We started a new series at church last night, on money and how we think about and man­age it. In the first of five talks, we looked at the rela­tion­ship which exists between God and money.

It was… very help­ful, I think, in terms of per­spec­tive. The thing which struck me most about the talk was a ref­er­ence made to 1 Chron­i­cles 29:14 – 16:

1 Chron­i­cles 29

¹⁴ “But who am I, and who are my peo­ple, that we should be able to give as gen­er­ously as this? Every­thing comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand. ¹⁵ We are aliens and strangers in your sight, as were all our fore­fa­thers. Our days on earth are like a shadow, with­out hope. ¹⁶ O LORD our God, as for all this abun­dance that we have pro­vided for build­ing you a tem­ple for your Holy Name, it comes from your hand, and all of it belongs to you.

There’s a pas­sage in the Old Tes­ta­ment, before Jesus came along, which instructs the peo­ple of Israel to give a tenth of all they get. One ref­er­ence is Deuteron­omy 26:11 – 13, which instructs them to “set… aside a tenth of all your pro­duce” to give away.

Later on, in the New Tes­ta­ment, Jesus crit­cises the reli­gious teach­ers of the day for being hyp­o­crit­i­cal in the way they’re fol­low­ing God’s law. In Luke 11:42, Jesus says “Woe to you Phar­isees, because you give God a tenth of your mint, rue and all other kinds of gar­den herbs, but you neglect jus­tice and the love of God. You should have prac­ticed the lat­ter with­out leav­ing the for­mer undone.” Obvi­ously, Jesus is crit­i­cal of the reli­gious teach­ers (Phar­isees) here… so, how much should we give?

The Chron­i­cles pas­sage quoted above puts every­thing in per­spec­tive for me. Con­tex­tu­ally, this is being writ­ten just after a great tem­ple has been built for God by the Israelites… the Israelites giv­ing so that this could hap­pen. But King David says “Who am I, and who are my peo­ple, that we should be able to give as gen­er­ously as this? Every­thing comes from you…”

So, every­thing comes from God. Okay. This is the killer bit: “…we have given only what comes from your hand.” The trans­la­tion I’m using doesn’t put excla­ma­tion marks after that state­ment, but I think there should be. They’re not really giv­ing any­thing! Every­thing they (and, con­se­quently, we) have was given to them by the Lord — it already belonged to him!

This really changes the way that I think about every­thing… it’s not as though I would be giv­ing 10%; I’d be keep­ing 90%.

“It comes from your hand, and all of it belongs to you.”

Tags: generosity, giving, God, King, money, Who am