“Giving With an Attitude” - Acts 5:1-11
May 6, 2007
Dr. Michael C. Yarbrough

          As all of us sat at the dining room table, my parents laid a pile of ten dimes in front of each of the three of us.  Ten dimes: a tithe of one dime for the church offering plate – one dime for the piggy bank – eight dimes were left over to spend.  Woo – hoo!  We thought we’d hit the jackpot!  In our young minds, this was high finance!

          Each Saturday, the ritual was the same: shine the shoes for church – go to Mom or Dad for our allowances – get out our own personal boxes of offering envelopes – put our dimes in – seal them up and put them with our Bibles – put another dime in our piggy banks – and stash the rest of the coins in some hidden place in our rooms to spend later.  On Sunday mornings, the ritual was also the same: during the worship service, the offering plate was passed down our pew and our offering envelopes were dropped into the plate.  Never once did I ever hesitate to drop mine in.  I was taught by my parents that everything we had was God’s, and that giving God back a tenth of my allowance was an act of worship.  The routine only varied if I received a gift of money from someone (like for a birthday or at Christmas), or I earned a little extra doing some extra chores or errands.  That money, too, was a gift from God – and one tenth of that money also went into my offering envelope on Sunday mornings.

          By the time we were starting high school, our weekly allowances had more than doubled to $2.50.  Each Saturday, we received from our parents two one-dollar bills and two quarters: twenty-five cents for our offering to God – twenty-five cents for the piggy bank – $2.00 for spending.  One quarter was sealed up in my offering envelope and set aside for me to take on Sunday morning.  On Sunday mornings, the ritual was also still the same: during the worship service, the offering plate was passed down our pew and our offering envelopes were dropped in the plate.  Never once did I ever hesitate to drop mine in.  Never was my giving from a sense of obligation.  What my parents instilled in me was a true joy in giving for the sake of giving.  Everything I had was God’s, and joyfully giving God back a tenth of my allowance and any money I earned or received as a gift was an act of worship.

          I was fortunate enough to find and marry Suanne who also has a love for giving her financial resources back to God.  When we first met, I discovered that she and I have a great many things in common.  One of them has been our commitment to giving a tithe or more back to God.  Our giving has never been about what we would get from it or out of any sense of obligation.  We give our offering to God in love – we give it with joy.

          People bring an offering to God in worship for a lot of different reasons.  Biblical teaching about our offerings clearly emphasizes two points.  The first is: the size of our offering is less important than the attitude in which we give it.  Our offerings to God should be “giving with an attitude:” gifts given in worshipful joy.

          In the Middle Ages, the Church taught that you could pay cash for forgiveness for your sins.  This practice was called the “selling of indulgences.”  Give a donation to the Church – get a sin or two cancelled.  In fact, you could pay it forward.  Give a donation to the Church – get a coupon good for a future sin (sort of like a spiritual “get out of jail free” card).  Giving God an offering to buy God’s love or forgiveness is a corruption of what our gifts to God were meant to be.

          The second point the scriptures make about our offerings is that they should be generous and sacrificial.  In our culture, to make a sacrifice means to give up something that is very important to us – something of great personal value.  The word “sacrifice” comes from Latin words meaning, “to make sacred or holy.”  Our worship offerings, given sacrificially, become a sacred gift to God.

          In the first century of the Common Era, there was a story being told about a couple of Christians who had the wrong attitude when giving God a gift.  If Luke had not recorded the story for us in Acts, we would have never heard of Ananias and his wife, Sapphira.

          In the early chapters of Acts, Luke describes the Christian community as practicing a form of Christian communism.  They gave all of their financial resources to the church, which then redistributed them to its members according to their needs.  In chapter 5, Luke indicates that Christians did retain some of their own personal properties until they were ready to voluntarily contribute them to the church. (Acts 5:4)

          The story of this couple is not meant to be interpreted as a morality tale whose purpose is to scare Christians into giving more money to the church.  The size of Ananias and Sapphira’s gift was not the issue – nor was it the cause of their deaths.  Ananias and Sapphira were guilty of giving to God “with an attitude” – the wrong attitude!  Their guilt came from their selfish withholding of that which they had promised to God.  They held back some of the money that was promised to God and then lied about it.  Their offering was not sacrificial or sacred.

          Ananias and Sapphira “did not have to make vows to God, but … once made, such vows are taken with absolute seriousness.” (M. Eugene Boring and Fred B. Craddock, The People’s New Testament Commentary, 2004, p.382)  Their sin was in their breaking of their covenant with God.  Ananias and Sapphira thought that their promised giving was to a human institution, and that nobody would know what they did in private.  Their story reminds the followers of Jesus that our covenant with the Church is also a covenant with God.

          At Bread of Life Christian Church, we affirm that all that we have comes to us as a free-flowing shower of blessings from God.  Why do we have so much while others have so little?  Only God knows the answer to that question.  The greater and more personal question to ask is: “what do we do with what we’ve been given?”  That is a question to which we can know the answer because we decide the answer with our actions and our attitudes.

          As one portion of our annual covenant membership, we commit ourselves to give to God an offering (in support of Bread of Life) of our financial resources, with a tithe (10%) and beyond as our personal goal.  What we give to God is a personal matter.  What we give to God does reflect what is happening with our personal relationship with God.  Our worshipful gifts are meant to be given in proportion to what we’ve been given.  The size of our gift isn’t as important as is the attitude we have in giving the offering!

          To be a follower of Jesus is a commitment to bring an offering to God in worship.  Our sacrifice makes it sacred.  To be a follower of Jesus means that we give our offerings with an attitude: an attitude of love – an attitude of generosity – and attitude of joy.  Please!  Give your offerings to the Church with an attitude that pleases God!

          Let us pray:

          Generous God, touch us with your Spirit.  Teach us to give our worship offerings to you lovingly, sacrificially, joyfully, and with generosity.  In Jesus’ name we ask it.

Amen.