Ep #023: Where does the Bible say you should give?

Episode Transcript

Austin
Choosing where to give can feel overwhelming, almost like choosing where to eat in a new city. There's a lot of options, and if I'm overwhelmed, then I might just choose the closest location to me. But a guide can really help determine where I should go. And really, what we want to think about today is where does the Bible guide us into giving?
There are natural challenges when it comes to charitable giving. Every charity has a need. Often the needs are put right in front of our face and it's really hard to discern where does the Lord want us to give? And I think the at the end of the day today, we are not going to say give to charity X over charity Y
That's not our place right now. But what we want to do is we want to line out what does the Bible say, Where can we give, how can we participate with the Lord and this? And then how can we start thinking about ways that we can either give places that we can give first, second or third, and how to prioritize?
Where does the Bible say are some of those places of priority. So, Spencer, when we think about how culture tells us to give or not give? What are some things that we see there?

Spencer
Well, as you said, I think one of the things that we go back to is too often we start with, well, where does my heart say I need to give in or what are my emotions here? Or where am I most inspired? That can be part of the process, but we don't want to start there because if we start there, then we're starting and we're looking at ourselves as the decision maker, as the one that we're trying to satisfy, our own desires, our own needs. And we got to come back and say we're stewards of what God has given us.
He owns it all. How do we act as stewards? And God has given us a guide with a lot of different principles and a lot of different thoughts in terms of how we put those priorities together. And so that's one of the pieces. I think the second piece is we just need to acknowledge that culturally the flow of the current is going to be moving towards this worldview of materialism, that there's nothing transcendent out there and that we really need to just make decisions that are going to be based on our own happiness.
So anytime that we talk about giving, the culture starts to kind of clinch up a little bit and say, well, let's not get too crazy here because, you know, you should be shopping, you know, at Amazon or, you know, buying things, you know, at Wal-Mart or whatever it might be. We need to move against that and really ask that question of how much is enough.
And that's that's a great way that we can be helped so that we can get to that point with a proper perspective of beginning to ask the Lord, where do I give? I think another thing that we recognize is that if it's all about us, sometimes other ulterior motives start to creep in recognition. I want to be able to give to my alma mater because I want to be at the silver level or the gold level or the platinum level of giving.
Sometimes folks really give on impulse, and it's more to assuage a guilty conscience or seeing some of the difficulties that are happening around the world and saying, okay, how do I move beyond this just as quick as I can? I'm going to struggle, check and feel like I did something for refugees coming out of Ukraine or starving people in another part of the world.
There's a way that the Lord can use our emotions there, but we don't want to be driven by impulse. Ideally, we want to be able to lay those before the Lord in a thoughtful way and allow Him to speak to us. So we'll talk more about that today. But again, I think it comes back to we want to be that steward if we anchor ourselves and just knowing that God owns at all.
So today's going to be a little bit different in that we're going to explore some different scriptures and really anchor our thoughts in a Book can you kind of unpack that, Austin?

Austin
A book that Spencer and I recently read is called Joy Giving and it's by Cameron Doolittle, and he kind of brings out this framework of thinking about where we should give.
And I used to love doing archery and archery. You shoot at a target and they have concentric circles going out and in archery you try to hit the center, the bull's eye. Now there's a little bit of a fallacy with this analogy in that like we're not trying to hit the bull's eye because we want to give broadly.
But I think it's helpful to think, okay, what are those concentric circles? When we think about our giving and Cameron lays out, there's kind of three categories. And if we think about what's the most important, the next most important, the next most important. And he suggests that you break down giving and it starts with your local congregation and the those that instruct us or pastors in giving into the local church that you're part of.
And then once you have chosen to give there, you say, okay, who do I know that is spreading the gospel? What missionaries are going out and proclaiming the gospel? And then after that, it's people in need. And that can be my immediate family, that can be brothers and sisters in Christ in need, and that can be just the poor and the needy among us.
But those are kind of our concentric circles as we think about this. So we're going to break these down. We're going to look at a little bit of verses in each of these areas to kind of start thinking, where does the Lord say give to the local church? Where does the Lord say give to the spread of the gospel?
What does the Lord say? Other places. So you want to start us off? What's that first one there, Spencer?

Spencer
It's the local congregation and those that are teaching us that are feeding us with spiritual food and we've selected a couple of passages here, but really you see this in the Old Testament, the New Testament. It's not just one grouping of literature.
It's really throughout. And so we try to give priority again, because this is the most spoken about. And really we see this in the Old Testament in giving to the temple, giving to the Levites, that being a primary, you know, level of giving. When we see the New Testament, we see Galatians 6:6. It says, “Let the one who is taught the word share all good things with the one who teaches.”
Then in 1 Corinthians 9:14 says, “The Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel.” And Paul is speaking in both of these circumstances. And of course, when we look at the Apostle Paul's life, he was one that didn't claim this right, but he still set up a framework to say if someone is teaching you, you should provide for them, You should give to their needs.
So that's really the first part that we want to say. This is by far the number of scriptural references or the most here in enjoining us to give in this direction.

Austin
The second one we started thinking about is sending people in, sharing the gospel. And really we think about this in such a way that I want to give first to the people that are influencing me. So the church that I'm a part of should be really important to my livelihood, to my spiritual vitality. And then I think, where are people engaging the gospel with others? As we've thought about this and we look at different organizations that are doing similar work. We look at maybe IJM against another organization that's serving victims of human trafficking.
Well, if one is partnered and sharing the gospel, then I want to have a tilt and my giving. I want to prioritize the giving to the people that aren't just rescuing the slaves, but they're rescuing the slaves and offering a hope of Jesus in the midst of that. And we've got some friends that are doing this. They work in a large country in Southeast Asia, and they are actively pulling people out of human trafficking.
And their hope is that they would restore them to dignity, but also to be like, Jesus loves you, and this is why we're doing this. And so my heart towards giving I want to not just be about rescuing slaves. I want to be about rescuing slaves and giving them hope that there is in Jesus. So we think about this, and that's kind of that second tier is who are those people that are proclaiming the gospel and maybe also doing good deeds, but are their primary end is seeing people restored to Jesus?
We see this in Romans 10:14-15. “How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent as it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!’”
And then as well, in Philippians 4:16, “Even in Thessalonica you sent me help for my needs once and again.” Paul was on the front lines and he was telling the Philippians, You sent me help. I was proclaiming the gospel and you sent for my needs to be met. And it's this beautiful. I love partnering with people that are sharing the gospel.
I was thinking about some of them on my drive over, and it's just such a beautiful thing to think, oh, we've given to this person in the Dominican Republic who raised up this person who's now in Colombia and they're Dominican and they're serving in another country. And it's a joy to give to them as people that are proclaiming the gospel around the world.

Spencer
And there's this great institutions that are doing a lot of things together. And sometimes they're doing multiple things like you talked about IJM, I think about Hope International that says, okay, our whole microfinance operation is going to be about empowering people. Yes, economically being able to give these micro loans so that they are able to provide for their families.
Also in the loan groups, we’re going to teach them about business. We're also going to teach them about the love of the Lord and about Jesus. And so there's there's a lot of different ways that we can share the gospel there. But those institutions, again, that see people's redemption, see people, they're being restored to relationship with God, being a part of that is a beautiful thing.

Austin
So you take us through that last one, the people in need.

Spencer
Well, and this is an interesting one. I think this is maybe different will have a little bit different perspective in going through some of the passages at least then I was really aware of a few years ago. You know, we think about this again in concentric circles.
First, we see in different points of scripture that really we need to provide not just for our immediate family, but kind of our extended family. And that the Lord is particularly pushing us to do that for the poor or the needy in that extended family. Then beyond that, again, brothers and sisters in Christ and then beyond that kind of the broader world around us.
But in 1 Timothy 5:8 says “But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” Now, sometimes you'll hear this verse quoted as kind of a catch all that actually puts pushes the provision on us as people, as though we were the providers.
We say, no, we are not the providers. We are to care for our family. We're not the providers. And that's one of the things that we see is a bit of a difference sometimes in the Western church that we think that that's just not an appropriate reading of 1 Timothy 5:8 because it's couched in a passage about providing for widows.
So what Paul is really getting into there with Timothy in this letter is saying, I want you to make sure that everyone knows that the poor among their extended family, they need to take care of them. They doesn't need to be, you know, an aunt or a great aunt, you know, that is penniless that you leave on the street.
No. Instead, you provide for that person. It's not so much, you know, that the parallel would not be, well, you need to make sure that, you know, you funded your kid's college education to an Ivy League school. Now, if the Lord calls you to do that we're not saying don't do that. What we're saying that that's not included here in this passage. So, again, that first part is my immediate family.
Second part would be Christians who are brothers and sisters in Christ, who we know. So 1 John 3:17 says, “But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him?” And this is again, the Apostle John towards the end of his life, talking about love and what that love means, having seen Jesus the way that he loved the apostles, the disciples in his life, and then translating that to the way that the church needs to operate, needs to be such that we can't just withhold our goods if we see a brother or sister in need.
You know, if we see them going through a difficult time, we need to make sure that we're helping provide for them. I think the dicey thing is how do we really relate to this when we think about brothers and sisters in Christ around the world? And I think one of the things that we really have to grapple with here is how do we love well, and not just write checks. You know, a lot of it, I think, comes back to loving people and not doing for people what they can do for themselves, but really partnering with building those relationships, walking alongside. And that can also mean the same thing for, you know, working with someone that might be in the neighborhood who's, you know, homeless or partially homeless.
They're helping kind of restore their dignity, because if we give just checks to people, give cash to people, oftentimes we're taking the easy way out. We are not helping to restore their dignity. We're doing for them what they need to be doing. And that's why we kind of love Hope International and others that are kind of helping people along.
But saying, you know, you've got to take steps forward in the way that you manage life and we'll come alongside and love you well and try to be cheerleaders and encourage others and provide some resources as quickly as we can do so.

Austin
I think what you were saying about especially our brothers and sisters in Christ, and I think I'm going to try not to come off too strongly here, but I think there's an ethos in the United States of self-sufficiency that has actually done a lot of damage to the Christian ethos of let's work with God to make sure our brothers and sisters in Christ are not in desperation.
You know, I think about a couple of days ago we were sitting down with some friends and everything in me wanted to be like, Don't worry about retirement. Like, if you stay connected with the body of Christ, the body of Christ should be helping you in your time of need. But I had to couch that in my head and be like, But I can't guarantee that.
And that makes me really sad because we've got such this ethos in the United States that you must be self-sufficient. You must do this for yourself. And if not, then you are a drain on society. And that was never the early church. The early church looked and said, there are some among us that are wealthy, there are some among us that are poor.
There are some among us that have means to be able to make more money. And there are some that just don't have skills and abilities to do the same. But when they were brothers in need that were working and that were active and something happened, health events, probably the church wrapped around them. And we see this in Acts 4 that there wasn't needy among them.
And I think it's an interesting contrast because the Bible also says there will always be a poor among you. Well, it's both, because we can care for the people within our midst, but it's going to take us dying to that self-sufficiency God. And I think we've idolized it so much that we need to put it to death.

Spencer
Well, and we see that even in certain situations in the early church, when there was a plague, you know, the church oftentimes would stay in that particular city and would give people a proper burial, would not abandon, you know, those who were terribly sick. So, there was that ethos back then that there was a level of sharing, a level of openness, both to make known one's needs, but also to see, you know, one's extra resources as being available.

Austin
So again, we kind of come back and we start thinking about there's lots of local churches, there's lots of teachers, there's lots of missions, organizations. At the end of the day, we need to be open handed with the Lord. We need to constantly come before him in prayer and in listening to prayer as is listening to the Father and saying, God, I want to participate with what you are doing in this world.
And first, we need to be involved in a local church, and we need to be giving and participating in the giving of our tithes and offerings back to the church. It's a beautiful, good thing, the way to participate and say, No, I'm not just receiving from this. I'm part of this living organization that is the body of Christ.
Similarly, we've gone on about this before, but giving is reciprocal. Like, I want to be a part of some of those organizations that I'm giving to you. If they're about the spread of the gospel, then if I can go and be part of that and build relationships with those people that I'm giving to you, it's a beautiful thing.
So, as we think about these concentric circles, yeah, we don't have the answers of where you should give or where I should give. We need to be open handed with the Lord about that. But we also want to be strategic in thinking about our giving decisions.

Spencer
I think we see really Jesus's example in this in wrapping this time up, talking about who our brother is. You know, in the parable of the Good Samaritan, because, you know, the Pharisee asks him who's my neighbor? And Jesus goes on to be able to unpack it's anyone that's in need around you that you can offer love to. So we think about those concentric circles, but we also have in our example with Jesus and in his teaching that we not need.
We we need to be not just open handed with our family, with our brothers and sisters, but also with the broader people that we come in contact with. And to the point where, you know, when we see in that parable the Samaritan, he pays up front, the innkeeper, and then he says, do whatever you need to do to take care of this person.

I'll come back. So he's basically writing a blank check. So, you know, Jesus kind of expects that we're not going to withhold things over here and say, No, I have a brother in need. I'm not going to help or care for that person again. We've got to make sure that we're not enabling that we're not, you know, doing things that actually harm that person, because that has been a pattern far too often when we see the West engaging with, you know, different parts of the world.
And that can be the same, you know, with other people that we come across in life. But we need to have open enough hands that regardless of who's coming, if it's our neighbor, that we're able to give what's needed.

Austin
As you were speaking, I was just thinking giving needs to be in partnership. It doesn't need to be paternalistic. I don't come thinking I am the Savior and Jesus is the savior. Jesus is the provider and it's not. I am better than you. Therefore, you need my staff. No, let's be in partnership and let's work towards your health and your wholeness in this giving, especially to the needy.

Spencer
So I think, you know, as we wrap up our time, we hope that this is giving you a framework to think about things. You know, as we look at the way that we make giving decisions. So many times it is overwhelming because you get all of the different mailers. You have different friends saying, well, you should look at this organization, but if we've got some biblical wisdom where we kind of ground ourselves and say, okay, these are the different areas, then we can categorize that giving and lay that really before the Holy Spirit and ask for wisdom.
James 1:5 “If any of you lacks wisdom ask God who gives generously to all without finding fault and it will be given to him.” So when we don't know where to give, let's go there. That's what let's claim that Scripture and be able to lay that before the Lord. One of the other practical things I think, you know, that we found is that if we have some amount of money that we've set aside kind of in our mental giving at least a category there where, you know, it's for our immediate neighbors and friends.
And if they're into something, they're doing something. And we can get behind, you know, a scout troop or somebody comes by and they're raising money for a trip or this or that or the other, we can joyfully and gladly take part in that small part. But we don't have to feel guilty that maybe we didn't perfectly prioritize every dime into those three categories, because the Lord knows that we have these relationships and those relationships are enhanced if we have some money that set aside for, you know, Jimmy that comes over and he needs, you know, money for a Boy Scout troop or whatever it might be.

Austin
Again, we hope you enjoyed this episode. If you've got more questions about biblical giving, we've got a whitepaper on our website that is just about a guide to biblical giving. Take a look at it. Send us your email and we will see you soon.