1 Cor No.37 Praise God it's the Collection

Six days before the Passover, Jesus arrived at Bethany, where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. Here a dinner was given in Jesus' honour. Martha served, while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him.

Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume. She poured it on Jesus' feet and wiped his feet with her hair, and the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray him, objected.

Why wasn't this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year's wages. He didn't say this because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief. As keeper of the money bag, he used it to help himself to what was put into it.

Leave her alone, Jesus replied. It was meant that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial. You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.

This is the word of the Lord. Now I'd like you again to turn with me to 1 Corinthians, and we're going to look at some verses specifically in the 16th chapter. But I'll start to read from the 54th verse of the previous chapter.

1 Corinthians chapter 15, and halfway through that 54th verse we read, Death has been swallowed up in victory, whereo death is your victory, whereo death is your sting. The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law, but thanks be to God, he gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm.

Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. Now about the collection for God's people.

Do what I told the Galatian churches to do. On the first day of every week, each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with his income, saving it up, so that when I come, no collections will have to be made. Then when I arrive, I will give letters of introduction to the men you approve and send them with your gift to Jerusalem.

If it seems advisable for me to go also, they will accompany me. Some while ago, I came across George Duncan's commentary on 2 Corinthians, and when he moved on to the seventh and eighth chapters, which have to speak particularly the eighth about giving and financing in the work of the Lord, he engaged in a piece of autobiography, and he said he was a speaker, as many of us know, who travels around in this country and abroad at conventions and so on and so forth, and that he had on many an occasion listened to congregations interject in the middle of a service with the words Amen and Hallelujah and Praise the Lord, and Duncan appreciated this. But he said that he had yet to come across a situation where someone in a church pulpit indicated that the time had come for the collection to be received, and for all the people to jump up and say Hallelujah.

And the implication was that when we've arrived there, that maybe we're moving into real blessings of revival and renewal. Well, be that as it may, at least that little comment gave to me the provocative heading for what shall be just a short study from God's Word as we proceed in our series through this fascinating book of 1 Corinthians. Thank God or Hallelujah for the collection.

Now let's look at these opening verses of chapter 16, and let's first of all notice the sequence of teaching, the sequence of teaching. Why do I say this? Well, I dipped into the earlier part of the preceding chapter just to get the thrust of Paul's reasoning and the order of what he has been saying back in your minds. I mean, here we have been for, what, four Sundays, perhaps more, in the 15th chapter of 1 Corinthians, and if it were just for the sake of my choice alone, I'd preach in that chapter—I'm not exaggerating—for the whole of this year.

I think it's such a glorious chapter. It's the chapter of the resurrection. We build our Christian faith on that.

And so at the beginning of 1 Corinthians 15, Paul introduces us to the concept of the empty tomb. They kill the Lord at Calvary, but the third day he's raised from the dead, and we're introduced to those astonished disciples who could hardly believe the news. And then later on, we remember how 500 men at one session see the risen Lord.

And Paul gathers together the whole of his argument, and he takes us through to the possibility that, well, if Jesus had not been raised, then what would the significance of that be? And it's a terrible thought. And Paul goes on to say, if Christ was not raised, then of all men, the Christian community would be the most pitiable in the world, going along through life with a crutch to limp, a crutch that had got no historical substance to it at all. But perish that thought, says Paul.

He is alive, and then he goes on to think of the theological significance, and that's titanic. He brings us face to face with Adam and the terrible mess in the Garden of Eden, and that mess that has brimmed over, and is seen in the whole human story, and in the lives of every individual. And then he contrasts that Adam with the last Adam, the Lord Jesus, and all that he has achieved.

And then he thinks in terms of our body. It's a weak body, this one. It's a corruptible body.

It's got the seeds of decay in it. It's not designed for eternity. If something, if I am going to go through into the eternal dimension in God's future program, then something radical has got to happen to this body.

I, says Paul, and our body is going to be like his body, the glorious body of the Lord Jesus Christ. Verse 49, just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven. And then Paul takes full flight, just as though he's a great airliner that's gone down the tarmac, and it's now climbing and soaring higher and higher into the great mysteries of God, and the ultimate purposes that he has for his church.

And he speaks of the second coming of Jesus, and he says, behold, I show you a mystery. Shall not all sleep? We all be changed in a flash, in a twinkling of the moment. He thinks of that cosmic second when Jesus Christ shall arrive back on planet earth and open up the new era with a renewed universe, and we're going to live on that, says the Apostle Paul.

And then he takes us to a grave, and he does a dance of delight as he points his finger at the grave, and he says, O death, where is your sting? O death, where is your victory? And then he speaks of Jesus again, thanks be unto God, who gives us a victory, the triumph through our Lord Jesus Christ. All these things follow from the mighty resurrection of our Saviour, from the fact that when he was killed on the skull-shaped hill, he was nonetheless raised in triumph and great glory. Therefore, says the Apostle, if you believe these things, my dear brothers and sisters in Corinth, and all who shall hear my ministry in the ages to come, stand fast, be unmovable, let nothing shift you from your faith.

And what would you expect after that? The Hallelujah Chorus? Tremendous doxology, the like of which we know Paul is capable of, and the inspiration of the Spirit? That you might well anticipate, but instead he sort of leans over his pulpit, if you'll allow the analogy, and he says, now about the collection, about the collection. It's true, isn't it? It seems almost humorous, and there is a sanctified humor that is within the Bible, and within the experience of Christian people. Now about the collection, the sequence of his teaching, you see.

Not that this is novel to Paul. After all, our blessed Lord gives us that prayer which we have just been using, our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, the greatness of the God's kingdom as it visibly manifests itself on earth.

Your will be done, as the divine fiat is recognized and executed in the heavenly realm. May your will be done on this earth increasingly. And then what? Give us this day our daily bread.

Oh, the Bible is so practical. It's so superb. I can't understand people who argue against the inspiration of Scripture.

It's inherent within it, its own witness, its own testimony. So here is the mighty Apostle Paul. He's lifted us up to the planes of ecstasy.

He's spelled out as well as human words can convey what's in store for us, the great future of the Christian Church. And then he leans over to his friends and says, okay, now about the collection. You see, the Bible is a very down-to-earth book.

It's God's Word down-to-earth for ordinary mortals like you and me. And the reason why Paul is so concerned about the collection, well, if you read through the opening verses of this chapter, you'll begin to understand that what is at the back of his mind is that there are people in Jerusalem and they're in great need. There are people in the whole of Palestine, Christian people, and they're suffering.

A famine has broken out throughout the whole of Judea. And you remember when there was the first conference of Christian leaders called at Jerusalem. Paul was present and Barnabas was.

And the whole controversy was about the Gentiles and whether they were to accept the Jewish law or not and engage in practices which Moses put down in the books of Numbers and Leviticus and what have you. And that great conference, one of the most influential that was ever called in the history of Christendom said, no, it is true that the Apostle Paul is right when he says that salvation is through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ alone and all the traditions of Judaism do not necessarily apply to the Gentile believers. But we give you a sanction to preach this gospel on a basis of justification by faith only.

But wherever you go Paul and Silas and Barnabas, remember the poor, remember the poor. Paul makes reference to this in Galatians 2, to that conference in Jerusalem. And he says, I was very pleased to do that.

And at the back of his mind as he's writing to the Corinthians and as he's been moving around Asia Minor is the thought that in Jerusalem and the whole area around Jerusalem there is the most devastating famine. And there are brothers and sisters who live in Palestine who are related to Christians at Corinth and Galatia in that whole area and indeed at Rome. Do you come across the word solidarity? Well obviously you have because of what's been happening in Poland.

In one sense Karl Marx brought that term even if he didn't use it exactly certainly its significance very much to to bear in his book Das Kapital but I'm preaching from the from the Bible this morning. Solidarity means the awareness of corporate responsibility. I think that's the best definition I can give you off the cuff.

The awareness of corporate responsibility. And solidarity has a biblical concept you see because we're all members of the body of Christ. That means to say that my Indian brother is very much my brother in more than just a nominal sense.

I'm not being sentimental in calling him that. Or my the Christian believer in Turkana, the lady who's having great difficulty making ends meet because she's got several children and things are very bad in that area south of the Sudan. She belongs to me and I belong to her because well spiritually we are together.

We are knitted together. Now this is what Paul has in mind when he's speaking practically to Christians in Corinth about the situation way over there in Palestine. They are in need.

And so Paul is the instigator of Teofond. Now I really mean that. I'm not being novel.

Here is an evangelical summoning up an alliance of churches for relief of brothers and sisters who live several hundred miles away. And so he tells us that when he was preaching in Galatia and in Romans 15 he tells you exactly the same because he's got the same project in mind when he was writing to them in Rome. He is exciting their Christian agape in a very, very practical sense to direct finance to the churches at Jerusalem and in the whole of that area where there are Christian people in need.

So you see, as I say, the delightful common sense of the Apostle Paul. And enshrined here is a principle that remains constant throughout the whole of church history. It is this principle that I am my brother's keeper.

You remember that was denied in the earlier chapters of the Old Testament. It's the Apostle John who says that if I go along the street and I see that my brother has need and I have got plenty and I don't give to him what I have in excess, then how dwells the love of God in me? You see perish the thought that Christianity is a merely theological bundle of concepts. It is that and thank God for doctrine.

But unless it transcends doctrine then it's a bubble and the New Testament and the Old Testament for that matter have got nothing to do with what that person believes if it doesn't excite them experimentally to put into practice the ethics of the Bible. So here is, as I say, the Apostle Paul putting the print of the Holy Spirit, because he's speaking by inspiration of the Spirit, putting the stamp of the Spirit upon Christian relief organizations towards other Christian people in particular. So you see the sequence of Paul's teaching.

He is dealt with the resurrection and he goes on to the collection and he doesn't even blush nor give an apology. Hallelujah! It's collection time. And then he shows us that it's right to have a concern for Christian people in third world countries who don't have sufficient to live on.

But then it seems to me that there's something even more significant and I don't want to go into all of the details because I promised, unusually so, this Sunday morning I'll preach briefly. Here is some basic principle of how Christian people are to cope with the ministry of finance. You say, I never thought of finance in terms of a ministry.

Let me tell you, not only is ministry a finance, it is one of the charismatic gifts of the Spirit. We've been looking at the vexed issue of spiritual gifts. Why they should be vexed, I don't know.

And I've made the position that I understand, as clear as I can, that I do believe within God's sovereignty that every gift of the Spirit is available within his church today and needs to be tested scripturally and sincerely. Right, here is another gift of the Spirit mentioned in 2nd Corinthians chapter 8, with exactly the same phraseology in the Greek language as you discover employed in 1 Corinthians 12 and 14. 2nd Corinthians chapter 8, where you find further information about this great offering that Paul is getting up for the churches in Judea, speaks also more in chapter 9 about this project.

But for our purposes, drop down to the 7th verse of the 8th chapter. And Paul is congratulating these Christians in Corinth for what reason? Well, they excel. It's very easy sometimes to pull out the criticisms that Paul makes of the Corinthians and make them out to be worse than they were.

There are some great congratulatory remarks that the Apostle also levels at them. So he utters this accolade. Just as you excel in everything, in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in complete earnestness, and in your love for us, now here, see that you also excel in this charisma of giving, this grace of giving.

Exactly the same terminology as when Paul is listing the more celebrated nine gifts of the Spirit in 1 Corinthians 12 and 14. Giving is a charisma. Giving is something that God grants to us to do.

When a person is conducting his finances, controlling his finances properly, a Christian person, what does he have in mind? Well, he has in mind nothing less than the generosity of God. Let me approach that another way. What is a Christian? He's a person who's taken something of the life of God into his own nature.

I had the tremendous privilege of leading a young fellow to the Lord yesterday morning in my home, and I was explaining to him that Christianity is participating in the life of Jesus. I spent about an hour at the University of Reading on Friday evening doing exactly the same to 100, 150 students. Now, how would you describe the character of God as revealed in Jesus? Well, would you not say that God is a generous God? An old-fashioned word, bounty, describes God.

He is a bounteous God. If it were possible to dissect, I'm almost using the language of a fool, to dissect the Godhead, every part would be one of utter generosity. Now, I may be using the language of a fool, but there is at least some justification in the New Testament, because when the Apostle Paul, later on in Corinthians, at the end of chapter 9, speaks of our Lord Jesus, he says, thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift.

Here is bounty. Here is unmitigated, unqualified generosity. God is a generous God.

Every good, every perfect gift comes from the Father above, says James. If you want it in the language of the Old Testament, here's David at the end of First Chronicles, and he's praising God for the ability to give, and then he says, Lord, I must apologize. It's not really that I'm giving mine, because what is mine was yours in the first instance.

I only bring you what is your own. Sometimes Christian people get a little bit in a tangle about tithing. You mention the word tithe, and immediately up comes the word legalism, and we're not to be legalistic, because we're born again Christians, Reformation era, and we know that we're not under the constraints of the law.

Well, I'm not too sure that that is the right interpretation of the of the Reformation. But do you know when tithing was first mentioned in Scripture, it had got nothing to do with the law at all. I was reading this quite casually earlier on this morning.

The first time that you ever come across tithing is in the book of Genesis, and Abraham's involved. Do you remember he'd had a mighty great battle, and he got 300 plus of his crack troops leveled against five kings. It's a magnificent story, and I'm tempted to tell it you, but I promise I'll preach briefly, and you'll be chasing me afterwards.

However, he wins. It's a fantastic achievement, and as he's coming away, he bumps into one of the most mysterious characters who flits across Old Testament pages, and that is Melchizedek. And when you move into the New Testament to the book of Hebrews, reference is made to Melchizedek as being a type of the Lord Jesus.

And when when Abraham spots Melchizedek, he recognizes him to be a priest of the Most High God, and he ministers incidentally in the very area where Jerusalem ultimately was constructed. I find that historically fascinating. And even more fascinating, Melchizedek invites Abraham to a meal of bread and wine.

I find that very suggestive. And here is Abraham living before the time of the law, and he makes over to Melchizedek tithes from the booty, from the achievements of his military encounter. The first time you read about the generous giving of a man in the large-scale capacity to God has got nothing to do with the law.

It's Abraham's reaction in the presence of Melchizedek, who according to Hebrews, typifies the Lord Jesus Christ. So here we are as Christian people this morning, living not in a land in an era of law understood in terms of classic Old Testament law, living in an era of grace. We're going to be confronting in a moment or two the man who offers us bread and wine, the God-man, the Lord Jesus.

And if you cut him apart allow the language of a fool again. You'll find a man who is just made up of love and exquisite generosity. You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

How though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that through his poverty he might make others rich. When you analyze Jesus, obviously there's his holiness, his righteousness, his oneness with the purposes of the Father, but there is always through and through every fiber of his being a generous spirit. And if I'm a charismatic Christian, I've participated in his nature.

And that's what Paul is saying to these Corinthian brothers and sisters, get it right. Don't just understand me about the resurrection and the second coming, but get it right also about the collection. And do what I've told the Galatian churches to do.

We can't find that in the Galatian epistle, so it's obviously a piece of preaching that Paul engaged in, which now he refers to, although it's not in Scripture itself. Do what I told the Galatian churches to do. Paul, what did you tell them? Well, he says on a regular basis, the first day of every week, on a proportionate basis, each of them should set aside a sum of money in keeping with his income, saving it up, so that what Paul? So that when I come, no collections will have to be taken, and there will be an amount of money worthy of the name of Christian charity at Corinth, which can be added to the generous giving in Rome and the churches in Macedonia, and this heaped up offering can go out there to Judea, and when the Christian Jews understand your love for them tangibly expressed, there will be such a oneness and such a unity amongst Christian people, and they'll also, says the Apostle in 2 Corinthians 8 and 9, be great joy in heaven, because you will have blessed God through your giving.

Now I'm just about through. I thank God for the generosity of this church. In many senses, it's almost legendary.

In some parts of the UK, that's not too strong a description, and in India, there are some people who feel that at Worthing Tabernacle, we just have 500 saints. I've never disillusioned them of that, because I'm a proud man, basically. But God is calling us, I believe, to even greater fidelity in this area of our giving.

Martin Luther says that conversion affects two things. First of all, you convert your heart, and then you convert your wallet, and that was pretty shrewd thinking coming from Luther, who was taken up very much with theology, and less with practical things. Now we have a program this year to underpin our mission work, as well as to make contribution for the ongoing of the ministry here in this church.

And I'm asking young people, and older friends, and middle-aged people, as I speak to myself, handle your finances as though you were, as indeed you are, a steward of God. One of the greatest temptations, I speak now to six couples who are proposing marriage this year, one of the greatest temptations for married couples is in some way to eat away their tithing commitment to the Lord, because to get married is an expensive business, I speak from experience. And there is a temptation to rob Peter to pay Paul, to use that absurd proverbial expression.

God blesses that man, that couple, that boy, that girl. Yes, I'll bring it down to our children. Who deal honorably with their finance, who ensure that their tithes are paid to the Lord's work.

I'm not pleading for money at the tab, I'm certainly not pleading money for myself, I'm far too proud for that. But I am pleading for God's body to be well financed around the world. And not only that, I'm pleading for the blessings that are attendant upon ensuring that you've got the collection right in your thinking, because God does bless those who deal honorably with their finance.

Of that, there can be no question at all. You young couples, like myself, with a mortgage, you bask in the blessings of the government who say, well, we'll give you tax back because your mortgage is right up to the eyebrows and almost coming out of your ears. And so you don't write a letter, dear Mrs. Thatcher, please, I really don't want this provision.

You say, thank goodness it was the socialist government that brought it in and the Tories haven't thrown it out or something, or something like that. Do you have that same shrewdness in the way you handle your tithes and your covenant, your money? You see, one day my heart will be declared before Jesus. There are some things that the Lord Jesus will have to sort out between me and him and maybe other people.

We'll all stand before the judgment seat of Christ, not the judgment seat of God in terms of damnation and salvation, we bypass that, but the judgment seat of Christ. I'll stand before him. Not only my heart will be exposed and my attitudes, my relationships here in the tab and elsewhere, and my secrets, but also my bank balance and how I lived my life.

There are two things you will never do in heaven. Have you ever thought of this? You will never win a soul. Soul winning is the prerogative of the church here on earth.

When you die, it's the end of your possibility of winning a soul. And the second thing is tithing. You'll never tithe in heaven.

Tithing is a privilege of God's people here on this earth. And when Paul writes to the Corinthians, having set up the scenario of God's eternal purposes, he leans over and he says, brothers, now about the collection, let's get to it. And we have every indication historically that they got to it.

And they were honorable in the way that they dealt with their finances, as in measure I feel we're honorable in this fellowship. Then those of us who need any corrective at all, let's take this word from the apostle Paul and put it into practice for Jesus' sake. Amen.

God, we pray that you will absorb us afresh in your agape love and that from our total personality and from every habit that we practice may radiate something of the generosity of the Christ. We thank you for what you have done for us. It leaves us spellbound.

Help us in turn, financially, materially, temporally, in every possible way we can advance the kingdom of God to make our hearty sacrificial donations. And this we pray, imploring your blessings upon us in his name. Amen.