Overflowing with Thankfulness (Part 2 of 3)

Gratitude is something we ought to express in words and actions. When we remember who God is and all He's done for us, it should cause us to worship and to praise Him. And today on Truth for Life we'll learn how thankfulness also moved God's people to respond with overflowing generosity after the exodus from Egypt.

Alistair Begg is continuing a study on thankful living. I invite you to turn with me to Exodus, to the second book of the Bible, Exodus chapter 35, and we're going to read from verse 4 through to the seventh verse of chapter 36. And here instructions are being given for another time, a second time, concerning the materials for the tabernacle, the dwelling place of God, and for how they're going to be provided for.

Moses said to the whole Israelite community, This is what the LORD has commanded. From what you have, take an offering for the LORD. Everyone who is willing is to bring to the LORD an offering of gold, silver, and bronze, blue, purple, and scarlet yarn and fine linen, goat hair, ram skins dyed red and hides of sea cows, acacia wood, olive oil for the light, spices for the anointing oil and for the fragrant incense, and onyx stones and other gems to be mounted on the ephod and breastpiece. All who are skilled among you are to come and make everything the LORD has commanded—the tabernacle with its tent and its covering, clasps, frames, crossbars, posts, and bases, the ark with its poles and the atonement cover and the curtain that shields it, the table with its poles and all its articles and the bread of the presence, the lampstand that is for light with its accessories, lamps, and oil for the light, the altar of incense with its poles, the anointing oil and the fragrant incense, the curtain for the doorway at the entrance to the tabernacle, the altar of burnt offering with its bronze grating, its poles and all its utensils, the bronze basin with its stand, the curtains of the courtyard with its posts and bases and the curtain for the entrance to the courtyard, the tent pegs for the tabernacle and for the courtyard and their ropes, the woven garments worn for ministering in the sanctuary, both the sacred garments for Aaron the priest and the garments for his sons when they serve as priests.

Then the whole Israelite community withdrew from Moses' presence, and everyone who was willing and whose heart moved him came and brought an offering to the LORD for the work on the tent of meeting, for all its service, and for the sacred garments. All who were willing, men and women alike, came and brought gold jewelry of all kinds, brooches, earrings, rings, and ornaments. They all presented their gold as a wave offering to the LORD. Everyone who had blue, purple, or scarlet yarn, or fine linen, or goat hair, ramskins dyed red, or hides of sea cows brought them. Those presenting an offering of silver or bronze brought it as an offering to the LORD, and everyone who had acacia wood for any part of the work brought it. Every skilled woman spun with her hands and brought what she had spun—blue, purple, or scarlet yarn, or fine linen—and all the women who were willing and had the skill spun the goat hair.

The leaders brought onyx stones and other gems to be mounted on the ephod and breastpiece. They also brought spices and olive oil for the light and for the anointing oil and for the fragrant incense. All the Israelite men and women who were willing brought to the LORD freewill offerings for all the work of the LORD through Moses that he had commanded them to do. Then Moses said to the Israelites, See, the LORD has chosen Bezalel son of Uri, the son of Hur, one of the tribe of Judah, and he has filled him with the Spirit of God with skill, ability, and knowledge in all kinds of crafts—to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver, and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood, and to engage in all kinds of artistic craftsmanship. And he has given both him and Oholiab, son of Ahizamach, of the tribe of Dan, the ability to teach others.

He has filled them with skill to do all kinds of work as craftsmen, designers, embroiderers in blue, purple, and scarlet yarn and fine linen, and weavers—all of them master craftsmen and designers. So Bezalel, Oholiab, and every skilled person to whom the LORD has given skill and ability to know how to carry out all the work of constructing the sanctuary are to do the work just as the LORD has commanded. Then Moses summoned Bezalel, Oholiab, and every skilled person to whom the LORD had given ability and who was willing to come and do the work, they received from Moses all the offerings the Israelites had brought to carry out the work of constructing the sanctuary. And the people continued to bring freewill offerings morning after morning. So all the skilled craftsmen who were doing all the work on the sanctuary left their work and said to Moses, The people are bringing more than enough for doing the work the LORD commanded to be done. But then Moses gave an order, and they sent this word throughout the camp, No man or woman is to make anything else as an offering for the sanctuary.

And so the people were restrained from bringing more, because what they already had was more than enough to do all the work. Amen. And Father, as we turn now to the Bible, we pray that we might hear from your voice, we marvel at this great, peculiar experience whereby the voice of a mere man becomes to us, as we listen in faith and in obedience, the very voice of God to us. So we wait expectantly and humbly, that we might hear from you and no one else, and that we might respond solely to the prompting and work of God the Holy Spirit, to the glory of God the Son, in whose name we pray.

Amen. Those who were present last Sunday will perhaps remember that we gathered our thoughts around one phrase that is found at the end of the seventh verse of Colossians chapter 2, and that phrase is overflowing with thankfulness. Overflowing with thankfulness. Throughout the days of the week that has passed, I have found myself returning to that phrase again and again, and I have a feeling that others along with me might have done the same—not always to great encouragement but sometimes to great challenge, monitoring my response to things or my attitude to things in light of the challenge of the phrase is the way in which I have just responded or am about to respond—an expression of overflowing thankfulness.

And it has served as something of a chart and compass to me, and I don't sense that it's going away anytime soon. We reminded ourselves that the foundation of this overflowing gratitude lay in the grace of God as our creator and redeemer and the sustainer of our lives. We paid attention to the important distinction between the kind of natural gratitude which says thanks when everything is going well but fails to find any reason for thankfulness when the circumstances of life overtake us, and gracious gratitude which triumphs and glorifies God even when things are not the way we would desire them to be. We ended our time by thinking about expressions of this same thankfulness, and we focused primarily on the notion of this thankfulness being expressed in the lives of those who would have reason to doubt, perhaps, whether what had happened to them was something that they ought to rejoice in and be grateful for.

And we ended with the illustration of two women, you will perhaps recall, Sarah Edwards, the wife of Jonathan Edwards, and the lady with the long Swedish name, who lost her father on a sailing trip to Gothenburg. But I want to come back to this notion of expressing gratitude and the expressions of overflowing thankfulness, and I want, as you would have already deduced from our Scripture reading, to think of an expression of thankfulness in terms of generous giving to the work of the Lord. Generous giving to the work of the Lord. And I have read purposefully from Exodus 35, because it gives us one of the wonderful illustrations from the Old Testament of God's people overflowing generously in response to God's grace. Let's just highlight it by looking at verse 20 and 21 of Exodus 35 as we begin. Then the whole Israelite community withdrew from Moses' presence, and everyone who was willing and whose heart moved him came and brought an offering to the Lord. Now, we need to say something concerning the context of this, lest we fiddle with the Bible.

And the context is the whole Bible and is certainly the book of Exodus, but we can't start at the very beginning. So let me encourage you, if you want, just to follow a couple of references with me, to begin by looking at Exodus chapter 25 and verse 1, where we have the first indication of the Lord giving instruction for the construction of the tabernacle. And it is there, as you will see if you're using an NIV—in fact, they give that, the heading, Offerings for the Tabernacle. And what God is doing there is he's giving to his servant Moses the directives which are to be passed on to the people concerning the place of meeting. In other words, the ark of the covenant set within the framework of the tabernacle was to be the place where the people of God symbolically met with God, that this was emblematic of his dwelling among them—God's people in God's place, under God's direction. And it was in this tabernacle that they were to be reminded of three things. One, of God's awesome holiness, that he was distinctly unlike his creation, in that they were sinful and he was without sin. Secondly, of the people's need of cleansing, which becomes apparent when we are confronted by unfettered holiness. And thirdly, the provision of atonement for sin in the sacrificial system that was in place, always pointing forward to that final sacrifice in Christ himself. Well, this was all very well, and it was a good start there in Exodus chapter 25, but before ever things got to where they needed to be, there was a dreadful delay that kicked in.

And that delay is described for us, sadly, in chapter 32. And here, if you know anything of Exodus or know anything of the Old Testament, you may know something of the fact that the people of God made a golden calf and they bowed down to it. Well, it's here in Exodus 32 that we discover the event for ourselves. God had provided for his people in the exodus from Egypt. You may remember that when he told the people to get ready and to make the provisions for the Passover, that when they were then redeemed from the bondage of Egypt, one of the things they should do was to plunder the Egyptians.

It may sound rather strange. He said that they should actually ask their Egyptian landlords and owners for their gold and their silver and their clothes so that they might take those provisions with them when they cross over into the promised land. And when you read that, in its bold simplicity—or bald simplicity—you may say, Well, why was God doing that? Just as a further punishment to the Egyptians? I don't think so. Just to line the pockets of his people?

No, I don't think so. He was doing that because he knew that that which he was providing for them in this somewhat strange way was going to be the very means that would be employed in fulfilling his purposes in relationship to the construction of this tabernacle. And with the delay of Moses in meeting with God, Aaron, we're told, takes matters into his own hands, and he asks the people to take the stuff that they had and essentially to squander it in the creation of a golden calf. And Exodus 32 describes that for us. And at the end of Exodus 32, with the return of Moses, Moses comes back in verse 31 to go to the Lord and say, Oh, what a great sin these people have committed!

They have made themselves gods of gold. Please forgive their sin. This should not have happened, he said.

This should not have happened. And if you go to 34 and to verse 8, you have the picture there of Moses lying down to the ground, worshiping God and saying, O Lord, if I have found favor in your eyes, then let the Lord go with us. Although this is a stiffneck, people forgive our wickedness and our sin and take us as your inheritance. In other words, you are the God who has made a covenant with your people. Keep your covenant. Even though we have made a horrible mess of things, even though we have taken what you have provided for us and squandered it in the construction of false gods, please do not leave us alone.

Please do not abandon the work of your hands. And here we see the indications of what we finally find in its fulfillment in the New Testament, where in Christ all the promises of God, as we have sung, find their yes and their amen, and all of the promises of him keeping his people, completing the good work that he has begun in them, are found in the essence of Jesus himself. And it is a good and a helpful reminder to us, isn't it, that given that we are prone to wander and prone to leave the God we love, that God is never the author of unfinished business when it comes to his children? And so it is in light of that that we get back to 35—25, that is, Exodus 25.

He is given the initial directive. That has been prolonged by the rebellion and by the false worshiping of false gods. And now here Moses once again assembles the Israelite community, reminds them of the importance of the place of the Sabbath, and then, in verse 4, as we have read, gives them the directions for this construction.

Now, let's just notice them very straightforwardly. Verse 5, notice the phrase, From what you have, from what you have, take an offering. From what you have. What did they have? What do we have? Only what God the Creator has provided. Only what God the Redeemer has granted them in their exodus from the bondage of Egypt.

Only what God who has sustained their lives makes possible for them now in light of the project that is before them. If you like, we might say that everything we have is stamped with the seal of God's ownership. Everything in the universe—there's not a place as Kuyper, the prime minister of the Netherlands many years ago, he says, there's not one inch in the whole universe at which God does not look and say, This is mine.

This is all mine. Now, this is vastly different from our contemporary culture, isn't it? Where pantheism suggests that the earth is God and everything is God, and since we are part of everything, there's somehow or another we are part of God. Not so, says the Bible. The earth is the Lord—Psalm 24, verse 1—the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof.

In other words, the earth belongs to God, and everything that grows and is dug up out of the earth, everything that exists in the entirety, belongs to God. And some time ago—and I don't say that—I say this at some risk, but there's no malice in it—some time ago, the administrative people here at Parkside decided that we should put a sticker on everything announcing the fact that it was the property of Parkside Church. It seemed to me such a crazy exercise, but it went ahead without any reference to me.

They don't really care. But the fact is, I just got such a charge out of going and picking up, like, the garbage cans out there, you know, and turning them on their side or upside down and looking, and the little sticker said, This belongs to Parkside Church, you know? I said, Well, what did you expect? That someone was going to steal a garbage can, and then they turned it upside down and said, Oh, I didn't realize it belonged to Parkside Church. I guess I'd better put it back down. Or they even had one on the grand piano, you know? Or somebody said, Oh, the grand piano belongs to Parkside. I should have known better. I was just going to take it home to my living room.

I really shouldn't have done that. No, I thought it was a futile exercise, but anyway, nobody really cares. But by the time David is involved in the prospect of building the temple, he makes the point very clearly, as he says in 1 Chronicles 29, everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand. Everything that these people, to whom he gives this directive, had was a result of God's grace. Second phrase to help us understand the directive is the phrase, Everyone who is willing. That's also in verse 5.

Everyone who is willing. In other words, this is not a matter of legislation, this is a matter of personal conscience. Some people see giving as a grudge—I guess I have to, I suppose I should—or as a duty—I ought to do this—or perhaps, in response to some measure of guilt, I've been a bad person, I think I should try and be a good person now. Or, I think I'd better give something, or something bad might happen to me.

All of these things are absolutely against the principle which is here in Exodus 35 and runs throughout the Bible. The giving of the people of God in response to the grace of God is thanksgiving. It is overflowing gratitude, overflowing thankfulness revealed in overflowing generosity. How will God know that we are overflowing in thankfulness by our overflowing generosity?

The principle's obvious. Now, given the notion of willingness, we must always beware of anybody who is heavy-handed or who is overly directive in the matter of giving. And, you know, we say very little about giving here at Parkside Church. I've chosen to do so today for a number of reasons, but I think I didn't do this for at least two years. And before that, I think it was twelve years.

So just in case you're visiting today and would want to extrapolate from this, really, you'd have to wait some considerable time before there would be any mention again of these things. No, Aaron was the one who was heavy-handed. Aaron is the one who told them what to do with their earrings. Moses doesn't give any expression regarding earrings. He just says anybody who is willing and whose heart has been stirred up should bring an offering to the Lord.

He doesn't tell them what to do or how to do it. And you will notice that—and this is the third phrase—that this is to be brought to the Lord. From what you have, take an offering for the Lord.

Moses is telling the people that the Lord is willing to receive from all who are willing to give. But the Lord, who is in need of nothing, is willing to receive from those who are the beneficiaries of everything, when we, the beneficiaries of his grace, as an expression of our overflowing thankfulness, reveal our hearts in overflowing generosity. And when that happens, God is glorified. When that happens, glory and praise is given to God. You're listening to Truth for Life. That is Alistair Begg with a message about grace-inspired generosity.

We'll hear more on this subject on Monday. Here at Truth for Life, we love telling others about God's grace and his plan of salvation, and you're invited to join us in this effort. Christmas presents the perfect opportunity to introduce others to the gospel, so we've carefully selected books that make excellent gifts, and they're all available at our cost.

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It also explains why Jesus taught in parables and why some people could understand them while others couldn't. This is a hardcover book, and it's illustrated in bright, engaging colors. You can purchase it for our cost of only $5. Order a copy for all of the children on your Christmas list when you visit truthforlife.org slash gifts. And if you're able to add a donation to your purchase, we would be grateful. And when you do, be sure to request the family Christmas devotional titled Promises Made, Promises Kept. This book is our way of saying thank you for your generosity. The book is yours when you give a donation at truthforlife.org slash donate, or call us at 888-588-7884. I'm Bob Lapine. We hope you have a blessed weekend, hope you're able to worship with your local church, and then join us Monday when we'll learn about the only biblical inspiration for giving. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.