Happy Givers

If you have ever had a godly ambition and your ambition was thwarted, then you will sympathize with King David. David wanted to build a temple for the Lord, but God wouldn't let him do it. In 1 Chronicles 28, we find David had called a great assembly of his leaders. His government officers were there, the priests were there, the captains and all the people who served in the army and in the treasury and in the government. They were all there. They are listed in 1 Chronicles 28:1. Then David arose to his feet. He's an old man now. David's ready to step off the scene and Solomon is going to take over. 

David wanted to build a beautiful temple. He said, "Hear me, my brethren and my people." I like that. I wish every leader had that same humble attitude. He didn't say, "Here I am, the king. Listen to me, my subjects." No, he says, "My brethren and my people. I had it in my heart to build a house of rest for the ark of the covenant of the Lord and for the footstool of our God, and had made preparations to build it. But God said to me, 'You shall not build a house for My name because you have been a man of war and have shed blood.'" 

Oh, how David wanted to build God's house. When you read the Psalms, you see how much he loved the house of the Lord. And yet he said he had made preparation. I appreciate that. You know, if I can't get a certain job done, I can help somebody else do it. The day is going to come when some of us who are older are going to move off the scene. Perhaps some of us should be moving sooner than we plan. It's good to know our times are in God's hands. And David didn't act as though the future of Israel depended only on him. The future of the church doesn't depend on you or me; it depends on the Lord. We do want to be faithful. 

Someone said to Charles Spurgeon one day, "What's going to happen to all this ministry when you leave?" And Spurgeon said, "God has somebody someplace to take my place. My job is to be faithful while I am here." Well, David appointed Solomon to be his successor. He gathered together all of his officers and leaders, and he took up an offering. He said, "We're going to all contribute to the house of God." 1 Chronicles 29 talks about that. In 1 Chronicles 29:2, David says, "Now for the house of my God I have prepared with all my might: gold and silver and bronze and iron and wood and precious stones." 1 Chronicles 29:3: "Moreover, because I have set my affection on the house of my God, I have given to the house of my God over and above all that I have prepared for the holy house, my own special treasure of gold and silver." Then in 1 Chronicles 29:5 he says, "Who then is willing to consecrate himself this day to the Lord?" And so the leaders came and they offered willingly. And it lists here all that they brought: the gold, the silver, the bronze, the iron, and the precious stones for the house of the Lord. 

Now 1 Chronicles 29:9: "Then the people rejoiced." Do you rejoice at offerings? When the pastor says, "Now we're going to take an extra offering today. Some of our missionaries need help," do you rejoice at that or do you say, "Oh no"? When you get a letter through the mail from some ministry that's a blessing to you, and that letter says, "We have some needs, please pray about it," do you crumple up that letter in anger and throw it in the wastebasket and say, "All they do is ask for money"? Now if that's the case, you'd better listen to what God has to say: "Then the people rejoiced, for they had offered willingly, because with a loyal heart they had offered willingly to the Lord; and King David also rejoiced greatly." David said, "I can go to my grave knowing that the house of God is taken care of." 

You know, we as Christians are forgiven. God has forgiven us. We are forgiving; we forgive others. And we are for giving. That's right. Every Christian must believe in giving because salvation is a gift. Jesus Christ is a gift. The Bible that you study is a gift. In John 17, our Lord Jesus said, "I have given them the words which You've given Me." Everything we have is a gift. In Him we live and move and have our being. And therefore, we are for giving. We are in favor of giving. Living is giving, and giving is living to the Christian who is walking in the Holy Spirit of God. Indeed, 2 Corinthians 9:7 is true: the Lord loves a cheerful giver. 

Well, what are the joys involved in true giving to God? Let's just go back to this day in David's life and find out what were the joys that motivated these people in their giving. Number one: there's the joy of pleasing the heart of God. Pleasing God's heart. 1 Chronicles 29:1: "Furthermore King David said to all the congregation: 'My son Solomon, whom alone God has chosen, is young and inexperienced.'" We older people talk like that, don't we? The younger generation needs help. Well, one day we were the younger generation. "And the work is great, because the temple is not for man but for the Lord God." That's the first thing you want to remember: that when you give, you aren't giving to the local church or to Back to the Bible or some other ministry; you are giving to the Lord, and that's what pleases God's heart. 

David, you know, was a man after God's own heart. Now, David sinned, but whenever he sinned, he confessed it and he repented. He loved God. He submitted to God. He wanted to please God. He loved God and he loved what God loved. And he wanted more than anything else to please Almighty God. He had so many opportunities just to please himself. He didn't—didn't use them. Rather, he said, "I want to do the things that please God." You see, he loved the house of God. 1 Chronicles 29:3: "Moreover, because I have set my affection on the house of my God, I have given." That's a great text. You see, where your treasure is, says Matthew 6:21, there will your heart be also. And so people say, "Oh, I love the church. I love missions. I love Back to the Bible." Well, where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. 

His love for God's house motivated him to give. His gratitude to God motivated him to give. Where do we get the material wealth to give to the Lord? We get it from the Lord. David knew that what he had had been given to him by God. Look at 1 Chronicles 29:12: "Both riches and honor come from You." Where did David get his honor? Who made him king? God. Who gave you the job that you have? God. "Riches and honor come from You, and You reign over all. In Your hand is power and might; in Your hand it is to make great and to give strength to all. Now therefore, our God, we thank You and praise Your glorious name. But who am I, and who are my people, that we should be able to offer so willingly as this?" Now get what he says in 1 Chronicles 29:14: "For all things come from You, and of Your own we have given You." Literally in the Hebrew it reads, "And of Your hand we have given You." 

He mentions God's hand three times. 1 Chronicles 29:12: "In Your hand is power and might. In Your hand it is to make great and to give strength to all." And "from Your hand, of Your hand, we have given to You." It's sort of like our children. You remember when your children were small and you gave them an allowance, and they saved a little bit of that allowance so they could buy you a birthday present or a Christmas present? Well, whatever they brought to you, you paid for. And we—we give to God so grudgingly. We give to God so—so carefully. We aren't—we aren't enthusiastic and generous. We forget that everything comes from Him. Oh, he loved God's house. He was grateful for God's blessing. And he just blesses the Lord. 

1 Chronicles 29:10: "Blessed are You, Lord God of Israel, our Father, forever and ever. Yours, O Lord, is the greatness, the power and the glory, the victory and the majesty; for all that is in heaven and in earth is Yours; Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and You are exalted as head over all." I tell you, you start worshipping God like that, you'll have no problem giving. The joy of pleasing God's heart. Showing Him we love Him and we appreciate Him and we want to glorify Him. 

Secondly, there's the joy of building God's temple. Here they were to build the house of the Lord. The ark of the covenant had been in a tent for years. David said, "I want to build a house, a magnificent house to the glory of God." That's what God's doing today. Today God is building a temple—the church. Now, our bodies are His temple. We know that: 1 Corinthians 6:19-20. But the church is His temple. I read in Ephesians 2:19-22: "Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner stone, in whom the whole building, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit." 

What's God doing today? He's building Himself a church, building a temple. And we are a part of that. Now, I notice the emphasis on the materials. 1 Chronicles 29:2: gold, silver, precious stones. 1 Chronicles 29:7-8: gold, silver, precious stones. What does Paul write about in 1 Corinthians 3, talking about the building of the church? Gold, silver, and precious stones. We've got to use the right materials. 1 Corinthians 3:12: "Now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one's work will become manifest." At the judgment seat of Christ, our offerings will pass through the fire. What we have built into His church will pass through the fire, our ministries. And David said, "I'm going to bring gold and silver and precious stones and consecrate all of this to the Lord." The joy of building God's temple. 

You know, God gave David the desire to build the temple, but He didn't give him the privilege of doing it. He gave him the desire. David got started. My generation is not going to finish all the work of the Lord. The next generation has to come along. I want to leave something behind to help the next generation get the job done and do it better. I just pray that somehow some sermon I've preached that's on a cassette, or some book I have written, or some work I have done by the goodness of the Lord, will last and help the next generation. The joy of building God's temple. God gave David the plans for the temple. 1 Chronicles 28:19: "All this," said David, "the Lord made me understand in writing, by His hand upon me, all the works of these plans." Rather interesting. All the details were given to David, and David wrote them down. He said, "Here, here's everything on how to build a temple." Well, God's given us His Word. And that Word tells us how to build our lives and how to build the church and to serve and glorify Him. 

The joy of building God's temple. The joy of pleasing God's heart. There's a third joy that motivates us in giving, and that's the joy of working together with God's people. Oh, there's so much division today. We can't agree on music and we can't agree on translations and we can't agree on this or that. But there's one thing we ought to be able to agree on: let's give to the Lord's work. That's what unites us. In 2 Corinthians 8 and 9, when Paul was taking up that offering for the poor saints in Jerusalem and in Judea, it united the churches. There was a fellowship, a oneness of giving. Now many people shared in this offering. David brought the loot from the wars. 1 Chronicles 29:2: he said, "I prepared with all my might gold and silver and iron and so forth." This was the spoil from the wars of the Lord. But he also gave of his own wealth. In 1 Chronicles 29:3 he said, "I brought money from my own treasury." And someone has calculated that David's gift was worth about $60 million. 

In 1 Chronicles 29:6, the leaders and the captains and all the officers, they brought their gifts. By the way, if you're an officer in the church, you ought to be a giver, a faithful giver. You have no right to spend the money of the Lord if you aren't faithful in your own giving. Pastor, don't say because you're a full-time servant of God you don't have to give to the work of the Lord in your local church. You be the best giver that you can possibly be. So David gave, and his officers gave, and the leaders gave, and people were sharing together in working together to the glory of God. Now that encourages me. I can't pay all the bills at the schools that we help to support, but I can do something. I can't do everything, but I can do something. And when I send my check to various mission boards to help get the gospel out, when I invest in various ministries and in the work of our local church where my wife and I belong and attend, I'm sharing with all of God's people. One of the most beautiful kinds of fellowship in all the world is the fellowship of giving. Paul wrote about that in Philippians 1. He thanked them for their fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now. They had given to his ministry. 

The joy of pleasing God's heart. The joy of building God's temple. The joy of working together with God's people. And the joy of ministering to the next generation. Paul tells us in Acts 13:36 that David, when he had served his own generation, died. But David not only served his own generation; he served generations to follow. And David is still serving us today. Every time I read the Psalms, David is serving me. In fact, it's through the family of David that the Lord Jesus Christ was born into this world. You and I would not be Christians today were it not for David's faithfulness. David did serve his generation. As a soldier, as a singer, as a king, he served his generation. He served the next generation and generations to follow. In the temple, they followed David's orders of service. They used the instruments that he had made. They used the songs that he had written. He served every generation following. 

You know, life is short. 1 Chronicles 29:15, David says, "For we are aliens and pilgrims before You... Our days on earth are as a shadow, and without hope." Literally, without abiding, without continuance. My friend, your life is short. You won't be here forever. What are you going to leave behind? What will you leave behind in your local church, in your family, in the ministry of the Lord? After God calls you home, are you going to have a continued ministry because you were faithful in your giving? God wants us to be faithful givers. He loves a cheerful giver. He tells us that He wants us to be joyful as we share with Him. 

Paul wrote about these Christians: "For I bear witness that according to their ability, yes, and beyond their ability, they were freely willing, imploring us with much urgency that we would receive the gift and the fellowship of the ministering to the saints." 2 Corinthians 8:3-4. The Lord does love a cheerful giver. Are you giving joyfully? If you're giving to please God's heart and to build God's work and to work together with God's people and to minister to the next generation, you can give with joy.