Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ

Jan 23, 2025

Generosity For Worship

 

2 Chronicles 31:4-5 He ordered the people living in Jerusalem to give the portion due the priests and Levites so they could devote themselves to the Law of the LORD. 5 As soon as the order went out, the Israelites generously gave the first fruits of their grain, new wine, olive oil and honey and all that the fields produced. They brought a great amount, a tithe of everything.

If we make $50,000, a gift of $5,000 does seem like a lot. It would seem that people who do such a thing would then value what got them to that point and not just grumble about the taxes it seems to be. When I pay my US taxes, I hate to think of the waste that might be going out to the “military industrial complex”, the waste in highway constructions that I see here in Texas, but I also think of the men and women of our armed forces risking their lives with the “military industrial complex” supplying their work and the beauty of the completed highways. It may be that somewhere in the complexity of the temple worship, there were people like Zechariah who could bless and be blessed by the living God. It may be in our fractured complexes of congregations, denominations and non-denominations people of faith (which I have found) who are worth the possibility of fault and even failures we have attached to the temple in the days of Jesus (remember Simeon and Anna in Luke 2). Can we be generous for the sake of what the Lord has structured, and we have weakened? Or is He no longer Lord?

 

For your prayers: The Nation of Bangladesh

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