Opening Prayer
Being present in our midst this morning. And we pray that you would speak to us through your word in Scripture as well as we turn to Deuteronomy 6. Thank you for that opportunity to sing your praise, to take communion, remembering Lord Jesus, that you died for us on the cross. Thank you. That you rose again and that you reign over all. We give you the glory and the praise. And we ask that the Holy Spirit would move in our midst now in Jesus name. Amen.
Introduction
We’ve been in a sermon series in Deuteronomy, in the book of Deuteronomy. And today we’re reading chapter 26, and we’re coming towards the end of this book. I hope you’ve been blessed by this sermon series. There’s one more after this. But as Moses draws to a close the sermon that he’s preaching, he’s preaching a sermon to the whole nation of Israel, and he’s applying the law of God. And in chapter 26, he comes to the end of this sermon, he says, after we’ve come into the promised land, after we’ve gone into the land of Israel, and we’ve settled there, and we’ve grown some crops, and we’ve taken our first harvest from the land, what’s the very first thing we should do after that? And so I’m going to preach a sermon on thanksgiving, gratitude and giving. And I would love you to turn to Deuteronomy 26, and I’m going to read the whole chapter to us, and it will appear on the screen behind me as well.
Bible Passage
When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance, and have taken possession of it and live in it, you shall take some of the, first of all, the fruit of the ground which you harvest from your land that the Lord your God is giving you. And you shall put it in a basket, and you shall go to the place that the Lord your God will choose to make his name to dwell there. And you shall go to the priest who is in office at that time, and say to him, I declare today to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our fathers to give us. Then the priest shall take the basket from your hand and set it down before the altar of the Lord your God. And you shall make response before the Lord your God. A wandering Aramean was my father. And he went down into Egypt and sojourned there, few in number. And there he became a nation great, mighty and populous. And the Egyptians treated us harshly and humiliated us and laid on us hard labor. Then we cried to the Lord, the God of our fathers. And the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil and our oppression. And the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great deeds of terror, with signs and wonders. And he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. And behold, now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground which you, O Lord, have given me. And you shall set it down before the Lord your God and worship before the Lord your God. And you shall rejoice in all the good that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house. You and the Levite and the sojourner who is among you. When you have finished paying all the tithe of your produce in the third year, which is the year of tithing, give it to the Levite, the sojourner and the fatherless and the widow, so that they may eat within your towns and be filled. Then you shall say before the Lord your God, I have removed the sacred portion out of my house. And moreover, I have given it to the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, according to all your commandment that you have commanded me. I have not transgressed any of your commandments, nor have I forgotten them. I have not eaten of the tithe while I was mourning, or removed any of it while I was unclean, or offered any of it to the dead. I have obeyed the voice of the Lord, my God. I have done according to all that you have commanded me. Look down from your holy habitation, from heaven, and bless your people, Israel, and the ground that you have given us as you swore to our fathers, a lamb flowing with milk and honey this day. The Lord your God commands you to do these statutes and rules. You shall therefore be careful to do them with all your heart and with all your soul. You have declared today that the Lord is your God, and that you will walk in his ways and keep his statutes and his commandments and his rules, and will obey his voice. And the Lord has declared today that you are a people for his treasured possession, as he has promised you, and that you are to keep all his commandments, and that he will set you in praise and in fame and in honour high above all nations that he is made. And that you shall be a people holy to the Lord your God, as he promised.
Introduction
Well, before I get into the meat of my sermon this morning, I want to point out that verses 12 and verses 14 use the word tithe, which is the kind of word that you only ever hear in a church context. Now, the word tithe means 10%. It means 10%, and in several different ways. The Old Testament Jews were instructed to give 10% of their harvest away to the priests who worked at the temple, to the poor and those who did not have enough to eat in the land. Actually, because they had to do it more than once, they actually gave away more than 10% of their produce in various different ways. In the New Testament, Christians are instructed to give to the poor and to the local church for the proclamation of the Gospel. But nowhere in the New Testament does it tell us how much we ought to give. So as I begin this sermon, before I get into the meat of what I think the passage does say, I want us to read 2 Corinthians 9, 7, which says this. Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion. For God loves a cheerful giver. In other words, the written law in Deuteronomy that says, you must give a tithe, you must give 10% is not a law that Christians are under or must follow. Instead, the written law has been transformed for the Christian. So the Holy Spirit is poured into the heart of a Christian believer, and it’s about the cheerfulness with which you give, not the amount. So some of this sermon will speak into giving. But at no stage am I interested in telling you how much you need to give away. That’s for you to decide in your heart before the Lord. And one of the points I’m going to make in this sermon is that giving is a response to God’s story in our lives. So if you’re a visitor or you’re not a Christian, we are not interested in you giving your money this morning. We’re interested in how God has spoken into our lives and transformed us. But if you are a Christian, there is a challenge here to use your money to honor the Lord.
Give Your First Fruits In Faith
Okay, let’s get into the passage. Let’s get into my sermon proper this morning. And the first point I want to make is, give your first fruits in faith. If you look at verse two, the very first thing, they’ve settled in the land, and they’ve grown some crops in this new land that God has given them. And in verse two, it says, you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground which you shall harvest. You put it in a basket. And then in verse four, you set this basket before the priest on the altar. And then in verse 12, it says, you’ve paid what you meant to pay.
Now, I want you to consider what that must have been like living in an agricultural society where you were responsible for growing your own food. The very first things that spring out of the ground. And you’re thinking, well, I want to eat that. I’m hungry. I want to keep that. That’s for me. I know if I grew anything in my garden, I’m a rubbish gardener. But if I grew anything in my garden, I’d be like, oh, I’m quite proud of myself. I think I might eat that and enjoy it. But God says to the Israelites, you have to have faith in him for food to keep coming from the land that he has given to you. And therefore the first of what you’ve grown, you are to take and to give it away to the priests.
Now, I think sometimes for us in our society where food is easy to come by and most of us know when the money’s coming in regularly, it’s very different from a society where you’re actually giving away something in faith, saying, I’m trusting the Lord for this land to keep producing what I need to say, survive. The New Testament also commands giving away the first bit of money that you receive as wages. In 1 Corinthians 16, verses 1 to 2, Paul writes this. Now, concerning the collection for the saints, as I directed the churches of Galatia, so also you are to do on the first day of the week, each one of you is to put something aside and store it up. And that money was stored up and eventually given to the saints in other churches to bless those who were poor, you know, many people in Corinth will have been paid daily. And so for the Holy Spirit through Paul, to say, you’ve got to take something at the beginning of the week and put it aside and store it up in order to give away. That was an act of faith for them as well. Will I be paid tomorrow? Will I still have a job? There was a moment of. Of faithfully giving the first fruits of the wages that they’ve received in a week.
Brothers and sisters, giving has always been an act of faith, a declaration of trust in God that He will provide. Therefore, it is good to practice making giving to God your first fruits, the first thing that you pay after your salary goes in. Sometimes giving ought to really feel like an act of faith. I don’t mean regularly giving what you can’t afford, but sometimes Christians are called to be generous in a way that really does rely on God, perhaps an unusually large gift from your first payslip or after a pay rise, or from time to time, a gift that. That feels really sacrificial. I could have used this money for this or for that. But I’m trusting that God will give me what I need if that’s something that he wants me to have. So the first point, I think this passage in Deuteronomy 26 gives to us is that giving is an act of faith, a giving of the first fruits of what you have received.
Giving Is Thanksgiving for God’s Story In Your Life
Secondly, giving is thanksgiving for God’s story in your life. If that’s a hard point to begin with. This morning, I love verses 5 to 11. Because what you would do as a Jew is you’d bring your first fruits of the harvest. And then you rehearse this history of the Israelite nation at the altar where you’ve come to. Isn’t it just such a beautiful instruction? You’re to remember Jacob. Jacob was the Aramean who’s mentioned in verse 5. One man, one family who during a famine had to go to Egypt in order to survive. So he takes his family to go and live in Egypt. And you’re thinking, man, this is big trouble. One family. What’s going to happen to this family? Are they going to just die in the land of Egypt? Are they going to survive? Well, what happens in the land of Egypt is they multiply and multiply and multiply. And one man called Israel fathers a nation of tribes. In verse six, though, they rehearse this history and remember that a new Egyptian pharaoh came to power and he was threatened by the Jews in his land. So he enslaved them and treated them harshly and humiliated them. In verse 6, in verse 7, the Israelites cry out. And God hears their cry and he sees their affliction. And Therefore in verse 8, God delivers them out of Egypt with a mighty hand. And in verse nine, he brings them into the promised land, metaphorically flowing with milk and honey.
I assure you, if you go to Israel, there are not rivers of milk and honey literally in the land. But this land was glorious and wonderful. And so that you have this amazing story of. Of the Israelite nation that the person who’s brought their gift to the temple has to remember. And then in verse 10, the Israelite says, I’m part of this story. And even now God has given me these crops. These things have emerged from the ground because of his generosity. And so I’m bringing this to you, God, back in worship. The whole story of Israel and the whole personal circumstances of a person was brought to this moment of giving away the first crops that they’ve grown. Isn’t this just a magnificent idea? The Israelite is instructed to see their individual harvest in the context of years and years of God’s goodness and blessing.
Now, I think sometimes when Christians give, it’s a reluctant giving. It’s a let me write a number, set up a standing order, and then ignore it and just leave it for a time. Well, I don’t think that that’s how we should give our money. Oh, it’s something I’ve got to do. I must do it, so I’m going to do. I think actually our giving should be connected to the wonderful story of God in our lives. So for me personally, I can say this to God. Lord, you sent your son, Jesus Christ to die on the cross for the sins of all who would trust in Jesus. And my sin. He carried my sin upon the cross. He died for the things that I have done wrong. He rose from the grave victoriously and gloriously because death could not hold him. He turned by the power of The Holy Spirit, 12 disciples into millions of worshipers around the world. And those millions of worshipers included my mum and dad. And they taught me the gospel from a young age. And God was pleased to give me the gift of the Holy Spirit as well. And so I believed and trusted in Jesus Christ for salvation. Therefore, I know that I’m forgiven. I know I’m free. I know I’ve been given eternal life. I have a relationship with God. Your glorious gospel story has impacted me, Lord. And even now, in all my life, you’ve provided every day. You’ve given me what I need. Even the money I earn, the wages I receive, are a gift from you, Lord God. So here’s what I’m going to give to you. It’s so small in comparison to the glorious riches that I have received. But I’m giving to you because of the great story of what you’ve done in my life. That’s Christian giving.
No pressure from this sermon. Again, not interested in how much you give. We’re doing really well as a church financially. Thank you for so many wonderful, fantastic givers in this church. We’re able to bless people in our church and people outside the church because of your generosity. So there’s no pressure. But I would encourage each of you, if you consider yourself to be a believer in Jesus Christ, to find some time this week, maybe this afternoon, and just have a conversation with your spouse, if you’re married or if you’re not married. Have a time of prayerful thought and think through the great story that God has worked in your life and use that as an opportunity to give. Think about, what am I giving now? God has done so much for me. What does that mean for how I’m going to use my money moving forward? Include your salvation story in that moment, but also think about God’s goodness to you more recently, the things that he’s brought your family, your friends and the goodness in your life, the church that you are a part of. Thank God and worship him and then perhaps consider changing what you give away to the poor and to charities that do great deeds and to your local church for the proclamation of the gospel. Even if you don’t change what you give, I’d encourage you to do the process. It’s actually not about the number that you end up with. It’s about the thinking of your giving away in the great story of all that God has given to you. There might actually be a moment in that to repent and say, I have given faithfully, Lord, but actually I’ve never really connected it to how brilliant you have been in my life. It’s just been something that I’ve done legalistically rather than an act of worship for how you’ve totally transformed my life. So there might be a moment to say, sorry Lord, sorry Lord, that I haven’t appreciated this glorious great story. You saved the Israelite nation, you saved me through Christ, and I’m connecting that to what I give away to others. Giving is an act of thanksgiving and worship for God’s generosity and story in your life.
Now by the way, just notice in verse 11, actually, that it’s not just a personal story that you’re thankful for. In verse 11, he’s thankful not only that the Israelites thankful not only that he has crops, but also that there are crops to give away to the sojourner and the people who don’t have enough in the world. So actually, as you think through your great story, you should also be going, thank you God, that there are people in this land who can come and receive all they need. You’re not just generous to me, Lord God, but you’re generous to others as well. And let that fuel your celebration of thanksgiving towards God.
Giving
Now, thirdly, I’m going to move on to talking specifically about giving. But I want to drill down on one element of that glorious story of Israel that really struck me as I was preparing for this morning. Look at verse seven. It says, then we cried to the Lord, the God of our Fathers and the Lord heard our voice and. And saw our affliction and toil and our oppression. And so my third point this morning is that God hears and sees affliction, therefore cry out to you to cry out to him. Sorry, Cry out to him. This is a common theme in the Torah. Several times in the book of Genesis, there’s moments where people are in dire circumstances and they cry out to God, and God from heaven hears and listens and responds to their prayer. In the book of Exodus, there’s this central, amazing moment where the Israelites are in slavery in Egypt. And they’re like, does God really remember us? Does he care about us? Does he love us? It feels like he doesn’t. Look at where we are. We’re numerous, but we’re working as slaves. And they cry out to God, and God hears them. He raises up Moses to lead them out of slavery in Egypt, through the wilderness, into the promised land. It uses the language, doesn’t it, of God having a mighty arm to rescue numbers and Deuteronomy as they go through. The law of God constantly points back to the work of God and the fact that God hears us when we cry out to him and sees our affliction.
I want to say to you this morning, you personally, if you are going through a time of affliction in your life right now, God is not blind to your suffering. God sees what you’re going through. And if you are praying and asking God to move, God is not deaf to your prayers. God is hearing what you’re saying. Please ensure that you are praying and spending time each day before the Lord crying out and saying, lord, I’ve heard in the sermon that you see and hear of what I’m going through. Lord, please, would you do something? Lord, you have a mighty hand. You have an outstretched arm. Would you rescue me from my current circumstances? So make sure you are going to that place of prayer, but never doubt that God hears you when you cry out to Him. Don’t doubt that he sees you where you are in life right now. And of course, all of us, whether we’re in time of affliction or a wonderful time in our life right now in that place of prayer, can remember the great salvation act of our Savior, Jesus Christ. We can say, I was enslaved to sin and you saw me in my affliction and you sent Jesus to rescue me. And Jesus came and died on the cross for my sin, thereby winning my freedom, winning my life back, winning my forgiveness upon the cross. And therefore, when I cried out to you, for mercy. Lord God, you heard my cry and answered me. Isn’t that the story of every Christian that we were in our Egypt, we were in slavery, we were in affliction and we cried out and God heard us and rescued us into life, into the promised land of knowing God and being in relationship to him. God sees your affliction. He hears your prayer. He has seen your affliction and answered your prayer. If you are a saved Christian.
Rejoice In All That The Lord Your God Has Given You
My fourth point this morning is from verse 11 where it says, rejoice in all the good that the Lord your God has given to you. There is a place for reviewing your giving. But more than that, more importantly than that, there’s a call in this chapter to remember all the good that God has done in your life and and rejoice. Are you a rejoicing, joy filled Christian? Are you exceedingly joyful because of all the goodness that God has given to you?
Brothers and sisters, we watch the news and what we see is evil and misery. In prayer meetings, there’s nothing wrong with this at all. But in prayer meetings we tend to share our difficult situations and the things that are going wrong and we pray into those. And that’s a good thing. That’s okay, but that’s okay so long as we don’t forget how magnificently good God is and has been in our lives and rejoice. We have salvation in Jesus Christ. We have a roof over our heads. We have food in our stomach. We have friends and family and church family. We have laughter. We have a beautiful creation and countryside in which to see the grandeur and splendor of God. We have answers to prayer throughout our lives. We have even moments of pain in our history that God has used for our good to grow us and challenge us. We’ve had moments of rest and peace and just loving God for who he is. Good moments and hard moments all leading us into good places. We’ve had baptisms in Christchurch fare and eight people saying, I believe in Jesus and I want to live my whole life for Him. We’ve got young people coming back into the church. We’ve got the big things and the glorious things and the small things. The smell of freshly cut grass. I mowed my lawn for once this weekend. The Taste of Chocolate, the book with a captivating story that you just cannot put down. The job that you work and the meaning that you find in that place, but also just the job that just pays the wages is a wonderful gift from God, the Holy Spirit, who is the third Person of the Trinity, living within Your very heart, if you are a Christian. The words of God spoken to us in Scripture and the future of eternal paradise with God in the new heavens and the new earth. A tiny fraction of all the goodness of God in our lives. Do you agree?
God is full of goodness and he has poured goodness into our lives. And sometimes we’re the blind ones. God is not blind to our affliction, but sometimes we’re blind to the good things that God has given to us. Sometimes we’re not thankful for all the brilliance of God in our lives. We’re miserable when we’re groaning and we’re moaning. But brothers and sisters, we have such a wonderful God who has been good to us in so many ways. You know, I really feel that one of the great evils of our day in the west is that I think there really are some people who think that not living is better than living. And I think it’s this symptom of spending all our time thinking about all the things that are bad in our life and not thinking about all the good things that God has given to us. I personally believe that that’s the root of why some people think it’s better to abort a baby rather than have that baby grow up in a slightly difficult environment. Because we think actually maybe not living is better than living or. I’ve often heard, look at all the suffering in the world, Duncan. God can’t be good. Do you know what I’ve never heard? Look at all the brilliance in life, Duncan. God can’t be bad. I wonder whether we are different to that. I wonder whether we’re different to that. I’m not trying to belittle suffering. God hears our prayers and sees affliction. I’m not trying to belittle that. But we have so many good things in life, and Christians are to abound in thanksgiving for all the goodness that God has given to us. And this verse instructs us to rejoice in all the good that we have received from the Lord.
So what are you going to do this afternoon? Well, I’d encourage you to go home to think about all the goodness that God has given you and maybe dance and sing and put on worship music and leap. It’s not very British of us, but let’s do it. Because God is amazing and he’s brought so much goodness into our lives. And this is what the Israelites are instructed to do, to go into the promised land, grow some crops and then take the very first that they’ve. The first things that they’ve grown and rejoice in all the goodness of God throughout history and in their lives and more recent times. Let’s practice noticing God’s goodness and rejoicing in it. I think that’s especially important now. When the daytime becomes shorter and the nights draw in. There is a tendency for people to suffer a seasonal depression. Let’s fight against that and let’s rejoice in all the goodness of God in our lives.
Treasured Possession
My fifth and final point from this passage is in verse 18. It says, the Lord has declared today that you are a people for his treasured possession. The Lord has. With a nice background tune. The Lord has declared today that you are a people for his treasured possession. Sorry. That’s all right, Paul. The Lord has declared today that you are a people for his treasured possession. Do you know in the Old Testament, God chose Israel. They were a holy people set apart from all the other peoples on the earth. And God said, this is my nation that I am choosing. They are the holy ones. They are my treasured possession.
In the New Testament, Christians from every tribe and tongue and nation are God’s holy people. God’s set apart people, his treasured possession. And that means, if you are a believer in Jesus Christ, that you belong to the Lord and He treasures you. Last week I spoke about holiness as though it’s something we grow in day by day. I was talking about something called progressive sanctification. Day by day we become more like Jesus. Hopefully you’re more like Jesus today than you were yesterday. You’ve progressed in your holiness. In that sense, it’s called progressive sanctification. But here I’m talking about something called positional sanctification. So we grow holy day by day. Progressive sanctification. But actually every Christian has been made holy by God. He like picked us up and plonked us and said, now you’re in my people. Now you are set apart from the rest of the world. You’re going to progressively become more holy in your life. But actually this is a declaration over who you are for all time. You are holy. You are sanctified. You are positionally sanctified before me. God says to you, this one is part of my people. This one is my treasured possession. Let’s bask in that glorious and wonderful truth. You belong to God. You are His. You belong to Christ. He purchased you by his blood upon the cross.
But you aren’t one of those possessions that gets lost in the attic and gets covered in dust and completely ignored, long forgotten. You are treasured. It’s just astonishing, isn’t it, that God would look at me and go, you’re a treasure, Duncan. And he would look at us and say, this is my treasured possession. God loves you. He cares for you. You are prized by Jesus. If anyone among us feels like trash this morning, then God says, I’m not going to throw you away. You’re my treasured possession. So, brothers and sisters, let us learn from Deuteronomy 26. Let’s give our first fruits to God in faith. Let’s connect the story of what God has done in our lives to our giving away to others. Let’s deliberately set aside time to do that. Let’s remember that God sees and hears our affliction. And just as he rescued the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, he has rescued us from sin and death through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Let’s rejoice in all the good God has done for us because there’s so much good in our lives. And let’s know that God treasures us, that we belong to Christ. We are holy to him, set apart forever as his treasured possession. And therefore, let’s just enjoy once more the story of Jesus Christ and what he has done for us. We were lost in sin and destined to die. And Christ saw us in that place of affliction. He came from heaven to earth in order to die on a cross, taking upon himself the sin of the world so that whoever believes in Christ would be forgiven and have everlasting life. He showed his love for us in that place. He showed that we are treasured possession on the cross. He’s so treasured that he would die for us. He rose again in glory. And when we cried out for mercy. I pray there was a moment in your life when you cried out to mercy. You said to God, I need forgiveness. Save me. When we cried out for mercy, he heard us and gave us the gift of faith, salvation. He has shown us in so many ways his goodness and his love. And he will continue to faithfully show you his goodness and his love for the rest of the days of your life, even into eternity. This is the story of Jesus Christ, which is also our story that we are a holy people and his treasured possession.
Closing Prayer
Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for the great story of salvation that you worked for your people, Israel in the Old Testament. I love this moment when an Israelite comes and says, here’s the first crops that I’ve grown and I want to tell you, Lord, you know the story, but let me tell you Anyway, the whole story of what you’ve done for this amazing nation. And I’ve brought a few carrots to say thank you. It’s so small compared to what you’ve done, Lord. But I’m giving this away because of how brilliant you’ve been in my life. And Lord, as Christians, we can say, yes, you’ve been amazing. You’ve saved us, you’ve rescued us, you’ve brought us into your family. Lord God, here’s a few coins that we’re giving back to you to say thank you for what you’ve done. Lord, I pray that we would be people who rejoice in all your goodness to us. Fill our hearts with the joy of the Lord. I pray through the power of the spirit, make us dance and leap and sing because of your glorious goodness. And in that place of rejoicing, may we also be generous to others who need more. I pray we would graciously give to the poor and to the church for the proclamation of the Gospel. And I thank you, Lord, that we are your treasured possession, holy and set apart for you. We were not holy. We did not deserve to be set apart in any way. But you chose us. And we are so grateful for that choice that you made. Thank you that you treasure us. And may every heart in this room know your love. Lord, I want to pray in particular, if there’s anyone who’s not a believer in this place. Would you reveal yourself to them? Give them a faith in Jesus Christ Christ for salvation that they might know in their heart that they are loved and treasured by you and come to receive that glorious forgiveness and wonderful relationship with you for all eternity. Pray this in Jesus name, Amen.
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