A New years resolution

Now, we read from 2 Samuel, chapter 24, and we commence at the 18th verse. The context of this reading I think perhaps you'll be familiar with, as it wasn't so long ago that I directed your attention to this passage on a Sunday evening at the tabernacle. And Gad came that day to David and said unto him, Go up, rear an altar unto the Lord in the threshing floor of Arana, the Jebusite.

And David, according to the saying of Gad, went up as the Lord commanded, and Arana looked and saw the king and his servants coming on toward him. And Arana went out and bowed himself before the king on his face upon the ground. And Arana said, Wherefore is my lord the king come to his servant? And David said, To buy the threshing floor of thee, to build an altar unto the Lord that the plague may be stayed from the people.

And Arana said unto David, Let my lord the king take, and offer up what seemeth good unto him. Behold, here be oxen for burnt sacrifice, and threshing instruments, and other instruments of the oxen for wood. And all these things did Arana as a king give unto the king.

And Arana said unto the king, The Lord thy God accept thee. And the king said unto Arana, Nay, but I will surely buy it of thee at a price. Neither will I offer burnt offerings unto the Lord my God of that which doth cost me nothing.

So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver. And David built there an altar unto the Lord, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. So the Lord was entreated for the land, and the plague was stayed from Israel.

Now, follow me please in the ninth chapter of Luke's gospel, on the fifty-seventh verse, where we read of three men who wanted to be disciples of the Lord Jesus, but didn't make the grade. Luke 9, 57. And it came to pass that as they went in the way, a certain man said unto him, Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest.

And Jesus said unto him, Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head. He said unto another, Follow me. But he said, Lord, suffer me first, to go and bury my father.

And Jesus said unto him, Let the dead bury their dead, but go thou and preach the kingdom of God. And another also said, Lord, I will follow thee, but let me first go bid them farewell, which are at home at my house. And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.

Amen. Let me read to you again just a sentence, if you please, an extract from the 24th verse of 2 Samuel 24. And then we have a very brief prayer together.

Neither will I offer unto the Lord my God that which doth cost me nothing. Neither will I offer to the Lord my God that which doth cost me nothing. Father, we have already offered these moments to you, and again we're enlisting the aid of the Holy Spirit.

We pray that every heart shall be spoken to, and we ask, O Lord, that honor and glory shall accrue to your name, as the result of our response to our meditation around the word of God this evening may be so simple and so clear that all shall understand, and yet so profound that all shall be sent away, musing over the things that we have discussed together. For Jesus' sake, amen. Now, if you were present this morning, you will recall that I tried to preach to you on a subject I entitled, A New Year's Consolation.

And my subject matter stemmed from the church motto, verse for 1976, the Lord knows the way that we take. Now what I want to do this evening is to complement the morning's ministry by preaching to you on a New Year's resolution. And for this purpose, I want to employ the words I have taken from the 24th verse of this chapter, neither will I offer unto the Lord my God that which costs me nothing.

I'd like you, if you please and if you feel that this is a word of the Lord to your own heart, to make this at least one of your resolutions during the next 12 months, to offer to the Lord something that is costly, or to put it in the negative as Scripture does, not to offer to the Lord that which costs you nothing. I suppose in one sense I could be called a grammar school reject in as much as I was advised to leave school earlier than some of my contemporaries did. And I went out into the wide world and managed to acquire a job in the health department of the local education office.

They had a health department for the schools, and my work was purely administrative, not much more than the level of an office boy. And I recall that during the three years I was there, on at least two occasions I was delegated towards the end of the year to help Fred, who was our porter, do an inventory of the various clinics, and we had a whale of a time going from place to place checking up the bottles of methylated spirits and the syringes and the hypodermic needles and, you know, that sort of thing, counting them all up and trying to work out just what the local education authority owned and what needed to be ordered for the forthcoming year. In a word, we were doing an inventory.

We were taking stock of what the local education authority owned. And I suppose it was a beneficial thing, at least I hope so. I don't recall my boss telling me off for anything wrong that we did during that period.

He seemed to be quite pleased with the results. It's good at the end of the year to take an inventory, particularly if you run a business or something like that, to know where you stand materially and financially. It's also good as a Christian to take a spiritual inventory and to ask yourself, what have you done for Jesus Christ? What investment did you make during the last twelve months? Or did you take your religion on the cheap? Did you sponge on the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ to the extent that you felt because He has done so much for you at Calvary, you've no real reason or need to make much of an effort as a Christian? I can't really think that anyone could con themselves into that position.

And yet I suppose if one is honest and if one is realistic, one has to make the conclusion that some do. And maybe the temptation is a general one for us all. To offer to the Lord that which costs us nothing.

That's what David didn't want to do. Not in this particular situation. I don't want to go into the context because I dealt with it some weeks ago.

But one thing that stands out paramount from this particular incident is here is a man who wants to give to the Lord something that's going to be costly. Something that's going to require expenditure. And I ask you in 1976 to have the same attitude towards your service for the Lord.

Make this your New Year's resolution. Take an inventory of what you did in the past and if you're disgusted at your performance, then by the power of the Holy Ghost, resolve before God that the twelve months that are to come will be ones in which you invest your time and your talent in the service of Jesus. One of the most moving experiences, I recall, in my spiritual pilgrimage happened about ten or perhaps twelve years ago.

I was then in association with a church in South London and from time to time I preached. And on one occasion we invited a lady to sing a solo. I reckon she was about fifty years of age and she'd just come through a very serious operation.

She'd had something wrong with part of her brain and the surgeons had cut into her head and they performed the necessary surgery. She said before she sang that when she was on the operating table, that is just before they had prepared her for the operation, when before she had actually been made unconscious, she was rather fearful about going into the presence of the Lord at that particular moment. Not because she wasn't saved, but when she looked back upon her life and contrasted all that she had done and all that the Lord had done for her, it seemed so meagre.

And she felt distinctly and acutely embarrassed. And she was wishing before God that she might have another lease of life and if she did have that, then she would invest the months and the years within the grace of God in the service of Jesus Christ. Now, these words prefaced the solo that she was to sing.

And she sang out that hymn that some of you perhaps know, By and by when I look on his face, Face that was scarred, brow that was marred, I'll wish I'd given him more, More, far, far more, More of my life than I ever gave before, By and by when I look on his face, I'll wish I'd have given him more, Now, the preacher really didn't need to do anything after that solo had been sung because God's message had certainly been transmitted to us through music that night. Here was a lady whose request was answered. God had given to her an extra few years.

She'd been brought to that particular point of crisis even before her operation, and she had realized that the service that she had offered before was not really honoring to the Lord. It had not been costly enough. And when she contrasted what she had done with what God had done for her, she felt distinctly embarrassed.

And those words were riveted upon my memory, and I tell you honestly that I've never forgotten them, and I've never forgotten that service. And I ask you to make the resolve of that lady your own resolve as you face 1976. Offer to the Lord that which costs you something.

David, you see, needed to make a sacrifice to the Lord. As I say, the details of this chapter don't concern us at the moment. And there was a man by Orano who was prepared to give David all that he needed, the place for the altar to be erected, and indeed the very utensils that were required, the wood and the animals, everything prepared for him.

He could take it as a gift. But David will not take the generosity of Orano. Why? Well, you see, it will interfere with the quality of service that he wants to offer God.

If you receive a gift and then give it to someone else, there is no merit in your giving to someone else. If your service to God costs you nothing, then there is no merit in that service at all. David, I say, and let's make this one of the categories of my address this evening, understood a little bit about the divine philosophy of giving.

What do I mean? Well, if you'll allow the word, he had an insight into God's technique when God gives. God had given much to David, and David placed his indebtedness on record. God had given to David in a loving fashion and in a selfless fashion and in an appropriate way.

And, you know, that's how I would divide up the philosophy of divine giving. It's always done lovingly. It's always done selflessly.

It's always done appropriately. David sets down his thanks to the Lord in the 23rd Psalm, where he testifies to the goodness of God. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

And at the end of his life, David could have rewritten the Psalm only in the past tense. The Lord has been my shepherd, I've never wanted. He's led me in green pastures.

He's led me by the still waters. He's always spread that table in the wilderness for me. My God has dealt lovingly with me.

My God has dealt selflessly with me. My God has dealt appropriately with me. And David's insight into the divine philosophy of giving, I say, is developed in the New Testament.

And those three features of divine benevolence are encapsuled, are wound up in John 3 and verse 16. For God so loved the world, he gave lovingly, that he gave his only begotten Son, he gave selflessly, so that whoever believed on him should not perish, but have eternal life, he gave appropriately. This is always the feature of God's giving.

It's loving, it's selfless, it's appropriate. How do you give? You who are parents do give selflessly to your children. I think some of you do, but maybe some of you err on your selfless giving.

Maybe one can give selflessly, but not appropriately. You could give too much, couldn't you? You could harm a child by giving into him all the time. But you see, the divine giving is never like this, it's always appropriate, it always suits the need.

David has a need, God responds to that need. The world has a need, God responds to that need. I require God's help for what? For salvation, for I'm a sinner.

And in a loving, selfless fashion, God responds appropriately to my need. That's what I would call the philosophy of divine giving. Now in turn, David wants to give to God.

Not with a desire to repay him, for that would be to trade in absurdity. Who can repay God for all that he has done? But with a desire practically to put on record the fact that he is grateful. Grateful for the mercies of God's salvation, grateful for his forgiveness, because prior to this event, David has done something that has been absolutely stupid.

He has disobeyed God. And David wants now to show his thankfulness to the Lord, because God has forgiven him. And as David is aware of the features of the way in which God gives, so David is also informed that there are certain fashions in which one could give to God by way of return, and those gifts would be unacceptable.

Let me repeat that in case you lost the thread with all those words. It's possible for you to give to God in return, and for your giving to be completely unacceptable. When David sinned against God, you remember how he committed adultery, you remember how he murdered, how he broke at least three of the Ten Commandments.

Eventually he was filled with remorse, and his penitential psalm, the 51st, records his regret. What does he have to say towards the end of that psalm? Let me paraphrase it. Lord, had I felt that you would have forgiven me had I offered sacrifices of bulls and of oxen, then I would have done it.

Had I felt that in some way you would have been placated by these offerings, then I would have brought these before you, and I would have endeavored to have won forgiveness on that measure, on those grounds. But David realizes that that sort of offering would be completely unacceptable to God, for David had deliberately sinned, and there was no way, not in the Jewish law, not in the Mosaic regulation, where a premeditated sin could be forgiven. The offering that David would have brought before the Lord would have been unacceptable on that basis.

The later Hebrews were not as perceptive spiritually as David, and in the time of the minor prophet Micah, he had to take them to task. You see, a permissive society had dawned amongst the Hebrews, and they believed that God could be farmed off, God could be placated, provided that they brought into their sanctuaries, into the temple and into the various places where offerings were made, all the bulls and all the oxen that they could procure. And provided they did this, then they'd be forgiven.

And in very strong language that almost matches that of the prophet Jeremiah, Micah, in the name of God, rejects those offerings. He won't have them at all. They're completely unacceptable.

An attempt to gift to God, and yet the gift is not valid. The gift is not accepted. Jump over into the New Testament.

Here's the Lord Jesus in the temple area. He's watching people bring to the temple their finance, their monies. And there's a great display made by some of the rich affluent men.

And everyone looks with amazement. And there is a sense of wonder in their eyes as they see men take out their wallets and pour shekel after shekel into the temple coffers. But Jesus suggests that that offering is not acceptable to God.

Come through into the acts of the apostles, and there are two by the name of Ananias and Sapphira. And they bring quite a lot to the Lord, to half of their possessions. But that sacrifice is not acceptable to the Lord, although it would have amounted to a great deal.

Why is it that these examples of giving that I have brought before you were unacceptable to God? Because they were given to God on the wrong basis. The idea was to fob God off. Smuggled into them was the fallacy of justification by works.

You know you can pay for your own salvation provided you give enough. There were so many mixed motives involved and the net result was that the word unacceptable was written over these particular gifts. They were not acceptable to the Lord.

Now David doesn't want to give on that basis. He does not want to give that which costs him nothing. He wants to bring a sacrifice to the Lord that is acceptable to him.

Have you ever given a sacrifice to God? Something that is provoked by your own love for the Lord and by nothing else. Something that really costs you a great deal. There's all the difference in the world you know between an offering and a sacrifice.

Do you remember the story that's sometimes told of a pig and a hen that were chatting over the contribution or the offering that they made or would make one day to the farmer's breakfast. And the hen was saying that as far as bacon and eggs were concerned his offering was the greater. And the pig said no it isn't.

He said my offering is the greater. Yours is a contribution and mine is a sacrifice. And if you think it through as far as bacon and eggs is concerned the pig was dead right.

A sacrifice is something that's terribly costly. A contribution is something that you can do without. Have you differentiated between a sacrifice and a contribution in what you offer to the Lord? These people in Old Testament days and some in New Testament days didn't.

And they mixed up other motives with what they offered to the Lord and therefore it was completely unacceptable. But David is right when he sets down this principle so clearly. I will not offer to the Lord that which costs me nothing.

What are you giving to the Lord? Well let me take this a little more slowly in the development of my argument. How are we to give to the Lord as Christian people? I say that we are to give painstakingly. Remember the story of the wise men.

These three kings who came from the Orient. I know it doesn't say there were three kings in the New Testament. Some say there were six.

Some say there were twelve. Some say there were twenty. I'm not very concerned about arithmetic but I am concerned about these men.

They fascinate me. Imagine them as they set off on their journey from the Orient. These are trained men, scientists, astronomers.

And they come all the way from the east probably up via the Fertile Crescent and eventually into Palestine. What a journey. I've often thought about them.

The way that they crossed the desert. The way that they were sitting on their camels pushing their way further and further towards the west. Risking a great deal.

For what? Well so that they might find the Lord Jesus. And when they came to Jerusalem and eventually they arrived at Bethlehem what did they do? They presented gifts to Jesus. Gifts that were acceptable because the gifts were appropriate and the gifts had cost an awful amount to bring.

They'd risked their lives. They came in a painstaking fashion. And I say as far as our giving to the Lord is concerned we are to copy the wise men.

We are to give in a painstaking way. Not that which costs us nothing but that which costs us a great deal. They were prepared to come from the east to the west to find the Savior and to give Him divine honors.

And we could all take a lesson out of their book. I speak with sincerity when I say if the Savior were born today I think there is no obstacle that would stop me getting to Him. No sea would be wide enough.

No desert stretched mile after mile far enough. No mountain that would impede. One would want to come to the Lord.

One would want to bow one's knee. One would want to bring Him our gifts. And however painstaking the journey however many difficulties might have to be overcome we would go and we would give Him divine honors.

I say we are to give painstakingly. And then let me suggest we are to give reflectively. Reflecting on what? Well reflecting on what God has done for us.

No doubt this is what provoked David. He remembered that God had dealt with him in a very gracious fashion. In the Psalms he says daily hath He loaded me with blessing.

There had been a daily delivery from heaven and David had been the recipient. Now has not God dealt graciously with us? And do we not reflect upon His good offices? Did He not send Jesus Christ into the world to die for us? Does He not hang on yonder skull-shaped hill for your sin and for my sin? And is not the clearest and most eloquent display of the love of God seen in the fact that His Son was dying on our behalf? Do you ever allow that to fade from your thoughts? Do you ever allow it to be pushed from your conscious into your subconscious so that you forget all about it for week after week? You are not to do that. You are to reflect upon God's gracious giving to you.

The Apostle Paul could never get away from the thought of what Jesus had done on his behalf. And even towards the end of the illustrious Apostle's life he refers to Jesus and says, Who loved me and gave Himself for me. Why does Paul live the sort of life that he does? Why is he hounded from pillar to post? Why is he hunted like some common criminal? Why has someone said that to follow Paul's footsteps around Asia Minor is like tracing the footsteps of a bleeding rabbit in the snow? He lives like this because he's reflecting upon what Jesus has done for him.

Paul could have anticipated C.T.'s study in those famous words, If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then there is no sacrifice too great for me to make for him. Paul would not give to Jesus Christ that which cost Paul nothing, for Jesus had given to Paul that which cost Jesus everything. And on that basis we should always be reflecting.

Reflecting upon what God has done for us and giving not in a sense to repay but in a sense to show the quality of our gratitude. I say we are to give painstakingly, we are to give reflectively, we are to give, yes, generously. Not letting our right hand know what our left hand is doing.

And I'm not just speaking about finance. I'm not so finance orientated that I feel the only contribution that an individual can make in a local church is in terms of pound, shillings and pence. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that finance is the cheapest thing that you can bring to God.

For the majority of us here could put a pound note or a five pound note in an offering and not really be much impoverished as a result. Finance is not everything. It's perhaps one of the smallest things that we can bring to the Lord although its importance is not to be underestimated.

But what about time? What about talents? What about prayer? What about Bible study? How generous are you with the time that you carve out each day and invest in some spiritual discipline? You say you haven't got time. Some of you know I went to some seminars at London University the other day on how to manage your time, how to engage in church administration in a more profitable fashion. If you notice how the tabernacle suddenly improves during this last fortnight, you haven't.

Well, I'm still working on it. But my lecturer was endeavouring to show how you could get far more things done in a day than what you normally did. And by the time he was through with his seminars I was absolutely convinced that I really did nothing or hadn't done until that moment.

We can all pack far more into a day than what we really do. And none of us can excuse ourselves from spiritual disciplines on the ground that we have no time. You've time to eat.

You've time to wash. We're pleased about that. You've time to make yourself look presentable.

Have you time to spend in the service of God in some spiritual activity? How are you to give? To God you're to give painstakingly. You're to give reflectively. You're to give generously.

Let me try and close down my address this evening by just putting up one more question. What are we to give? David says, I will not give to the Lord that which costs me nothing. All right, David, then what am I to give to God? The thing that I treasure most.

For Abraham it was Isaac. For Hannah it was Samuel. For Paul it was his profession as a Pharisee and one of the greatest intellects that Judaism ever had.

For you it may be something completely different, but if there is anything in your life that you are trying to hold on to as your own and you are placing before God, then that is the thing that you have to reflect upon and to place at God's disposal. For you have no rights of your own if you are a Christian, for you do not belong to yourself, you belong to Jesus Christ. We're not our own, we're bought with a price.

We are to give to God our dearest possession, whatever that possession may be. We are to give to God, says the apostle Paul, our bodies. Present your bodies a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable unto God.

Now that's going to cost you something. It's going to cost our young men in this congregation something. It's not easy to present your body to God, not in the 20th century with all the temptations that have brought your way.

Not easy to present your mind to the Lord, for that word body includes the mind in this context, with all the thoughts that are pushed out, the television and the radio and the newspapers. But the Bible says we are to present our bodies to the Lord, and that's going to be a costly business. But remember how much it costs Jesus to present His body on the cross as an atonement for our sins.

We are to present our service before the Lord. In other words, we are to offer Him things that we will do for Him day by day. Did you hear about the Negro preacher who was bemoaning the fact that there were so many people with divers' diseases in his church? He was preaching on the text.

They brought to Jesus all sick people that were taken with divers' diseases. And he went on to say, Now the doctors can scrutinize you, analyze you, and sometimes cure your ills, but when you have divers' diseases, then only the Lord can cure. And brethren, he went on to say, We've got an epidemic of divers' diseases amongst us.

Some dive for the door after worship is over. Some dive for the television during the evening service. Others dive for the car and take a trip over the weekend.

Then a few dive into the flurry of fault-finding every time the church takes a stand on something. People with divers' diseases who never offer service to the Lord, may God heal us of divers' diseases if such a condition prevails in the tabernacle. We are to offer, I say, our dearest possession to the Lord, our bodies to the Lord, our service to the Lord, our relationships to the Lord.

That point needs to be considered. Your friendship with your closest friend, your relationship with your wife or with your husband, to be offered to the Lord. Why? Because in relationships we are to glorify God.

You see, everything that we have as Christian people belongs to God, and therefore all should be offered to Him for His glory. Now is your relationship with your friend, with your wife, with your husband, is it glorifying to the Lord? If it is not, why not analyze Scripture and implement Scriptural principles and swing that relationship back onto a right biblical foundation so that God is glorified? Because when we give our bodies to the Lord, when we give our service to the Lord, when we give our relationships to the Lord, when we give our dearest possession to the Lord, then the Lord accepts all these things as a costly sacrifice. And this surely is what we're about during 1976.

We will not offer to the Lord that which costs us nothing. So let me say, as I summarize my address right now, that we've looked into the divine philosophy of giving. God gives lovingly, selflessly, and appropriately.

We've looked into the fact that it is possible to offer God things that are completely unacceptable to Him because our motives are wrong. We are to give painstakingly, reflectively, and generously, and we're to give our bodies, our service, our relationships, and our possessions to the Lord. Let's give to God that which costs us a great deal during this oncoming year.

Do you remember what the carol said? What can I give Him, poor though I am? If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb. If I were a wise man, I would do my part. But what I can I give Him.

Give my heart. That's costly. Let's continue to give that quality of gift to the Lord, for Jesus' sake.

Let us pray. Our Father and our God, we've dealt with practical things from your Word this evening, and there's no one here that has so progressed in the school of sanctification that certain of these topics touched upon have no relevance at all to their lives. So where we are challenged and where we are convicted, and where we can trust what Jesus has done for us over against what we did for Him during the past 12 months and are embarrassed, then help us, Heavenly Father, to make amends and to offer during this coming year those sacrifices which are acceptable and well-pleasing to Yourself.

Father, exploit our lives for Your glory and keep us living in such a way that brings honor to the name of Jesus, our Savior, for His sake. Amen.