Thanks-for-Giving

“Thanks-for-Giving”

© Rev. Thomas B. Cundiff, Pastor

November 18, 2012

 

Exodus 35: 4-9  and 21

As I read a short portion of scripture, please know that a complete reading of chapters 35 and 36 in their entirety will give you a full picture of what this text says to us about Moses and the gracious people he led……let us now hear the Word of God from Exodus 35: 4-9 and vs. 21.  

4 Moses said to all the congregation of the Israelites: This is the thing that the Lord has commanded: ⁵Take from among you an offering to the Lord; let whoever is of a generous heart bring the Lord’s offering: gold, silver, and bronze; ⁶blue, purple, and crimson yarns, and fine linen; goats’ hair, ⁷tanned rams’ skins, and fine leather;^* acacia wood, ⁸oil for the light, spices for the anointing-oil and for the fragrant incense, ⁹and onyx stones and gems to be set in the ephod and the breast piece.

²¹And they came, everyone whose heart was stirred, and everyone whose spirit was willing, and brought the Lord’s offering to be used for the tent of meeting, and for all its service, and for the sacred vestments.

AND ADDING THIS VERSE I will put into context in the sermon:  “Moses gave command, and word was proclaimed throughout the camp:  “No man or woman is to make anything else as an offering for the sanctuary (tabernacle or church).”  Vs. 36:6   

Colossians 1: 3-23

 

3In our prayers for you we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 4for we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, 5because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. You have heard of this hope before in the word of the truth, the gospel 6that has come to you. Just as it is bearing fruit and growing in the whole world, so it has been bearing fruit among yourselves from the day you heard it and truly comprehended the grace of God. 7This you learned from Epaphras, our beloved fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf, 8and he has made known to us your love in the Spirit.

 

9For this reason, since the day we heard it, we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God.

 

11May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully 12giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. 13He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

 

 

I.  Moses -- Background

 

Imagine this setting twelve thousand years before the birth of Jesus:  An orphaned baby found in a papyrus basket among the reeds and bulrushes along the Nile river by the daughter of Pharaoh.  As the ancient story goes, this baby receives the name that the world would praise and respect forever:  Mosheh which means “he is good” – or MOSES.  (Exodus 2: 1-10)  This baby grows and matures as a young adult….a complex man, a great leader to be revered by tens of millions who would follow his law and commandments – all who have access to God’s Holy Word!  For if you read and study the bible, you know about Moses.         

 

What we don’t want to hear about often in reading about Moses?  As a young adult he does a horrible thing.  He commits a murder.  Look it up in the second chapter of Exodus.  Moses murders an Egyptian slave master and buried him in the sand. (vs. 15)  Interesting how we slide over some of these facts when teaching Sunday school classes….how easy it is to make this type of murder seem, almost, glamorous!

 

Murder was an inexcusable crime in the eye of the Pharaoh….yet we also know the Pharaoh was a man who also did some horrible, outrageous things to torture his followers.  Surely, regardless his reason for killing the Egyptian slave master, Moses if found would be put to death. 

 

What really makes this story interesting?  Moses fleeing from the Pharaoh’s wrath would become a great leader among all those who were the ‘suffering children of God’.  He would lead these afflicted, tormented and tortured people on a 40 year Exodus out of Egypt to the promised land of freedom and security and hope.  [one has to wonder if there are those in Palestine today looking for someone to lead them from the war-torn region toward a new, promised land!]         

Moses is best known for his laws – Mosaic Laws as we know them. The ‘Ten Commandments’ remain to this day an anchor in civilized societies.  Moses was a role-model for Jesus who would also become an advocate for the suffering, tormented and tortured people of the world.  It was Jesus who summarized all the laws of Moses with his own summary of the law:  “You shall love the Lord your God and your neighbor as yourselves.”  (Paraphrase, Matt. 22: 36-40)

II.  Digging Deeper

 Digging deeper into our scriptural lesson:  In context, Moses brings the these tormented, enslaved people seeking freedom from the Pharaoh in Egypt to a land where they could prosper – a land rich with “milk and honey” (Exodus 33:3).  These people who had to bare excruciating pain and suffering suddenly, because of Moses, had more than they could have possibly dreamed.  They are overwhelmed and overjoyed with where Moses brought them.  The were survivors of the trials of their exodus discovering new life and new freedoms and a wonderful, rich new covenant relationship with God.  So richly blessed, these humble and enriched and empowered people of God would build a wonderful tabernacle in which to worship God. 

This week before thanksgiving, I have to wonder if these ancient sentiments of God’s people aren’t similar to what we feel as Americans, crossing an ocean to embrace freedom from tyrannies and enslavement in our lives.  Our national pride as Americans is found in taking time this thanksgiving to “glorify God” for blessings received.  And what do people do when they feel so blessed from God?  What do we do?  We build temples and synagogues and cathedrals and tabernacles.  We build churches in order to give glory to God for blessings received.      

Getting really specific, the scriptural story teller talks in our lesson today of the offerings of the people given as a matter of personal conscience—so enthusiastic and overjoyed about giving.  “They cannot restrain themselves!”[1]   Just look at this list of gifts outlined in our scripture today:

Gold, silver, bronze

Blue and purple and crimson yarns

Fine linens

Goats’ hair, tanned rams’ skins and find leather

Acacia wood

Oil for the lights

Fragrant incense

Onyx stones and gems….

 

There is a secondary level of giving in this lesson – giving of time and talent and the actual labor in building the tabernacle – with the women spinning from goats’ and rams’ skins in making of vestments; and the men constructing the sacred Ark of the Covenant. 

 

And then this valuable verse we need to hear – not part of our scripture lesson today -- Exodus 35: 29: 

“All the Israelite women and men whose hearts had made them willing to bring anything for the work that the Lord had commanded by Moses to be done brought it as a freewill offering to the lord.”

This subtle and significant point:  Moses does not require the people to give.  We don’t require your giving to the church. We give you opportunities to give and to pledge as a response to God for what God has given us.  Yes, pledges do help us plan a budget.  But we do not require any payment of dues.  We don’t demand the payment of any kind of tax[2].   In this church we continue in the tradition of Moses in asking for gifts from the heart—from what you can return to God from blessings received. 

Going further with scripture – Exodus 36: 6 says of a Moses who is so overwhelmed with the generosity of all these people:   

“…{he} gave the command and word was proclaimed throughout the camp:  ‘No man or woman is to make anything else as an offering for the sanctuary.’  So the people were restrained from bringing:  for what they had already brought was more than enough to do all the work.”

Another subtle and significant point:  The people had more than enough to give!   This is powerful scripture, given all that people had gone through in their forty year exodus from Egypt.  These people had really suffered.  Family members had died.    Yet under the steady, forward leading direction of Moses they found the Promised Land feeling so blessed as to give God, through the building of the tabernacle, more than was needed.  In this church, with all that I see YOU give in time and talents in maintaining this church….you too give back to God more than what is often needed!

 

III.              Thanks-for-Giving

I would invite you now to do something…..something different.   Ready?   I would ask you to stand.  Join hands.  Find someone in front of you or in back of you or across isles…. And join hands!

We gather this week in our colonial-American tradition of feasting on wonderful bounties of harvest.  At family tables near and far we bow our heads in gratitude for blessings received. 

In this tabernacle—this church—we join hands and pray and say to God—repeat after me:

Thanks-for-giving us life and family and friends.

Thanks-for-giving us this bountiful country in which to live.

Thanks-for-giving us this church!

Thanks-for-giving us, Lord, all that we need!  AMEN.

 

Please remain standing as we open our hymnals to # 375 – a song of dedication for YOUR GENEROSITY, let’s sing:  ‘LORD OF ALL GOOD, OUR GIFTS WE BRING TO YOU’  

 

AMEN                                                                                           

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[1]  Sermon at the Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, September 16, 2012, “Restrain that Giver!”

 

[2]  Per Capita a Tax?  Perhaps!  At the same time, we do not require the payment of this per capita tax…..