Sermonette: An Offering, Sanctification and Atonement
God Expects Offerings as Part of His Way
#905s
John W. Ritenbaugh
Given 09-Oct-08; 14 minutes
description: Many of us are slaves of economic fears. According to the reciprocity principle, we will reap what we sow; if we sow in fear, we will reap fear, but if we sow in faith, trust, and love, we will reap spiritual and physical abundance. Expectations determine cause and effect results. Stinginess begets penury, but liberality begets abundance. In a true story, a Japanese farmer saved his village from a tidal wave by burning his crop while the villagers saved their lives by trying to save the farmer's crop. Sacrificial giving yields bountiful blessings.
transcript:
Everything that God commands us to do is designed to ingrain within us a way of life different in many specifics from anything that this world has to offer.
And here we are on the Day of Atonement, and even on this day we are not to come before God empty-handed, that is. And this is a small part of our conduct that marks us as different.
To be sanctified is to be different in a godly way. And sanctification is right conduct of life.
Now this day is listed among His festivals, and giving an offering is very much a part of all of His festivals and very much a part of His way of life.
Now the amount given during these offerings is nowhere near as important as the very act of doing it in the right attitude and with thoughtful consideration.
But God wants the principle of giving of ourselves and what we consider ours to be so deeply ingrained in us that it is first nature with us rather than the fearful protecting of ourselves and ours, which is the way it is most of the time with us now.
I'd like you to turn there. Hebrews 2 and verses 14 and 15.
Hebrews 2:14-15 Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.
It's not just the fear of death that drives us.
For all of our life, much of the way we conduct it has been the fear of loss, any loss lurking in its wings, and we will protect ourselves, our images of ourselves even through lying in order that we do not lose face.
I'll take it in another direction.
One will find or seek financial security motivated by the fear that he might be subject to some misfortune and find himself penniless.
Well, so often we worry ourselves to death, as the saying goes, thinking somebody or some disaster is about to take away our savings.
I knew a lady in California who was not in the church, but she did have a church connection through family members.
This lady became so fearful of germs that everything she touched other than the food she ate had to be wiped clean before she would touch it with her hand.
And she became through the course of the time that I knew her, which was about 5-7 years, she became sort of a female Howard Hughes without his financial resources.
In that she not only enslaved her life through this fear, but she put many demanding pressures on the rest of her family and especially her husband.
This sort of behavior certainly set her apart as different but not in a godly way.
Now perhaps by looking at some extreme behavior of this sort, we can clearly see how restrictive and binding one's life might be to a fear.
That God wants us to learn that there is a reciprocity in life and that is that we pretty much get out of it what we put into it.
It's the whatever one sows, one also reaps, and if one sows in fear, more fear will be produced.
I want you to turn to Ephesians 5 and verses 1 and 2. And we are going to look at this from a different standpoint.
Ephesians 5, verses 1 and 2. My new Bible's pages are still sticking together.
Ephesians 5:1-2 Therefore, be followers of God as dear children. And walk in love as Christ also loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.
Now let's go from here to 2 Corinthians, chapter 8 and verse 9.
II 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, that you through His poverty might become rich.
Now here is the supreme example on the other end of the scale.
His entire life was an offering to God and men. He did not fear being poor.
And it was so pleasant to God in the way that He dealt with being poor, that He is going to be King of kings and Lord of Lords when God's kingdom is established.
Now, in other words, if we were to look at this carnally, Christ's offering given without fear really paid off in the long run.
Now, do you see the reciprocity that is here?
His entire life was a sacrifice which He gave, trusting God freely, willingly without fear.
It was not done to get for Himself, but done simply because His offerings were an act of love.
Now the right thing to do, if I can define that, His acts of life were the right thing to do, and it produced the right things.
Now there is a major principle that we can learn from this.
And that is Satan and Satan's kingdom is rendered powerless when we like Christ sacrifice ourselves to God's cause in our life.
Now we are going to go back to Proverbs, in fact Proverbs chapter 11 and beginning in verse 23.
Proverbs 11, verse 23, we are going to go to 28.
All of these Proverbs have a similarity running through them.
Proverbs 11:23-28 The desire of the righteous is only good, but the expectation of the wicked is wrath [not the two opposites and what they produce]. There is one who scatters [that is, he gives willingly, abundantly], and yet he increases more. And [contrasting], there is one who withholds more than is right, and it leads to poverty [cause and effect]. One, the sacrifice produces prosperity. The other holding back, maybe out of fear of loss that nothing will come back to him, and surely it produces poverty. Verse 25. The generous soul will be made rich. He opens his hand wide, and he who waters will also be watered himself. The people will curse him who withholds grain, but blessing will be on the head of him who sells it. He who diligently seeks good finds favor [in other words, he gives of himself regardless of the cost, possibly]. But trouble will come to him who seeks evil. He who trusts in his riches will fall, but the righteous will flourish like foliage.
I once heard a story of the giving of a true sacrifice that produced the right fruit.
Now I do not know whether the story is absolutely true, but it was given that it was true.
It came from Leadership magazine.
And the story went like this.
A Japanese farmer whose farm was on a high hill just outside a seaside village and overlooked the village and the ocean.
Now this particular year, his farm was producing an unusually abundant crop.
And one day he was at the top of the hill, tending to his crop and also looking out over the ocean.
And before his startled eyes, the water in the ocean began to recede rapidly from the shore as if somebody had pulled a plug like in a bathroom.
Being acquainted with what was happening, he knew that a tidal wave was on its way, and the village was endangered because it was right on the shore at sea level.
Very quickly he set his crop on fire.
And the people in the village saw the smoke and rushed up the hill to help him save his crop and were either standing on the hill or on their way up when the tidal wave came ashore.
The village was destroyed. The man's crop was partly destroyed.
But a large number of people who would otherwise have been dead were alive.
Now this true story gives evidence of the truth of the proverb that we just read.
There were two acts of sacrificial giving in that story, first by the farmer who burned his crop, and then by the villagers who dropped what they were doing and rushed to what they believed was his rescue.
The result was that those people's offering of themselves and what was theirs was that those people survived what otherwise would have been a major life-taking catastrophe, and each one's offering annulled the power of destruction.
That's the important point.
Each one's offering annulled the power of destruction.
Now I want you to think about this.
That is the story of the resurrection.
Christ's offering atones sin and annuls the power of death.
Now each of those Proverbs contains a formula.
That generous, sacrificial giving does not go unnoticed by God.
Rather, He marks it and He returns the sacrifice with blessing because sacrifice to serve others is the very heart and core of His way of life.
It is those who do as God commands who are the ones who are sanctified.
Often doing this requires sacrifice.
It is those who learn to give of themselves and theirs who are going to be having a part in God's kingdom.
Now to me that is an awfully good incentive to learn this giving way of life, of which the giving of a monetary offering on a holy day is but an exercise of a tiny part of a much larger issue of being like Jesus Christ.
JWR/aws+/