithe over a period of time. And I would suggest you do what Marilyn and I've had to do. We've had to discipline our lifestyle out of obedience to God so that we could tithe.
There are lots things we would love to have
or do. (Actually, there are lots of things I would love to have or do.
Marilyn is much more contented than I am.) But we choose not to have those
things because we believe that the tithe, and then some, ought to come first.
It's one of the ways we keep our lives open to God’s work.
The people in 2 Chronicles gave generously
and look at what happened. The offering began to pile up in heaps. I love that
word. "They piled them in heaps," Verse 6: "They began doing
this and finished in the seventh month. And when Hezekiah and his officials
came and saw the heaps, they praised the Lord and blessed the people."
There was another time, earlier in the life
of Israel, when people became so generous that Moses finally had to tell them
to stop giving. Wouldn’t that be a nice problem to have? You can read about it
in Ex 36:3‑6.
Last Sunday we had our Spring business
meeting at which we had some good reports. God is doing good things in our
midst. The Agape Drop In on Tuesdays is getting better and better. The Korean
Presbyterian Church on Sanford has partnered with us and some of their people
come every Tuesday and help cook and serve and speak with the guests.
We have a great summer intern in Jenny. She
has planned and begun kids’ programmes for the summer and she was really
excited this week because the Vacation Bible School materials have arrived.
Kids’ lives are being touched by Jenny and the volunteers who work with her;
Danielle, Georgina, Don and others.
By God’s grace, people are getting their
lives back in order and growing in their faith. Our Sunday morning services are
thriving. The worship team have been doing a great job of serving God with
their gifts and leading us into worship. Numbers aren’t everything, but for the
last two years or so our numbers have been consistently moving upwards.
The
only negative report last Sunday was the financial one. All this great stuff is
happening in peoples’ lives, but the giving in the church has been dropping.
There seems to be a bit of a disconnect there. Part of following God faithfully
is putting your resources at his disposal.
In Hezekiah’s day the temple was a physical
building that needed upkeep and the priests were religious professionals who
essentially managed peoples’ religious lives for them. Today things are
different. Yes, we still have buildings but they’re not temples. They’re not
even churches. The early Baptists went to great lengths not to call any
building a church. The buildings were called chapels, the people are the
church.
And as believers, filled with the Holy
Spirit, we are each responsible for our own walk with God, even if we do have
some people, called pastors, who are called to teach us and lead us in our
Christian life. And all believers are priests who minister to God and
for God. (We’ll come back to that in a few weeks when we return to studying in
Ephesians.)
But, in this society, if we’re going to do
anything in the way of ministry it’s going to cost some money. If we want to see
the ministry of this church continue to expand we need to make a commitment to
give to that ministry. Cutting back is not an option. We’ve only just begun to
grow.
This sermon may seem like a conflict of
interest, since the same meeting last Sunday voted to pay me a full salary, but
you know that ever since I became pastor I have fought against taking a
full salary. I only relented when it was pointed out to me that I was setting
an unfair precedent and that many people in the church felt it was just plain
wrong for me not to. And you need to know that 10%, and more, of that salary
will come straight back into the offering plate. I don’t tell you that to
boast, simply to let you know that I am not asking anybody to do anything I’m
not willing to do myself.
Some of you are giving on a regular
basis and because you are tithing or giving proportionately there's a sense in
which this sermon is not for you, except to reaffirm what you’re already doing.
But there are some who are receiving and are being blessed and whose lives are
being touched in one way or the other and you're not being obedient to the
biblical plan of giving.
For some of you this is all new and it may
take some time for you to come around to giving to God’s work. It may take some
time to work your way up to a full 10%. That’s fine, but I want to encourage
you to make a start.
For others of you, you’ve bought into the
lie that you can’t give, that you can only receive. I want to tell you that
that’s a bondage. Those of you who were born and raised in Canada may find it
strange, but immigrants long for the time they can pay taxes. Because that
means they have a stake in the country, they belong, they’re giving something
back. They understand the power of giving. A few months ago a recent immigrant
was talking about encouraging her boys to get involved in ministry in the
church. The reason she gave was profound. She said, “If they don’t learn to
give, they will grow up feeling poor.”
There is a blessing in giving, and it isn’t
just for the receiver. Until you've straightened out the generosity principle
you’re putting a restriction on God’s blessing in your life. We talk about
“putting your money where your mouth is.” Jesus said it better, “Where your
treasure is there shall your heart be also.”
If Jesus has touched your heart in some way
in this place then you need to make it possible for others to be touched too,
and that means giving financially to the work of the church.