Encounter the Truth

Jonathan Griffiths: What does our giving reveal about our understanding of God himself? Does our giving reflect the reality that our money belongs to the all-sufficient God? God doesn't need our money, but what we do with our money reveals a great deal of what we think of him.

Steve Hill: Welcome to Encounter the Truth with Jonathan Griffiths. Jonathan, as we continue our message, "The Independent God," somebody tuning in may think, "Hey, we're going to talk about money in this broadcast," but that's not really the core of what this message is about either. I mean, this is just an example of a much bigger concept.

Jonathan Griffiths: Yeah, the big concept here is that God is entirely independent and self-sufficient. That means he doesn't rely upon anyone or anything because he is the creator of all things. And we touch upon money with that because sometimes Christians can think that God's work relies upon our money, God is reliant upon our money and our financial giving, and so we really need to get our act together and give money so that God can do his work.

But of course, God doesn't need anything from us. He calls us to be generous and to give to the work of the gospel, but doing so is a whole lot more about our spiritual well-being and the well-being of the church. It's not about God needing anything from us. And that's an important lesson for us to learn. What we give and how we use our money will say something of what we think about God, but we mustn't imagine that God is reliant upon us in any way.

Steve Hill: That's a great way to begin this time together, just being reminded of that truth. God does not need us, but as you pointed out last time, he loves us, and we want to get to know him and what he says in his word. So let's do just that as we continue this message, "The Independent God." Here is Jonathan.

Jonathan Griffiths: Now, you and I live in a very me-centered world. We live in a consumer culture that panders to our every need. We are the people of the iPhone and the iPad, a world built around me and my wants and my needs. We live in a culture that promotes self-determination and self-expression in every respect, and arguably our modern parenting methods and even our education system reinforce our natural me-centeredness in some pretty profound ways. That's our world. That's the culture in which we live.

And so for me to hear the Bible tell me that the creation is not about me, that God didn't make me because he couldn't imagine the universe without me, to hear these things is, I think, very offensive to our Western ear. Well, it may be offensive, but I do think it is the soul medicine we desperately need. God is dependent upon no one for his being, for his plans and his purposes, for his blessedness. That's the core, if you like, of God's independence.

The implications of this truth are huge. They're absolutely immense. And so with the minutes we have remaining, I'd like to try and apply them to three areas of our life together. First, I'd like to try and apply this truth to our worship. Now, properly understood, worship includes the whole of the believer's life. We worship God in all that we do, or at least we should. But here I do want to think about our corporate worship, and that's the way we often use the language of worship. I do want to be thinking about what we do together here as a body on Sunday.

At the Science and Technology Museum here in town, in the kids' room, they have this big light board with lots of LEDs arranged in dials and bars and things like that. If you've been there, you'll know what I'm talking about. And in front of this big board, they have, I think, three kids' bikes. And the little kids, they line up to take turns on these little bikes while the parents stand back dutifully on their smartphones checking if anything urgently important has happened on Facebook in the last three and a half minutes.

Anyway, the idea is that as the kids are going on this thing, the harder you pedal, the more you're going to see the lights light up. The further the dial will go, the higher the bar will rise. And the kids feel this sense of obligation to generate power for these lights on this board. It becomes quite a kind of quest, even an obsession. And as the kids are refusing to move on to the next room and onto the next thing, I'm tempted to go round to the back of the thing and just plug it into the wall. Plug this display thing into the power socket at the back so that we can get on with our day and move on elsewhere.

You see, all this labor on the part of the kids, it isn't needed. It isn't necessary. There is plenty of power in the mains. Now, sometimes I think we can come to our corporate worship and especially our singing with the view that God's power kind of needs topping up with our efforts. I think we can easily assume that in some way as we block off this time on a Sunday morning when we could be still in bed or out enjoying the sunshine, and then as we listen patiently to the word of God and we sing energetically the praises of God, we are bringing to God something that he needs.

I think we easily imagine that God would be helped in some way by our contribution, impressed that we've taken the trouble, grateful that we've spared him the time. In the Old Testament, biblical worship had at its heart the sacrifice of animals. You couldn't come before the Lord without an animal sacrifice. That's different for us now, of course. Jesus has made the great sacrifice, and we come to God the Father in worship through the Son who is our sacrifice and our great high priest.

But as we cast our minds back to the Old Testament days of worship, listen to what God says about the worship of his people in Psalm 50. And you might like to turn to this one: Psalm 50 and verse 7. "Hear, O my people, and I will speak; O Israel, and I will testify against you. I am God, your God. I do not rebuke you for your sacrifices or your burnt offerings, which are ever before me. I have no need of a bull from your stall or of goats from your pens, for every animal of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills. I know every bird in the mountains, and the creatures of the field are mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world is mine, and all that is in it. Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats? Sacrifice thank offerings to God, fulfill your vows to the Most High, and call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you will honor me."

Does God need something from us? Is there anything that he lacks which by our worship we can provide? Answer: of course not. Don't be absurd. And so the Lord continues. "Yes, come and worship me," verse 14, "and call upon me," verse 15, "and I will deliver you." But don't come and worship me because I need you. Worship me because you need me. "Call upon me on the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you will honor me." As we approach the Lord in worship, we don't come primarily to give him anything. We come primarily to receive.

Paul drives the same point home in Acts 17 in the passage that I mentioned already. He goes around Athens and sees all the idol worship going on. And so he stands up and proclaims to all these worshipers who don't know what they're worshiping. He proclaims that the God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands as if he needed anything because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.

Theologian John Frame puts the matter quite simply: biblical worship, unlike much pagan worship, is not intended to meet the needs of God. In worship, we offer our thanks for the fact that God has met our needs. I think we can instinctively assume that we come here to give God something that he wants, something that he needs. But friends, the reverse is true, gloriously true. We come here with empty hands, nothing to offer, but we come to call upon God for his gracious help.

We come to thank him for what he has done in Christ and through the gospel. We come with our divided hearts and our stuttering lips to express something of our feeble understanding of who he is in all his majesty and all his glory and all his goodness. And as we do that, here's the truth: we receive. We receive the encouragement of his word and the blessing of his help. We come to worship as recipients and as responders, but not as those who have something to give to God. To the God who is perfectly happy and perfectly full and perfectly blessed in and of himself.

Now, I believe that if we really understand that, it will have a transformative effect on our corporate worship. I believe that if we really understand that, we lose our swagger, if we have any swagger. I believe that if we really understand that, we lose our sense of triumphalism, if we have any sense of triumphalism. I believe that if we really understand that, we'll refuse to allow any of us, any of the people involved up here to have any of the glory.

Because we won't allow this to be a show of any kind. Because we realize that this is so profoundly not about us. We come in a spirit of reverence and a spirit of awe, of humility, of emptiness, of joy, of gratitude. That's worship.

Steve Hill: You're listening to Encounter the Truth with Jonathan Griffiths and a message called "The Independent God." It's part of our series "Who Is Like Our God?" and if you've missed any of the broadcasts in the series, come and listen online. Our website is encounterthetruth.org. While you're there, you can sign up for our newsletter. You can also check out our weekly e-devotional and connect with us on social media. Again, our website address is encounterthetruth.org. Let's get back to the message. Again, here is Jonathan.

Jonathan Griffiths: We come in a spirit of reverence and a spirit of awe, of humility, of emptiness, of joy, of gratitude. That's worship. But the implications of God's absolute independence, they go further and they touch our giving as well. It's very interesting to consider why it is that we give to the work of the gospel. I mean, why has God set things up in that way, that his work in reaching the nations with the good news of Jesus would happen through the gifts of his people?

If we've learned anything about God's independence, we know that he is not reliant upon us for anything at all, and that includes our financial giving. He doesn't need our money. I mean, the whole world, it's his. We heard already the words of Psalm 50 and verse 9: "I have no need of a bull from your stall or of goats from your pens, for every animal of the forest is mine and the cattle on a thousand hills." Psalm 24 has the same thought: "The earth is the Lord's and everything in it, the world and all who live in it, for he founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters."

Well, we certainly don't give to the Lord and to the work of the gospel because the Lord needs our money. That's simply not the case. And so there must be something else going on here if God would have us give. There must be some other dynamic behind this. We gain quite an insight into it, I think, in a very wonderful passage in the book of 1 Chronicles. 1 Chronicles 29, you might want to turn to this one. Here in 1 Chronicles 29, the people of Israel have just given very, very generously to the work of building the temple.

And King David is very moved by what he's seen, and he cries out in praise to the Lord. 1 Chronicles 29, and I'm going to read from verse 10. David praised the Lord in the presence of the whole assembly saying, "Praise be to you, O Lord God of our father Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours. Yours, O Lord, is the kingdom; you are exalted as head over all. Wealth and honor come from you; you are the ruler of all things."

"In your hands are strength and power to exalt and give strength to all. Now, O Lord, we give you thanks and praise your glorious name. 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. We are aliens and strangers in your sight, as were all our forefathers. Our days on earth are like a shadow, without hope, O Lord our God. O Lord our God, as for all this abundance that we have provided for you, a temple for your holy name, it comes from your hand, and all of it belongs to you."

If you and I are giving to the Lord because we believe that he needs it, our giving is only ever going to go so far. We will balance out the Lord's needs as we understand them with our sense of our own needs at the present time. And maybe the need for the next vacation or the new car or whatever will trump the Lord's needs this month or this year. Similarly, if you and I are giving money that we believe fundamentally belongs to us, we will give reluctantly, and when we give, we will be tempted always toward self-congratulation. "Oh, wasn't that rather generous of me?"

But the reality that David shows us is so different, isn't it? Everything in the world belongs to the Lord. All our assets are actually his. And so what a privilege it is to be able to participate in the Lord's work by giving back to him what rightly belongs to him anyway. He's enabled us to do that. What a privilege. He's enabled us to give so that we might have an opportunity to declare and display something of his majesty and something of his worth.

Friends, our financial giving to the work of the gospel reflects the vision and the comprehension we have of God himself. That's the truth. It's not fundamentally about us. It's not even about the needs before us. It's about understanding who he is, that he is the glorious creator, the all-sufficient one. Now, our giving to the work of the gospel is between us and the Lord, and he gives us great freedom in this.

But I would like to challenge all of us this week just to go home and just to pray over this question: what does our giving reveal about our understanding of God himself? Does our giving reflect the reality that our money belongs to the all-sufficient God? Does our giving reflect the fact that he is worthy of all glory and all honor? Let me just invite and challenge all of us to go home and have that conversation. Simply pray over that question.

God doesn't need our money, but what we do with our money reveals a great deal of what we think of him. There's a lovely old hymn. We don't sing it, but maybe we should. Some will know it, and it captures this so well: "We give thee but thine own, whate'er the gift may be. All that we have is thine alone, a trust, O Lord, from thee. May we thy bounties thus as stewards true receive, and gladly as thou blessest us, to thee our firstfruits give."

Finally and briefly, our service. Acts 17 again: "The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands as if he needed anything because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else." A.W. Tozer writes this: "Probably the hardest thought of all for our natural egotism to entertain is that God does not need our help."

We commonly represent him as a busy, eager, somewhat frustrated father hurrying about seeking help to carry out his benevolent plan to bring peace and salvation to the world. Too many missionary appeals are based upon this fancied frustration of the Almighty God. An effective speaker can easily excite pity in his listeners not only for the heathen but for the God who has tried so hard and so long to save them and has failed for want of support.

I fear that thousands of younger persons enter Christian service from no higher motive than to help deliver God from the embarrassing situation he has gotten himself into and his limited ability seem unable to get him out of. As believers, we have the opportunity to participate in what God is doing in the world. That is an immense privilege. When so many in our world are struggling to find meaning in what seems a meaningless existence, we have the opportunity to take part in God's great plan to exalt his Son and bring all things under the headship of Jesus Christ. It's a tremendous privilege.

But friends, we don't serve because God needs us. And we don't expect praise and adulation for serving the one who created us and then gave his Son to redeem us. In a rather hard-hitting passage in Luke chapter 17, Jesus makes this point quite bluntly in a way that runs the risk of wounding our pride, which probably needs wounding from time to time. Luke 17 and verse 7, maybe you remember these words.

"Suppose one of you had a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Would he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, 'Come now and sit down to eat'? Would he not rather say, 'Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink'? Would he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, 'We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.'"

It's good to serve in the work of the gospel. It is right and necessary to serve if we are followers of Christ. It's part of our basic discipleship. And of course, it's nice and it's good to thank and encourage one another when we're helped or when we're blessed by their ministry and their service. But as we serve, let's never imagine that we are doing God a favor or helping him out of a tough spot.

Let's serve because it's a privilege. Let's serve because he is worthy. Let's rejoice in the opportunity and humbly offer ourselves to him. It's never very comfortable to be put in our place. But as I've thought in recent days about the independence of God, the sheer self-sufficiency of our almighty and our glorious God, I've felt gently put in my place and brought down to size.

We easily place ourselves at the center of our own universe. I guess that's the very heart of sin, the very nature of sin. And even as Christian believers who should know better, we tend to make things about ourselves. We do that all the time. But we need to remember, don't we? God has no need of us. And the story of the universe is not about us.

And yet, yet in his grace and his mercy and his love, God has not only created us and redeemed us, now he has involved us in his work. What a privilege. And our response to these things must be the response of the Apostle Paul as he contemplates the wisdom and the power of God in Romans 11, and with this we close: "Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen."

Steve Hill: Jonathan Griffiths wrapping up our message, "The Independent God," part of our series "Who Is Like Our God?" And if you want to listen to this broadcast again, just come to our website encounterthetruth.org.

Well, Encounter the Truth is a listener-supported ministry. That's exactly what it sounds like. It is your generosity that keeps Jonathan's teaching available on this station, online, or however you've connected with the ministry. But we want to say thank you for your financial support this month by sending you a copy of Jonathan's brand new book entitled Wisdom and Knowledge. It's about Solomon, and Jonathan, why did you write this book?

Jonathan Griffiths: Well, I got into the study because I was just fascinated by this portion of the Scriptures and fascinated by this character. But what I discovered as I dug into the narrative and into the story is that we've got a figure here who has lessons for us about leadership, what it means to lead the people of God with the wisdom that God provides.

Huge lessons here for leaders. And lessons here about what it means to walk with the Lord by faith in moments of strength and triumph and moments of stumbling and sin, and to see the grace of God poured out in a very real, a very remarkable, but a very flawed life as well. And I've found it to be so very helpful.

Steve Hill: Well, we want to send you a copy of this book, believing it'll be helpful in your life as well. You can give a gift of any amount, and we'll say thank you for your support by sending you a copy of Wisdom and Knowledge. You can give online at encounterthetruth.org or when you call 1-833-998-7884. It might be easier to remember as 1-833-99-TRUTH. Or again, the website is encounterthetruth.org.

You can also write us at Encounter the Truth, 2176 Prince of Wales Drive, Ottawa, Ontario, K2E 0A1. Or in the US at Encounter the Truth, 215 North Arlington Heights Road, number 102, Arlington Heights, Illinois, 60004. For Jonathan Griffiths and our producer Mark Bruda, I'm Steve Hill. Thanks for listening, and I hope you'll join us next time.