WE GET TO GIVE
Psalm 50:8-12 (LB) I have no complaint about the sacrifices you bring to my altar, for you bring them regularly. But it isn’t sacrificial bullocks and goats that I really want from you. For all the animals of field and forest are mine! The cattle on a thousand hills! And all the birds upon the mountains! If I were hungry, I would not mention it to you—for all the world is mine and everything in it.
Obligation. Duty. Burden. Israel had been mechanically obliging God with its offerings, but it was not from the heart. He says to them, “You’ve been offering sacrifices to Me without any heart in it! Do you think I need your worship and offerings? I own everything already!”
God doesn’t need our worship or our money. It is we that need to give it so we can become more like Him.
We don’t HAVE to give….We GET to give!
God is a Giver. He gave us the earth. He gave us companionship with one another. He gave us His Son Jesus. He gave us His Holy Spirit.
John 3:16 God so loved, He gave His only Son…. Matthew 7:11 ….how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! Matthew 7:7 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you."
If we are going to be like our Heavenly Father, then we must be givers too! Not just out of religious obligation but instead, as the outflow of the love and grace we have received from God as His children.
That is what is so powerful about God’s command for us to tithe. When we tithe, our propensity to be selfish, stingy, and greedy is cut away from our hearts and our God-character begins to be revealed. Then God responds with such delight in how we are reflecting His attribute, that He turns around and gives right back to us. You really can’t out-give our God!
Malachi 3:10 (NIV) 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 there will not be room enough to store it.
