Because It’s Close to Our Hearts

We’ve been in this series, The Ministry of Jesus, and today we’re gonna look at an episode in the life of Jesus. But we’re gonna fast forward chronologically right out of the series. And in the next, in the weeks to come, Tony and the other speakers are going to go back to the series, The Ministry of Jesus. But the reason we’re fast forwarding to the last week of Jesus’s life is that we have a special need in the church that the leadership group, Tony, Cassandra and the four eldership couples have been aware of. And we want to share to meet that need in our church. And I share that need with you in just a minute.

First we’re going to look at our main text for today because that main text is going to point right at and help us meet this need that we’ve become aware of in the church. So I hope you will open your heart to the teachings of Jesus. This is a wonderful little story. That’s our primary text.

It is in Mark chapter twelve. You can read along if you would like, but I’ll have all the scriptures up on the screen. If you are reading along, we’re going to be using the NIV translation for the most part today. So let’s learn from Jesus. Amen.

Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put, and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts, but a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins worth only a few cents.

Sorry, I got to get coordinated with my computer and your computer. Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, truly, I tell you, this poor widow put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth, but she, out of her poverty, put in everything, all she had to live on. Now, Jesus is taking time in the middle of a very intense week to make a point, to have a teachable moment with his disciples. This week is the week where he overturned the tables of the money changers, he cleared the temple.

This is the week where he had fierce conflict conversations with the Sadducees and the chief priests. At the end of this week, he’s going to die on a cross and then God is going to raise him from the dead. So what is so important about this moment? What is his point? His point is this this woman’s faith was amazing and Jesus pointed that out all through his ministry.

When the Roman centurion asked Jesus to heal his servant long distance, Jesus pointed out, I have not seen such great faith in all of Israel. When the syro-pheonician woman asked that her child be cured, and she gave that great oneliner, even the dogs eat the crumbs from underneath the table, Jesus said, this woman has great faith and he’s stopping things because now in this last week of his life, he has another opportunity to show great faith. The interesting thing is, and what’s going to help us with our message today, is that her great faith, her incredible trust was demonstrated by her financial giving. Now, I’d like to illustrate what our special need is that we’ve come across by sharing a story with you guys that happened in my life a month ago. There’s a young man in the church here who has asked me to be a spiritual mentor for him.

I don’t know if I deserve that, but I’m flattered that he asked. And so every two or three weeks, this brother and I, this young new member of the church, and I meet and we talk about how we’re doing spiritually and just how we’re doing in life as a whole. And we’ve developed this multigenerational, this cross generational friendship because he’s as young as my kids who are way too grown up. Time keeps moving. I asked this young man, we were at Panera Bread, and I said, so how is your offering now that you’re back into a membership in the church?

How is your financial offering going with the church? And he didn’t mind that because he’s invited me into this process, what we often call discipling or discipleship. He’s invited me into this process of us challenging and encouraging each other, trying to help each other grow. He said, well, the truth is, I do not give any money to the church. There’s a young child in the Dominican Republic, and I support this child financially with my money on a consistent basis. And I consider that to be my offering to the church, is supporting this young man in the Dominican Republic. And so I showed him a couple of scriptures and he was super humble about it. And I think he had a really spiritual response because I showed him some scriptures and he’s like, you’re right, I’ll keep supporting this child in the Dominican Republic, but I’m going to begin to give on a regular basis to the church. Now, let me fast forward here. I got some notes.

The thing that his situation points to is a situation that as a church leadership, the eldership and Tony and Cassandra, our evangelist couple, what we’ve learned is that in the last two years in this church, a large number, well, it’s about 30% of the new members of the church are giving nothing at all to the church. And so that’s not only not biblical, it’s bad for those people spiritually. It’s not good in their relationship with God and anecdotally incidentally, it’s not how the Broward Church membership usually functions anyway. We are a very giving, sacrificial congregation. Now, we are not bringing up this need because the Broward Church is in financial need.

It’s actually by the grace of God and your sacrificial giving, the Broward Church is extremely solid and strong financially. We are in a very good position financially. And so this message, I hope that you will trust my motives, but whether you do or not, I’m just telling you the truth. I’m not doing this message so that our contribution will go up.

We’re doing this message so that the spiritual health of our new members is strong before our God. And so what we’re going to do today is we’re going to go through four biblical principles, basic principles from the Bible about giving to God. Now, we have pretty much been silent on the issue of financial giving over the last couple of years, going through and coming out of the pandemic, we just haven’t talked much about money at all. I actually can’t remember the last time we were teaching on money. I guess three or four years ago, Tony did a great series called Rich. For some of you may recall that series, which is a really, really good message. But since then, not intentionally, we’re not trying to dodge the subject, but we just have been silent on it. And if that has caused some of our new members or even existing members to move away from a biblical understanding of the offering, then I want to apologize to you because our silence is here’s a college word is juxtaposed with the Bible which talks a lot about money. And the reason the Bible talks a lot about money is because the Bible talks a lot about our heart.

And money is close to our heart. You know, whether we like it or not. I want to admit to that or own up to that or not, money is close to our heart. Now, I hope you guys are not surprised or upset that the senior leadership of the congregation knows what you’re giving. And I just want to share this with you for a minute.

The United States government requires that all congregations, all religious organizations in the United States, organized as 501 C, three charitable organizations. Some of you know what that means. We’re a charity. All churches who obey the government organize as a charity and we are supposed to track and therefore report back to our giving members so they can do their tax returns. But in a larger sense, the elders and the evangelists of the congregation have a shepherding responsibility.

And we think it is appropriate, not inappropriate, to monitor how the church is giving, not to try to squeeze more money out of the church. I hope you’ll trust our motives on this is to make sure people are doing well spiritually. Now, some of you may be under the impression that the Bible teaches that giving to the church should be a top secret, like a tightly held secret. And a lot of people believe that because of Matthew chapter six, where Jesus says, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. Now, that’s a very important concept.

In the top of Matthew chapter six in the sermon on the Mount is a whole section that talks about financial giving and it talks about prayer and it talks about fasting. And all three of those are in the context of don’t let your religious activity be a source of showing off, exalting yourself to other people. And so when Jesus says, don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, he’s not saying your giving is this top secret and no one should ever know. What he’s saying is don’t have this selftalk within yourself where you’re on the edge of bragging about your giving to other people. Are you with me?

And so I hope you guys will trust that our heart and our goal in this is shepherding. So what we want to do is we want to go through four points in the scriptures on giving to God. And we are going to use two scriptures each on each of the four points. And we’ve already read our first scripture, but I would like to go back to that first scripture and here’s what the four points are going to be answering. The question we’re looking at is what are the biblical convictions a Christian should have about giving to the church?

What should you and I as Christians, what should our deep held beliefs this word convictions is right out of a dictionary is a firmly held belief or opinion. My attitude about my financial giving to the church should be a deep biblical conviction. So let’s read our text again briefly. Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts, but a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins worth only a few cents.

Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put into the treasury more than all the others. They gave out of their wealth, but she, out of her poverty put in all she had to live in on. Everything.

Does God care what you give? Well, what do you see here? What you see here is Jesus watching and reacting to this woman’s giving. Notice that Jesus does not criticize the system. He doesn’t say these temple leadership people, they’re corrupt.

He doesn’t say that. He doesn’t say they should be doing this in private, they shouldn’t be giving it publicly. He has nothing to say good or bad about the process of the giving. What he’s pointing out is a matter of the heart and he’s deeply impressed. And so I just want to make this point from this text that our giving of our money demonstrates our faith and trust in God and that God sees that.

And so our first point that we want to make here on biblical principles about giving is that God watches, cares about, and is affected by your giving. Now you might think God’s not about money. God’s about love. You would be exactly right. That’s why he cares about the money, because what he cares about is living a life of love and the kind of heart and the kind of faith we have.

And once again, our money is often close to our heart. So here’s the second scripture I want to share with you is on this idea that God cares about and responds to our giving. This is at the very, very beginning of the Bible, genesis, chapter four. Now, Abel kept flocks and Cain worked the soil. In the course of time, cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord.

And Abel also brought an offering, fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering, he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry and his face was downcast. So I’d like to point out two things from this. Well, first of all, let me give you context.

This is in the Old Testament, but it is before hundreds, maybe thousands of years before God gave Moses the Old Testament Law. You guys know that in Exodus, God gave Moses the Ten Commandments and he gave about 603 additional commands. A lot of scholars say there’s about 613 commands in the Old Testament Law. Before the giving of the Law this story happened. And so what we see here is in the heart of people should be a natural inclination to want to give back to your God.

This just came. These are Adam and Eve’s kids. This is early, early history. These are Adam and Eve’s kids. And they have this inclination, I feel, a compulsion to give back to God.

So that’s the first thing is it should be inherent within a man or woman of God that out of their gratitude and out of their worship, they should want to bring an offering to God. And the second point is a reflection of our first principle we’re looking at, and that is God’s watching the offering and he’s responding to the offering. With one of the offerings, he’s not pleased with it. And with another one of the offerings, he is pleased with it. So I’m going to give you some reflective questions that I just want you to think about as we go through this message today.

And the first one is this how does God feel about my offering to the Church? Now, I don’t know how God feels about your offering because this is very, very individualistic, right? You can see there was a distinction between Cain and Abel right out of the starting gates of humankind history. But I think it’s right and good for you to ask yourself what Cain and Abel were asking themselves. How does God feel about my offering?

Here’s the second thing. The second point that we’re going to cover today is that sacrificial giving is a biblical expectation. Our first scripture is 2 Corinthians eight. The Apostle Paul is writing this to the church in Corinth and he says, and now, brothers and sisters, we want you to know about the grace that God has given the Macedonian churches. In the midst of a very severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity.

For I testify that they gave as much as they were able, and even beyond their ability, entirely on their own. They urgently pleaded with us for the privilege of sharing in this service to the Lord’s people.

Why is Paul doing this? Why is he saying this? He’s taking an example that’s a commendable example, the giving of the Macedonian churches, and he’s sharing it with the Christians in Corinth. And we’re going to see a little bit later in this message that some of the members of the Church of Corinth were struggling with their attitude about their financial giving to the church. And he’s going, Listen, this is an example that should be held up.

These people were not under compulsion. Right at the end of verse three, it says, entirely on their own, they urgently pleaded with us for this. Here’s an amazing adjective to describe the offering: privilege. For this privilege of giving to God. And so what we see, I think I’m pretty much all already covered this, but they had an idea, an attitude that they’re giving was a privilege. They felt urgent about giving and they felt and behaved in a sacrificial way.

I want to give you a second example as we talk about this. And this comes out of the Old Testament. This is from the life of King David in the Old Testament.

Aarunah said, Why is my Lord the King come to his servant? To buy your threshing floor, David answered, So I can build an altar to the Lord that the plague on the people may be stopped. David had done something in his leadership and God had sent a plague on Israel and he wanted to give an offering to God in hopes that God would hear his prayer about stopping the plague. Excuse me.

Aurunah said to David, let my Lord the King take whatever he wishes and offer it up. Here are oxen for the burn offering and here are threshing sledges and ox yokes for the wood. Your Majesty, Aurunah gives all this to the King. Aurunah also said to him, May the Lord your God accept you. But the King replied to Aurunah, no, I insist on paying you for it. I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing. So David bought the threshing floor and the auction and paid 50 shekels of silver for them. David built an offer to the Lord there and sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings. Then the Lord answered his prayer in behalf of the land and the plague on Israel was stopped.

So here’s my reflective challenge on the second point. Am I urgent and insistent on giving offerings to God? Do you feel I really feel compelled on my own, not compelled like somebody’s twisting my arm, but compelled because of my character, because of my integrity, and because of my love and honor for God, I will give back to Him, and I’m not going to let anything get in the way. That was the case with David.

That was the case with the Macedonian churches. That is the Bible’s precedence on this. Here’s the third principle. God will give to the giver. I had to narrow down from like a hundred scriptures to get down to two Scriptures for this one. There’s a great one liner in Proverbs that God refreshes those who refresh others.

He refreshes others will be refreshed. This promise appears over and over and over again in the Bible, not only about money, but by about living a lifestyle of being generous with both your money, your time, your focus, your love, your energy. If you’re a giver, God is going to give to you. It is a promise. Listen to this passage.

And this is a very important passage on the idea of giving the offering in general. Anyway, it’s two Corinthians, chapter nine. See if you see this promise here, remember this whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly. So let me pause. Obviously, that’s an agricultural example.

The word sow, as most of you know, simply means to plant seeds so that a crop will grow up. So he’s saying if you sow, if you don’t plant very many seeds, you’re not going to receive very much of a crop. And then he says, whoever sows generously will also reap generously. What is he talking about? Verse seven tells us, each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly, or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver, and God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things, at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.

Now, I do want to point out something that some of you are aware of. There are churches, sometimes churches with an evil motive who use a passage like this and they promise prosperity. And so what has come to be called by theologians, kind of nicknamed the prosperity Gospel, is this idea that is a false idea that if you give sacrificially to the church, the Bible has a promise that you will be financially rich. Now, the problem here is there’s a spectrum here and the Bible teaching is in the middle of the spectrum. At one end of the spectrum is a false teaching that if you give sacrificially, you’re going to be rich.

But at the other end of the spectrum is also a mistake. And that is, if you give sacrificially, God might help you out, he might not help you out. You might end up just being poorer because you’re giving to the church. That’s not true either. There is a centered biblical promise here, and that is if you give generously financially to the church, he’s going to take care of you.

He may not make you rich, but what you see here in this passage is you will have what you need because God sees your giving and he’s promising you that he’s going to take care of you. So many of you have already actively seen God do this in your life. Can I get an amen? This is the truth.

In Malachi in the Old Testament is another pretty famous passage on this principle. We’re going to go ahead and take a look at this as our second scripture to support the idea that God takes care of the giver. Will a mere mortal rob God? Yet you rob me. But you ask, how are we robbing you? In tithes and in offerings? You are under a curse your whole nation, because you’re robbing me. Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse that there may be food in my house. Test me in this, says the Lord Almighty, and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough to store it.

So can I be a Bible geek just for a minute here? So there are some principles in this passage of scripture that actually do not apply to us because it is an Old Testament scripture. The first example is this issue of tithing. And I’d like to talk to you about tithing. In the Old Testament, God commanded Moses to command the Israelites that they were to give 10% to the work of the temple. Actually, at the beginning, they called it a tabernacle because it was a tent. Later on, they built a building that was a temple. But the Israelites in the Old Testament were commanded to give 10%. We are no longer under law. We are under grace. And so the command to give 10% has not been forwarded to the Christian church.

I hope some of you are not going, Joe, you’re blowing it because there’s all these people giving 10%. Now you’ve ruined it. We are not obligated to give 10%.

Now, there’s this interesting thing that Jesus said to his disciples. If your righteousness does not exceed that of the Pharisees, you cannot be a part of the kingdom. I’m not trying to do a logical trap here. I’m not. What I’m telling you is, here’s the left hand telling you guys what the right hand is doing. Pam and I give 10% with our eyes wide open. I know I don’t have to give 10%. I know that. And so what you give to the church, you’re not commanded to give 10%. You get to decide, not under compulsion on your own, what you want to give. And I believe that it is a wise, appropriate idea. And we’ll circle back to this when we conclude the message that you ought to pick a percentage so that you can be consistent in what you’re giving instead of basing your giving sporadically on how you feel that particular Sunday.

And so I would encourage you in your own heart to decide what you’re going to give and give it. Now, there’s another thing about this passage of Scripture. So many things in the Old Testament were physical and have been rolled over into our Christian faith as a spiritual thing. And here’s what I mean by that. This promise of financial blessing that Malachi, the Old Testament prophet, is making from God was legit. These people were promised money. Now, what God is promising us today, he is going to take of our money. He’s going to take care of our money needs. But really, what we hope for is not financial riches. It’s spiritual riches. It’s a peace inside that passes understanding. It’s a purpose in life. It’s a family of God. That’s an incredible blessing. And I hope that your eyes are spiritual eyes, that you will look for spiritual blessings from God, because that’s how this relates to us today. He’s promising if you’re a giver, you’re going to get spiritual blessing. Don’t worry about the money thing. But the main hope that God is giving us is a spiritual blessing for today. I think I’m done geeking out there.

Here’s the reflection question that I would like you to ask yourself from this point. Do I believe that God will take care of me if I give sacrificially? Now, I believe that probably some of you here in the room are not giving to the church because you’re afraid. You’re afraid of running out of money. You’re afraid of being short at the end of the month on your bills. I’m not encouraging you to be irresponsible. I’m not encouraging you to give so much money to the church that you don’t have enough money to pay your bills. What the Bible has as this principle is that you give in proportion to how God has blessed you. And so you’re not obligated to give the same amount as anybody else in this church. But it should be a response out of gratitude. I will say that the reason Jesus was holding up that widow was because she had scary good faith. She had amazing trust. And I would ask you from the Scriptures, have a little courage, have a little Holy Spirit courage in being willing to give sacrificially to the church. Can you guys see that that’s a biblical example from the Scriptures for us?

And the last thing that we want to look at as far as the four Biblical principles we’re looking at. By the way, I don’t pretend that this is every principle on giving in the Bible. These are just four principles that Tony and I, as we prepared this lesson four principles that we saw that were kind of primary, frequently coming up in the Scriptures as principles for all of us to have on our hearts when it comes to giving. The last principle was this ministry costs money, and God’s people are the source of that money. Our first Scripture on this, I’d like to give you the context for the first Scripture. As Paul went through his ministry, some of the churches where he was traveling gave him money for his personal expenses as he was preaching the Gospel, and some of the churches did not. Now, one of those churches, apparently, from what we see in the text we’re about to read, the church in Corinth didn’t want to give him money. They not only not only that, they did not want to pay their own preachers. And so Paul is going to make the argument with them from the Old Testament Scriptures, because that’s the only scriptures they had as the New Testament was being written. He’s going to make this argument, you guys need to pay your preachers. What do you think, that I, the Apostle Paul, am doing this out of selfinterest? I’m not even going to let you pay me. I’ll take money from the other churches. He even uses this phrase further down in the chapter. We’re not going to read it here. He even uses this phrase I would rather die than take money from you. And he’s saying, I take money from other churches, but I’m not going to take money from you so that you will pay your preachers.

Let’s do it. Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Is he talking about military payroll? No, he’s not. He’s talking about this illustration for them in Corinth to think about their preachers. Who plants a vineyard and does not eat its grapes? Who tends a flock and does not drink the milk? Do I say this on merely human authority? Doesn’t the law, the Old Testament Law, say the same thing? For it is written in the law of Moses, do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain. Is it about oxen that God is concerned? Surely he says this for us, doesn’t he? Yes, this was written for us because whoever plows and threshes should be able to do so in the hope of sharing in the harvest. If we have sown spiritual seed among you, is it too much if we reap a material harvest from you? If others have this right of support from you, shouldn’t we have it? We the apostles, should we have it all the more? But we do not use this right. On the contrary, we put up with anything rather than hinder the Gospel of Christ. Don’t you know that those who serve in the temple get their food from the temple and those who serve at the altar sharing what is offered on the altar? In the same way here he says it’s straightforward. The Lord is commanded that those who preach the Gospel should receive their living from the Gospel. Yes, this was written for us because whoever plows and threshes should be able to do so in the hope of sharing in the harvest.

Should we pay Tony? Biblically. Should we pay Tony? Now, there’s some people who misconstrue the scriptures right here, and they say because Paul would not take money for his ministry, we should not pay our preachers. Having missed the point, getting money from Macedonia, like the entire Book of Philippians. We’ll read the ending out here in a minute. The entire Book of Philippians in the New Testament scriptures is a thank you letter. The reason Paul wrote it, he writes lots of very important theology in the Book of Philippians. But the reason he wrote the letter in the first place was a thank you letter for them sending him food and money. And at the end of Philippians, he wraps that up with a really wholehearted thank you that we’re going to look at before we end today.

Look, I would like to share this with you. This is not just about preacher salaries. Ministry takes money. Ministry takes money. So you and I, members of the church, we share a common burden together that all of us should shoulder together.

It’s not only the minister’s salaries. This building has a mortgage. And all of us together listen, there’s no Plan B if the membership of this church doesn’t all chip in to pay for the mortgage, to pay for the light built, to pay for the air conditioning, there’s no backup. There’s no rich guy around the corner or in some other congregation who’s also taking care of us in case we fall down short. Are you with me?

If you are not giving money to the church in your offering, you are shifting that burden to the rest of us. Do you see that? So I’m asking you, it’s right before God that you share in this burden. This is what Paul is asking the church and Corinth to do. We all share in this together in the Old Testament temple the reason he commends this woman for giving is that even if their temple system or leadership was corrupt, it was still the right thing to do for that widow to chip in to pay for the expenses of the temple. Do you see that? That’s just how God’s people function on this issue.

So I’d like for you to ask yourself this reflective question. Do I have a Godly attitude about supporting the financial needs of this congregation?

Let me give you our second Scripture to this point, which will be our last Scripture on the four points. And then I have some wrap up things here. So here’s the second scripture. Three times a year, all your men this is in the Old Testament. Three times a year, all your men appear before the Lord at the place he would choose at the festival of the unleavened Bread that’s Passover, the Festival of Weeks, that’s Pentecost, and the Festival of Tabernacles, also called Sukat today. No one should appear before the Lord empty handed. Each of you must bring a gift here we go in proportion to the way the Lord your God has blessed you.

And so the second question I have for you on this is how do I feel about appearing before the Lord empty handed? Is that actually what you want in your relationship with God? So let’s read that parting scripture in the book of Philippians, and then I have some closing guidance here. Paul says, yet it was good of you to share in my troubles. Moreover, as you Philippians know, in the early days of your acquaintance with the Gospel, when I set out from Macedonia, not one church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving, except you only. For even when I was in thessalonica, you sent me aid more than once when I was in need. Not that I desire your gifts. Listen to this. What I desire is that more be credited to your account. What Paul is saying here is you have an account, a bank account in heaven, and it’s not currency. It’s spiritual currency. And what he’s saying is, the more you give sacrificially to the work of God’s people, the work of the ministry, the more God sees that and is going to credit you for that. I have received full payment and have more than enough. I am amply supplied now that I have received from Apaphroditis the gifts that you sent, they are a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God and my God. Here’s that promise again. We’ll meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus. Your financial support can be a pleasing offering to God.

Now back to my lunch with the young man. Giving to the poor does not equal giving to the church. God’s people have always done both. I want to show you something in the Old Testament here. It’s a short scripture. In Deuteronomy 15, it says if anyone’s poor among your fellow Israelites in any of the towns or the land your Lord your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tight fisted toward them. Rather, be open handed and freely lend to them whatever they need. You see, God’s plan was not in the Old Testament for people to give money to the temple, and then the temple takes care of the poor. His plan was people gave money to the temple for the expenses of the temple, and then the people who gave money to the temple also gave money to the poor. Do you see that?

Now, look, Twan Wright, who’s great at artistic things, helped me make this little diagram. The Christian giver gives to the poor and needy, and the Christian giver gives to the church and its expenses. Now, the church does have, and this is a New Testament example, the church does have a benevolence fund. And you see this in the Book of Acts and in other of the Epistles, in particular the Pauline Epistles, where people are giving money in particular to help poor people in Jerusalem. And many of you are familiar who are Bible students that they had that going on.

That is not the only thing the church does with the money that’s given to us is have a benevolence fund. But we have a benevolence fund and we use the benevolence fund. And some of you have benefited from that benevolence fund. We do that. But I want to clear this up in your mind biblically. The idea is not I give to the church and the church takes care of the poor. That’s not the idea. The idea is I give to the church because the church has its own ministry expenses and they give to the poor. And on my own, I’m also going to give to the poor. Do you guys see that?

So that’s a proper understanding of God’s expectations. So here’s a concluding slide on our four points that we’re going to make. And then I’m going to take a minute or two for if you’re going to give and you haven’t given in the past, I want to go through a little bit of logistics here. But our advice is this, be a consistent planned percentage giver. The percentage you give is up to you. We are just asking, can we count on you? Like, will you chip in? It’s just something we all share together, this burden, a joyful burden, even a cause and that is the work of the ministry and the spread of the Gospel and the discipleship and fellowship we have as a church.

I love this passage of Scripture in the Old Testament it says, generous people plan to do what is generous, and they stand firm in their generosity. In other words, people plan how they’re going to be. A Godly person plans how he’s going to be generous, and then he consistently does that. And so I think spontaneous generosity is wonderful. But do you see this idea of like literally budgeting it into your life that you’re going to be a generous giver?

So did you notice that we no longer pass the offering trays? So I’m 64 years old and I’m technologically challenged. So for those few of you who are technologically challenged, I would like to go over the screen just for a minute. Some of you are going to roll your eyes and laugh at me, but I just want to cover a couple of things real quick. You can go online.

I assume all of you know at least that much. You can go online to Browardchurch.org. And I just want to go to the website and just show you something real quick. If you’re at Browardchurch.org, there’s the Giving Command right there by the way, if you would like to get involved in our church small groups, which we call community groups, there’s the command for small groups. And I can kind of walk you through that process.

But you click that button right there that says giving, and it’ll walk you through the process for your offering. The next little thing here on texting to give, this is where some of you are going to laugh. Oh, my gosh. Hey. Boomer.

You know, so here’s a screenshot of my cell phone. So when it says Text to 17 2356, so you fill in like you’re texting a person or you’re putting in the phone number of somebody. You text in these five numbers, like it’s a person’s name or a phone number. And then when you’re going to message him here in the message bar, you just put the word broward. It’ll take about five or 10 seconds for this message to bounce back.

But that’s going to link you to our software and our system and our church for you to be able to give by texting. So that’s how you do that. And so the third thing here is if you give in person, once again, we have not been passing the plates. So what we’ve done is we have put a metal box, a black metal box, which this week we added a QR code on the front of that metal box, which you can use with your cell phone. I’ll cover that in a minute.

But I want to tell you where the black boxes are. If you want to give cash or check, there’s a black box underneath this map on the wall in the back, there’s a black box by the door that’s to my left here, a black metal box. You can put a check in there. You can put cash in there there. So the trick is have good fellowship. Don’t forget the check. And so it’s a little bit more difficult. They used to pass the trays. You didn’t have to think about it. But if you’re having a good conversation, you might forget.

So the other black box is actually between the two center doors right here. And if you would like our church to track your charitable giving, which I personally recommend that if you’re giving cash, we have envelopes attached to the side of the black box. If you just write your name on the outside of that, we will track your charitable giving and be able to report to you, especially if you add your email address. If you put your name and your email address, we can report back to you for your tax returns at the end of the year.

Now, I don’t use I’m sorry, I went back. I don’t use QR codes. I’m a neanderthal. All right, so I thought you had to have a QR code app. Primitive man that I am. I didn’t know you could use your camera to read. Sorry. So if you point your camera at this QR code. When the giving screen comes up, your camera can read that QR code. All you have to do is tap that QR code when you’re looking at it with your camera, and once again, it’ll take your cell phone right into our giving software. And our giving software is this, realm. And so the quickest way into Realm to set up your giving, where, by the way, you can set up regular weekly giving if you choose to do that. And then you don’t have to go through any steps in the week because it’s set up here if you’d like to do that. The easiest way into Realm is through the QR code. So I hope those things have been helpful.

We’re going to go to the Lord’s Supper now, and I would like to read this scripture.

By the way, just to let you know what Joe Stearn’s favorite scripture in the Bible is. In the last couple of years. This is my favorite scripture. I don’t believe this scripture is even talking about money. I think this is talking about your lifestyle, including your money, but I think this is talking about being a giving person.

I’m going to read this Scripture in the hopes that it will help us with our mindset for communion. And then we’ll take the Lord’s supper. I hope you can find a cup of juice and bread next to you. But we’ll take the Lord’s Supper after this give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be poured into your lap. For the measure you use. It will be measured to you. Let’s pray.

Holy Father, thank you for giving to us first. If there’s anything that we want to praise you about right now, Father its that you are a giver, you are a sacrificial giver. You are a consistent giver to us. You provide for our needs, and you do that out of love. Help us to respond on by being giving people and remembering the ultimate gift you gave us, and that is the death of your very own Son and his resurrection so that we can be saved.

We pray in your Son’s name. Amen.