Dennis Tuuri

Sermon Text: Acts 11:27-30

Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Acts 11:27-30. And in these days came prophets from Jerusalem unto Antioch. And there stood up one of them named Agabus, and signified by the Spirit that there should be great dearth throughout all the world, which came to pass in the days of Claudius Caesar. Then the disciples, every man according to his ability, determined to send relief unto the brethren which dwelt in Judea, which also they did, and sent it to the elders by the hands of Barnabas and Saul.

Please be seated.

I’m way of following up some of the questions and discussion from the last few weeks. Just a couple of quick points that I wanted to make sure I took care of, not forgetting them again this week. I was asked by one person what the name Cornelius means. It apparently means “of a horn.” It was a common name in the Roman Empire. Cornelius being of course the name of the gentile convert in Acts chapter 10.

So it means of a horn. We talked a few weeks ago about Paul’s desire in the book of Galatians that those who are troubling the Galatian Christians should be cut off. That word is only used, as far as I can tell in the scriptures, relative to a physical cutting off of a hand, for instance—better to go into heaven having a hand cut off than to perish with the hand intact. So the cutting off does seem to refer specifically to cutting off in a physical sense those who would cause the Galatians to be troubled and have to be circumcised—that they would go all the way and cut off their organ.

So that’s what Paul said.

Let’s see. Also, I was asked last week when we talked about the first Christians in Antioch—or the place where the Christians were first called Christians, the disciples of Christ. I kind of took as the summary of that message the verse where it talked about how Barnabas saw the faith, saw the evidence of God’s grace to the Antiochans and then was glad as a result. And the word “glad” was asked about in terms of its origins.

It seems to have reference to something that was pure or shiny or smooth and maybe even having reference in the ancient languages to the same word as “gold.” So to be glad or joyous—the Greek word is the word that we see normally translated “joy.” And so the English word “glad” comes from the word meaning smooth, shiny, or even golden. And so when we have a glad countenance, we shine in that way and are smooth in the sight of God.

Well, let’s go on then. We’re now at Acts chapter 11, the last portion of it, finishing it up before we move into chapter 12. And really the story that begins in Acts 11:27 is sort of a parenthesis to what happens in the beginning of chapter 12. The Herodian persecution that’s described for us in chapter 12 occurs in the context of what begins here in Acts 11. And I thought as I was meditating on this text and getting ready for today’s message, I thought about the fact that in the providence of God, he has brought us to this text at what is it? I guess five days. Is today the 11th or the 10th? Today’s the 10th. So we’re five days prior to the 80th anniversary of the income tax. April 15th is tax day. I’m pretty sure everybody is aware of 80 years of federal income tax. My wife was reading to me out of the paper last evening—the Sunday Parade magazine—that originally it was a 1% tax. I don’t even think it was on normal income, but in any event, it was a 1% tax. And even then, single people were exempted for the first $3,000 of income. Married couples: $4,000 worth of income, which in today’s monetary evaluation—since we have a rubber dollar, of course, you understand—would be equivalent to a $35,000 deduction for a single person or a $45,000 or $47,000 deduction for a married couple.

So if you’re here and you make less than $47,000, when the income tax was started in 1914, you would have paid not a zilch, zero. If you’re here and happen to edge into the six-figure bracket somehow in your earnings, $100,000 worth of income would have been taxed. At $53,000, that would have been taxed at 1%—about $600 would be your total federal tax liability.

Well, today, of course, the total tax liability—federal, state, municipalities combined—comes to some 45 to 50% of the gross national product of our country. Why has this happened? Why has this devastating reality taken place in the lifetime of people that we probably know—people that are over 80 years old? My mother’s father was alive when the income tax at the federal level was passed.

There is a bright side to all of this.

You’re probably good and depressed now thinking about your tax liabilities. And please remember on April 15th how much total dollars you’re paying throughout the year, not just what you might have to send to them or what the refund you get back is. It’s such a paltry way the federal government has of making us happy about our taxes—to let us get a little refund back at the end of the year and somehow we come out happy because we’re getting back $500 or something like that if we’ve, you know, not if we paid too much taxes during the year.

Don’t be happy about that. Think about your total tax liability for the entire year that you’re paying to that federal government that used to take nothing from just about everybody in this congregation—most of us making far less than $47,000 a year.

But there’s a bright side. Now you’re getting depressed about all that. There’s a bright side. We are not beholden to anybody, right? We don’t have to rely upon our parents because we’re children. The government will take care of us. Parents in their old age don’t have to rely upon their children, you know. We have Social Security. It’s part of this total tax burden. We don’t have to worry about, you know, losing our jobs or whatever. Nobody starves to death in America. So we’ve conquered poverty in that way. So there’s this bright side to everything. We have no need for community life in terms of the temporal sense. The government welfare system will take care of us—maybe at great cost to our personal lives, our sense of family, et cetera. But the government will take care of us.

So we have no need for a community to meet our needs in times of dire economic circumstances or depression. We can tell the church, the covenant community, to stick it in their ear if we want to, because we have really no need for them in a temporal sense, and so we have very little inclination to need them in any other sense as well.

So we have a great deal of individual liberty. We’ve all found through this mechanism of the civil state the ability to not be dependent upon the person next to us in the pew, the person next to us in the family, or the person next to us in our neighborhood. Of course, the cost of this is that probably over half of most of our income in one form or another goes to the civil government, who then turns around and uses it to exert more authority, more control over our lives. And everything we do becomes licensed, regulated, and controlled by the civil government. And society breaks down.

Without families, without churches, without strong communities, we have the kind of crime we see in our culture today.

What happened? Why is this devastation taking place in our land? Well, it’s because of the failure, I think, of God’s people to apply themselves to the message in these very few short verses in Acts chapter 11—the last few verses, 27-30. And I want to talk about this text in the context of two essential principles. The first one is the principle of biblical famine relief, biblical provision for economic hardship, and then secondly, there’s a relationship, I think, of that to the fifth commandment. There’s a relationship to that as well to the fifth commandment. And those two aspects, I think, are a denial of those aspects that really is what led us to the situation where we face on April 15th.

If we really understand what’s going around and what’s going on when we face the blackness and depressing news of April 15th, it’s not our tax dollars ultimately, but the way we’ve ceded over responsibility to the civil government in area after area.

Okay, let’s talk about this text. But first, a few notes on the text itself. We read that in verse 27, “in those days came prophets from Jerusalem unto Antioch.” It’s interesting that when we say “came,” there actually is “came down from Jerusalem unto Antioch” more literally in the text in verse 27. The prophets come here. Prophets are a separate class. We’re told in the New Testament that the foundation of the church is Jesus Christ. And then God has given apostles. He’s given prophets and then teachers and pastors. And so prophets are a distinct class, somewhat distinctive to the first-century church—these first few years of the church.

They do not seem to have been—they seem to have been moved by the spirit to go in various places, but primarily for the purpose that they understood the scriptures very well and applied those scriptures to the times and circumstances in which they lived. They exhorted and strengthened people. That was the purpose of the prophets. And in the process of doing that, they would on occasion give predictions or prophecies about events to come.

And here we’re told, for the first time with Agabus (where we’ll be seeing him again in the book of Acts later on), he will signify—he will prophesy—that Paul will be imprisoned at Jerusalem. And those are the only two occurrences of him, I believe, in the scriptures. But these prophets come down, and one of them is Agabus himself. And so that’s what these prophets do: they build up the congregation.

Now it’s interesting that the opening scripture reading—frankly, it wasn’t the one I expected. I thought we were going to have the scripture reading, the call to worship, in the book of Jeremiah where God warns the people at the gate of the temple to not come in if they have unclean hands and if they have murder in their hearts—they haven’t obeyed God. So the need for confession of sin. But I had forgotten—we have two calls to worship out of the book of Jeremiah that we use on occasion, and this is the one that was chosen. And it’s interesting because Jeremiah, of course, is an Old Testament prophet, and the prophets are very important in the Old Testament. And there’s certainly a correlation between the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament prophets.

And what does God tell Jeremiah that he’s going to do as a prophet? He says in verse 10, as Richard read: “See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms to root out and to pull down and to destroy and to throw down, to build and to plant.”

So the prophet has kind of a rooting-up sort of aspect to him. God has set the prophets, and he set the prophetic church over the nations with authority over them. And so we should read this text a little differently if we understand that Agabus, being identified as a prophet, has correlation back to Jeremiah and the other prophets whose purpose was to be God’s spokesman.

Now, their understanding of the scriptures was quite important, and I wanted to just mention in passing that Matthew Henry says that those that are faithful in little shall be entrusted with more. You know, we want to understand the scriptures, and so we might pray that God would give us a deeper understanding of the scriptures. But Matthew Henry said that if you’re faithful in little—the scriptures that God has shown to you—then God will give you more instruction in the greater. The best understanding of scripture predictions, Matthew Henry wrote, is begot on the way of obedience to scripture instructions.

So if you want to understand what the scriptures predict about future events—and the scriptures do predict things; they talk about consequences to ethical actions. If you do this, that happens. If you do this, this happens. Deuteronomy 28: blessings and cursings. But if you want to understand scripture predictions about the times in which you live, Matthew Henry said, and I say to you and I say to myself, that the best way to get ahold of that is obedience to scripture instructions.

God is not around to give us titillating knowledge. He’s around to goad us on to ethical action on the basis of that—to increase our responsibility and knowledge.

These prophets come down, then, and they predict. Agabus does. One stood up among them named Agabus. Verse 28 says: “and signified by the spirit that there should be great dearth”—that is, a famine—”throughout all the earth, which came to pass in the days of Claudius Caesar.”

The reign of Claudius Caesar—the dates vary somewhere between 44 and 47 AD—this famine did come to pass. It was quite severe. People died, starved to death in Jerusalem. Offerings were taken from other countries. There were different methods to try to relieve some of the suffering. It wasn’t just in Jerusalem. The famine happened sporadically throughout the entire Roman Empire, throughout the entire known world, hitting one region one year, another region the next year. It happened over a course of several years, but it was quite severe, and people did starve to death in Jerusalem.

And that is the specific thrust of this passage—the famine that would come to Jerusalem. I don’t know if the phrase “throughout the whole world” in verse 28 has reference primarily to the Roman Empire, to the known world, or perhaps to the city of Jerusalem and the land of Canaan as a model of the whole world. Certainly, that is the significant significance that God places upon Jerusalem. It is the center of the world. The worshiping community of God are always seen in the scriptures as the center of the world. And so God’s perspective on what we do today is very important, and our perspective should be as well.

But in any event, the fact that Jerusalem suffered famine in the mid-40s is the beginning of the tribulations that would come to Jerusalem, culminating in AD 70, the destruction and sacking of the city and the temple.

They had rejected. As Matthew Henry (to quote Matthew Henry again), God had sent them the bread of life, and they rejected it, loathed the plenty of that manna, and therefore God just broke the staff of bread and punished them with famine. And herein he was righteous. They were barren, did not bring forth to God. Therefore, God made the earth barren to them. Our Savior predicted that there’d be famines and wars and ruins of wars, talking, I think, directly about what would be a coming judgment of God on Jerusalem in AD 70.

They had rejected the bread of life, and so God would not provide them the bread of physical life as well. They had rejected Jesus Christ. They had rejected the preaching of the word. The established community, the religious community at Jerusalem, had. They had persecuted once more the prophets and the church. They were barren, and so now the earth would be barren unto them.

There’s a tremendous warning if you want to talk about prediction of events.

We live in the context of a culture in America that has a famine in it, and it is a famine that is far worse than a famine of bread. It is a famine for the word of God. The prophet spoke of such famines in the Old Testament, and that’s what we have in America. Jerusalem had a famine of the preaching of God’s word before they had a famine of physical dimensions relative to food. They had a famine because they drove out and persecuted the church. The preachers would leave the city. The providence of God—he took the message then to Antioch and to outside regions.

We have a famine in this culture, and as a result, we are headed toward—in God’s judgment and justice, he is righteous in doing this—we are headed toward famine of a physical type in this country as well. Eventually, it will happen. God’s grace is very—God is very long-suffering. His mercy is long toward people. He waits. He brings small temporal judgments. He brings preaching to this country. But if this country turns, as it continues to move in a self-conscious way to suppress the truth of the gospel, and if churches themselves suppress the truth of the gospel, and if God’s people no longer desire to hear the plain teaching of God’s word, but rather to hear easy things from the word of God, then this country as well is headed toward famine and destruction, physical desolation, because there is spiritual desolation rampant in our land.

I heard Ken Talbot preach on the famine of the word back in Chicago last July. He said this used to be known as the land of milk and honey. That was the land of Canaan, of course, originally referred to in the scriptures as the land of milk and honey. And America, in its origins, did not have a famine of the word. They had good, strong biblical preaching from pulpit to pulpit. The origins of this country are distinctly Christian, and the governmental structures were established originally in a very self-consciously biblical fashion.

But—and that as a result, God blesses the land and gives it milk and honey, the produce of the field and the sweetness of honey. But as Ken Talbot said last July, you know, the land of the milk and honey, now what it is—you see people who want everything they can from the state, who don’t aren’t concerned at all about the tax rates because they want your money to be given to them. And yet the country cannot continue to feed cows that are continually hungry and asking for more and more and more of the civil government.

And so he said, instead of the land of the milk and honey, we have couples—a wife who turns to the husband and says, “Honey, we milk this land for all there is and there ain’t no more.”

That’s the way we’re going. That’s what we’re headed for in this country because of a famine of the preaching of the word of God.

Well, the same thing was true in Jerusalem. And so Agabus comes, and he describes the fact. He signifies by some symbolic action, apparently (as he did with the coming imprisonment of Paul), that there would be a great famine.

In verse 29, in Luke’s typical style of brevity relative to most of these events recorded for us: “then the disciples, every man according to his ability, determined to send relief unto the brethren which dwelt in Judea.”

They immediately act. You notice that there’s going to be a famine. He says, and immediately the text wants us to see there’s immediate response, antiphonal responsive action on the part of the church at Antioch to this situation. And they then immediately rally themselves, collectively and individually, to meet the need of the saints at Jerusalem.

We read here that “the disciples”—that is, a collective term, and it is in the genitive case—and “every man according to his ability” (again, the genitive case). There’s a double repetition of a particular case here in the Greek text: first referring to the group collectively, then referring to every man individually. That puts emphasis upon the fact that this was a collective action, but it also had an individual component to it.

In other words, it’s as if they got together on the Lord’s day, heard this report from Agabus, and then determined in council together as a community of believers at Antioch. They collectively—the disciples as a collective unit—determined to send relief to Jerusalem. And then the determination was not that they would tell everybody how much to give. This was not a tax, not a tithe. This was a free-will offering, a giving of alms.

And then every man in the congregation gave according as he saw fit. Also, the tense of the particular word here—”every man determined to send relief”—what that means is “kept sending relief.” So apparently this collection went on over a number of Sundays, a number of Lord’s days. It went on in the context of the collective, but there were individual actions being taken—a balance of the one and the many. An emphasis on volunteerism, but volunteerism in the context of a covenantal commitment by a group of people to meet a particular need, and then perpetual action going on over a series of Lord’s days until the money was then sent, eventually, to the brethren which dwelt in Judea.

Notice very importantly that this relief effort does not extend to the whole world—if we took that as the Roman Empire. It is very specifically sent to “the brethren”—that is, the Christians, the disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, those who are of the household of faith—which dwelt in Judea.

And so specifically, then, it’s given to a very specific purpose.

Verse 30: “which also they did and sent it to the elders by the hands of Barnabas and Saul.”

So they send this church to the elders in Judea. And by way of application, we know that this is Jerusalem of which they’re speaking about. They send this to the church at Jerusalem. They send it by the means of Barnabas and Saul, and they send it to the elders at the church of Jerusalem.

And so we have here the first mention of the term “elders” in the church. This shouldn’t cause us any great concern. Elders, apparently according to Luke’s understanding, were well-established in office in the church already at this time. There was no need to elaborate on this in Jerusalem particularly, because the idea of elders of the local church has continuity with the elders of the Old Testament. And so these elders received the alms from the Antiochian Christians, and they received it by means of Saul and Barnabas, though who had probably intended to report to Jerusalem anyway on the progress that was going on.

And so we have this account given to us.

If you have the map there in front of you that was available at the handouts, I wanted you—I just brought that for the purpose of showing you again how far it is from Jerusalem to Antioch. If you take the map, these are really—you might want to keep these for the next few months. The book of Acts talks about Paul’s first, second, third, and fourth missionary journeys. You’ll see that most of them began at Antioch. And you see Antioch is quite far north. As I said last week, 300 miles. And so we have an interesting picture for us given here of this establishment of this gentile church way in the outer regions of the earth, so to speak, outside of the land, right?—the land of Canaan.

This is established outside of the land. The gospel penetrates the known world through the mission center at Antioch. It’s a very important transition point for us. But there is relationship from Antioch back to Jerusalem. And so these people travel—Agabus, Paul, Barnabas, other people from Jerusalem to Antioch and then back. And there’s this loop made. And in one of these loops, this relief from the church at Antioch comes back to the saints at Jerusalem so that the poor there could survive this dreadful famine.

God takes care of his people in the midst of famine and desolation that he brings upon the earth for judgmental purposes.

Okay. Now, let’s talk a little bit about this.

Having taken an overview of this, we’ll talk about biblical famine relief. I mentioned the phrase in your outline: “the royal virtue.” That’s an old term used by Near Eastern culture. It refers to kings who would exhibit the virtue of extending grace and compassion to those who had need, particularly to widows and the fatherless, but also by way of extension to those people who are really poor and very desperate in circumstances because of circumstances beyond their control.

The royal virtue is a demonstration of grace to people on the part of people who have themselves acknowledged that they have received grace. God says that we’re a royal priesthood. He’s brought us into his family. He brings us here, and his royal virtue is that he feeds us every Lord’s day at the table of our Lord. He fills us with the best of all things with life in his Son Jesus Christ. He causes us to rejoice before him. He fills us with his word.

So God demonstrates this royal virtue by giving us grace and compassion and mercy, as we spoke of last week. And we, as God’s children, are to demonstrate—as a prince would that of the king—that same royal virtue by extending grace and compassion to those the king has set his favor upon. And so when we talk about famine relief here, helping the widow, the fatherless, the stranger, or the poor—those who are completely economically disadvantaged through a major catastrophe not of their own doing—this is a demonstration of what some have referred to as I think is a good term: “the royal virtue.”

Well, this royal virtue is an evidence of election.

And I’ve noticed—we, hopefully, you’ve noticed—that throughout the book of Acts so far, the giving of alms, charitable acts, deeds of mercy and kindness have been very important throughout the history of the early churches recorded in the book of Acts. We had the multitudes in Jerusalem who relinquished property rights, so to speak, who of their own accord determined, as they saw fit, again, would contribute to the common pool, the fund of the church at Jerusalem, because there’s a lot of people there who had been converted from all over the known world. And so there was a need for some to have assistance. And so the multitudes of Jerusalem demonstrated this royal virtue, and by means of that, they demonstrated their election—that their belief in the Lord Jesus Christ was genuine.

Barnabas, who we talked about a lot last week, was first mentioned for us in the book of Acts as one who sold his property to distribute to the church at Jerusalem. And so he demonstrates this royal virtue as a mark of his election.

The seven are selected specifically to minister to widows who have need of food. Again, demonstrating the royal virtue of the entire church institutionally now and demonstrating their evidence of their election.

Dorcas (raised from the dead—Tabitha, that is, the same person, two different names: Hebrew/Aramaic name and a Greek name), Dorcas also demonstrates the royal virtue. She did alms deeds for the widows of the church of which she was a part, and so demonstrated her election, being certified by her resurrection from the dead physically.

Cornelius was a man who gave much. Remember, his prayers and his alms are what went up as remembrance before God. So Cornelius also demonstrates this royal virtue as a result his election.

The Antiochans themselves now—as soon as we read about their establishment—immediately engage in alms deeds, demonstrating the royal virtue, compassion, and the extension of grace and mercy, as evidence of their election.

Its absence in the book of Acts is seen as an evidence of perdition of loss or ruin—the ruin of the soul. Perdition is kind of an old-fashioned term. It means absolute loss or destruction.

Ananias and Sapphira, in contrast to Barnabas, did not give the proceeds of their land—at least not all of it—to the church, but rather held some back. So I’ve listed them separately on your outline because while all too often this is the course that we see when people fall into disciplinary matters, husbands and wives refuse to separate themselves from each other’s sin. All too often. But nonetheless, in the sight of God, they are separate people. They have separate responsibilities to God.

Ananias died first. And Sapphira could have repented of her sin even after her husband had died. But she chose not to. So often that’s the case in scripture. But I said they list them separate on the outline because they’re treated separately in the scriptures, reminding us that our allegiance to God is greater—should be greater—than our allegiance to our marriage partner.

And then third, Simon Magus, who apparently because of his greed wanted to get office so he could make money, et cetera. And these are all examples in the book of Acts of greedy and grasping people.

I mention that because in our communion liturgy, one of them, at least, we talk about the excommunication—the barring of greedy and grasping people from the table of the Lord. Why? Because it’s a heinous sin because it demonstrates a lack of understanding that we’ve received grace from God. A failure to give grace to other people is a demonstration of our loss, our failure to comprehend the grace that has been showered upon us by God through the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so when we demonstrate that we have no grace toward other people or compassion or mercy, that we’ve not received forgiveness either—that’s the evidence of our perdition.

Greedy and grasping people, on the other hand, also at the end of most every communion liturgy, we make reference—sometimes by quotation, sometimes by simple reference—to Galatians 2:10, where Paul talks about how the heads of the church at Jerusalem would that we (that is, all in his company) should remember the poor. These are the very poor we’re speaking of in this text—the famine comes upon Jerusalem. The same thing—which also I was forward to do. Paul desired to help the poor, and that is a mark, again, of his election.

And in the communion liturgy at RCC, we frequently see these two things contrasted for us—maybe not right next to each other in the service, but you’ll see those mentioned in the communion liturgy. And that’s because communion is a picture of either salvation and election or cutting off from communion of perdition. At the center of that is a failure to comprehend the grace of Christ, demonstrating that no grace has been given to us.

So the scriptures say that this is a very important virtue, and I want to dwell on this for a couple of minutes.

Again, I want to quote Matthew Henry. Matthew Henry said: “It is promised to those that consider the poor that God will preserve them and keep them alive. They shall be blessed upon the earth.” And that’s from Psalm 41, verses 1 and 2. “And those who show mercy and give to the poor shall not be ashamed in the evil day. But in the days of famine, they shall be satisfied.” Psalm 37:19 and 21.

“The best provision,” Matthew Henry wrote, “that we can lay up against a dear time is to lay up an interest in these promises by doing good and communicating. Many give it as a reason why they should be sparing—that a dear time, or a difficult time, is an reason why they should be sparing. But the scripture gives it a reason why we should be liberal.”

To Ecclesiastes 7, verses 7 and 8. Ecclesiastes says, “Give because we know not what evil shall be upon the world.” The scriptures tell us, repeated in the psalm that was chosen today for the responsive reading, that it is a mark of our salvation if we give to the poor and of our physical substance and have a mind to do so according to God’s word. It’s an evidence of God’s election of us that we understand the grace we’ve received and want to hand out compassion and mercy to those round about us.

And so it’s very important.

2 Corinthians chapter 9 and following, read the following again. Paul gives an extended discussion here of the need for the saints to contribute to the saints of Jerusalem who are suffering because of the famine. That’s the context of what I’m going to read you here.

Now, in a way, we’ve talked before about how the Pentateuch sort of sets up the rest of the Old Testament. You must understand many of the prophetic writings or the historical books. You must know the Pentateuch. And of course, all that’s set up by the first few chapters of the book of Genesis is the model. It plays itself out. Well, in a very real sense, it will greatly help your understanding of the epistles of the New Testament if you understand the book of Acts and the gospels. You know, the Pentateuch and then moving into Joshua and the conquest of the land provide the basis for understanding the rest of the Old Testament. The gospels and the book of Acts provide the basis for understanding the epistles. And many times in the epistles, you hear about this collection for the poor going on. And this is where it’s happening right here. It’s referring to this period of time that Agabus predicted this famine or dearth to come upon Jerusalem and all the world.

Well, Paul in 2 Corinthians 9 writes to the Corinthians about this. He says: “Therefore, I thought it necessary to exhort the brethren that they should go before unto you and make up beforehand your bounty whereof ye have noticed you have noticed before that the same might be ready as a matter of bounty and not of covetousness.”

But this—so he’s saying, I was going to, I thought it good to tell Will I be coming to make this collection? I’ve sent brothers beforehand that you might be ready for this collection for the saints.

Then he says: “But this I say, he which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly, and he which sows bountifully shall reap bountifully. Every man according as he purposes in his heart, so let him give.”

See here, same principle that we just read—the principle of volunteerism really. A church is told of a need in Jerusalem. The church at Antioch determines as a group to meet the need. But the meeting of that need is a voluntary action by the individual members of the congregation. Each man determines as he sees fit in his own heart how much to give for the collection of the saints at Jerusalem.

And so Paul repeats this: “Every man according as he purposes in his heart, so let him give.”

But he doesn’t leave it there. He goes on to say: “Not grudgingly or of necessity, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you always have all sufficiency in all things, and he may that they may abound to every good work. As it is written, he hath dispersed abroad, he hath given to the poor, his righteousness remains forever. Now that he minister seed to the sower, both minister bread for your food, and multiply your seed sown, and increase the fruits of your righteousness, being enriched in everything to all bountifulness, which causes through us thanksgiving to God.”

Paul is saying that there’s some principles involved in this almsgiving that are very important for us to understand. There’s a principle of volunteerism. But there’s also the principle that there’s a law at work here—that as you give, so shall you receive. And as the other text we read from the Psalms and from Ecclesiastes says: Even in times of trouble, even in times of scarcity, don’t let that stop up your compassion to those who have need of physical resources.

Because God says that ultimately what will preserve you in the day of trouble is not your financial resources, but rather the grace and blessing of God himself.

And that’s why Paul says here, you know, don’t give grudgingly. God loves a cheerful giver. The Greek term there is “hilarious.” The root of our word “hilarious”—which is, by the way, the same essential root of the name Hillary, the president’s wife. Hilarious. God loves a hilarious giver. Not just throws a smile on your face, but with great joy in your heart, being able to give of your substance to help another brother in the Lord in a time of difficulty.

God loves cheerful giving, joyous, hilarious giving.

And Paul goes on to say, God is able to make all grace abound toward you. See, the principle here is: don’t hold on to everything you have. Greedy and grasping people will suffer. Be free. Freely give. That because God will certainly be able to make all grace abound to you—that you always have all sufficiency in all things, that you may abound to every good work.

So he says that he—now he that ministereth seed to the sower, both minister bread for your food, and multiply your seeds sown, and secure increase the fruits of your righteousness. So God is able to do these things, and Paul is saying this is what will happen as you give, and as you give freely.

This principle of giving, of almsgiving, is an important one in the book of Acts. It’s important in the Psalms. It’s important throughout the scriptures. I want to just dwell on that a few more minutes before we move on to the second aspects of this talk.

This is a demonstration of mercy. That’s what we’re talking about here. This giving that the saints did at Antioch was not the use of the tithe. There is a mercy aspect to the tithe, but that’s not what’s going on here, because otherwise it’s not “as each one purposes in his heart.”

R.J. Rushdoony, speaking on the verse from Matthew 23, verses 23 and 24, our Savior said this: “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, justice, mercy, and faith. These ought you to have done and not to have left the other undone. Ye blind guides, which strained a gnat and swallow a camel.”

You see, he was telling him, “Yeah, you tithe. You should have done that. That’s true. But you should have done more than that. You should have been concerned about the weightier matters of the law—justice and judgment, faith, but also mercy”—is also mentioned by our Savior.

But one of the things that they had neglected: to quote from R.J. Rushdoony, “Tithing does not make us great Christians or signal observers of the law. It is an elementary obligation. It is the necessary tax of the kingdom. Payment signifies citizenship, not distinguished service. We are not up to the level of the Pharisees if tithing is the highest point of our faith. It is an elementary mark of faith—the ABCs, so to speak, of the kingdom.”

“The Pharisees obeyed the law of the tithe as given in Leviticus 27 and elsewhere, and in that they surpass most who claim the name of Christ today. Justice, mercy, and faith, however, were left undone.”

That’s a very important point. And we think that we’ve done something good for God if we pay the tithe. But no, that’s not what’s being talked about here. Here is something—a collection for a need above and beyond the tithe. And the scriptures repeat these kind of things throughout them as an evidence of our election in Christ.

The tithe is a simply required tax to live in the kingdom of God. And if a person doesn’t do it, having understood that the scriptures require tithing—I don’t want to, you know, go too far here, because many churches today teach that tithing is not required. But a person has come to a knowledge of the scriptures, knowledge that tithing is required, doesn’t do it. He’s not paying his citizenship dues, his taxes to God, and he’s really not to be considered a member of the kingdom of God.

That’s plain and simple.

But this verse we’re talking about today from the book of Acts says: Beyond and above that, you should be able to give of your physical ability to pay for those who suffer need—in the case of the saints of Jerusalem—because of famine.

Now, in Psalm 126, we read: “They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth in weeping, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.”

And in the passage we just read from 2 Corinthians 9:6, we read: “He that sows sparingly shall also reap sparingly. And he that sows bountifully shall reap bountifully.”

Undoubtedly, Psalm 126 and other passages relative to that were in Paul’s mind when he wrote that text.

And again, to quote from R.J. Rushdoony relative to this principle of hilarity or joyousness in giving: “A man cannot survive by a sparing or token sowing of grain. Halfway measures are futile.”

And he’s talking here about the man who sows his seed in tears. The idea is that there is a famine. You have very little seed left. You know that if this crop doesn’t come up, you’re going to starve. And you know, if you eat this seed before you plant it, you’ll be happy this year, but next year you’ll starve. So what do you do? You plant the seed. You trust God. You cast your bread upon the water. That was this seed, apparently, that bread. You cast that seed into the ground, and you wait for God’s blessing upon you. And so it is with giving—to the point of, you know, not being able to understand where next year your things may come from—unless God blesses the crop. That’s what’s being talked about in Rushdoony.

He says: “This—a man cannot survive by a sparing or token sowing of grain. Halfway measures are futile. To eat the seed grain is an abandonment of the future in favor of eating today and dying tomorrow. So it is the man who does not give to the Lord. To give sparingly is comparable to being unable to live either for today or tomorrow. To give sparingly is a halting between two opinions. Only he who sows bountifully can and shall reap bountifully.

“The future we have is the future we plan for—either in terms of ourselves or in terms of God.”

The motivation for all this is the love of Jesus Christ ultimately. Remember, our Savior told us: “To the extent that you do it for the least of these, you do it unto me.”

So when we give to the saints of God, we do so not out of a motivation as a love of man as our ultimate goal, but rather out of a motivation of the love of Jesus Christ.

It’s interesting in the scriptures that the script related to this idea—the demonstration of mercy through almsgiving—is being hospitable toward people, entertaining people in your home. That’s the word “hospitable” means in the Greek. And that’s required of church officers. We are required to show hospitality. Not only to show it, but actually to enjoy doing it—to enjoy giving people mercy and compassion by having in our homes, to share our homes, et cetera.

So the scriptures tell us, again, that this is a very important way that the Christian is marked.

He’s not marked by a miserly spirit. As R.J. Rushdoony writes: “But a readiness to entertain other Christians, to pick up the check when together, to demonstrate and breathe that the bonds of love between fellow believers and hospitality to a stranger are more important than a self-seeking prudence. A miserly man is clearly lawless because hospitality is a requirement for Christians and a manifestation of grace.”

This is very important as a counterweight to a biblical understanding of economics. If you’ve been at this church very long, you know that we believe the scriptures teach a free enterprise system. Sometimes I didn’t wear it today—I probably should have maybe for the talk—but you know, I wear a tie—an Adam Smith tie—that is a demonstration of a belief that free market economics, volunteerism in the economic sphere, is what the scriptures provide for.

Private property is at the core of biblical faith. And it’s very important to keep repeating that in our culture because culture moves increasingly toward a diminishment of private property rights, and we’re almost on the verge now of complete elimination of private property rights in this country. But in any event, so it’s very important we stress that.

But on the other side of that, the counterweight to that is these principles about the giving of property to other people when in need. The counterweight to private property is the real demands the scriptures make upon us of proper stewardship of those property rights. Ultimately, the property doesn’t belong to us. Of course, ultimately, the property belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ.

And again, to quote Rushdoony: “The man who takes the private property emphasis of scripture without accepting the tithe, the law of hospitality, and the standard of St. Paul—and that is, relative to almsgiving—is marked by self-justification rather than by Christ justification.”

So the scriptures say that this particular truth is very important.

There is involved in this a test of ourselves.

Let me read again one more quote from R.J. Rushdoony. “The giving is as every man purposes in his heart, both in Corinthians and here in this text from Acts as well. It is a test, and the guidelines or answers are not revealed to us precisely because it is we who are on test. In other words, the Bible doesn’t tell you how much to give because the whole idea is that we’re giving you the answer before you give.

“So the Bible says: Give as you purpose in your heart. You’re being evaluated by God with the answer not being provided. If we begrudge giving or being hospitable, and if we justify by ourselves with endless good reasons—all excuses are good excuses when we make them—we have been indeed tested and found wanting.

“Tithing is a matter of law. Failure to tithe is a sin. Hospitality is a commandment. But the measure of hospitality and the extent of voluntary giving is a test of man. If we give because we feel that we must, we avoid judgment but gain no blessing. It is the joyful, the hilarious giver whom God loves—the man who delights in opportunities to serve and help in Christ’s name. The grudging giver gains nothing. He fails the test.”

Well, all these things are important. It’s important for us to take this word and apply it to our hearts.

Well, how do you rate on the mercy scale—the demonstration of compassion to other people? How do you rate in terms of being a cheerful giver when need presents itself? And these are things that God evaluates in us. He brings about specific things in our lives, in the lives of our culture, like he did in the lives of Jerusalem—a famine—to test God’s people and reveal their hearts to themselves.

Are they going to be giving their all? Are they going to demonstrate election through their participation in almsgiving? And are they going to do that cheerfully or are they going to do it grudgingly? Are they going to reap a reward from God? Are they going to be seen, to be evaluated correctly, and blessed by God? Or are they going to receive no blessing whatsoever?

So its exercise is certainly important in the scriptures, and its exercise is also regulated by the scriptures.

You know, it’s important we’ve established now the principle that giving is a good thing above and beyond the tithe to people who are in need—in particular, things that God calls us to give for. But now we must also recognize the other side of that: this is not an antinomian giving that we’re talking about. This is a giving regulated by God’s law. God’s law is to regulate every area of our lives. And it certainly regulates, number one, the recipients of our mercy, of our almsgiving, et cetera.

This is very important because we live in the context of an age in which the bad are rewarded by almsgiving and not the good. We live in the context of an age where mercy is seen outside of the covenantal context of God’s mercy to us. You know, God’s mercy in the scriptures is, almost in every occasion (say maybe one or two examples), God’s mercy is always spoken of relative to his covenant people—to people that he has covenant relationship with.

See, the recipients of God’s mercy should be the model for the recipients of our mercy. And to reward the bad is really to punish the good.

I found out this last week—as long as we’re talking about income taxes—I found out, for instance, that there is a compassion or there is a mercy program available from the federal government to pay back taxes. You can actually apply for a grant to the federal government if you owe back taxes for the purpose of paying those back taxes. And if you have attention deficit disorder, if you’re disabled in some way, can’t attend to things, whatever it is, then you’re qualified to apply for this grant or receive money from the federal government to pay your taxes for you.

See, what’s the end result of that? The end result is not that the federal government’s going to spend less dollars for their budget this year. The end result of that is that you who are responsible, obedient,