This man welcomes sinners and eats with them!

Posted on September 23, 2025 by Pastor Foley

Luke 15:1-10 is part of the portion of Luke which began in Luke 9:51 where Jesus has set his face towards Jerusalem and is on the way there to continue to fulfill Isaiah 61 as he preached in Luke 4. Jesus is the true Lord and this journey is the final Exodus, to which the first Exodus—the one out of Egypt –points and in which it is fulfilled .

By Alexandre Bida – https://archive.org/details/christinartstory00egglrich/page/164/mode/2up?view=theater, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=121008582

In the first Exodus, what happens to the Israelites who mutter in the wilderness? They died in the wilderness. Likewise, the “muttering” of the Pharisees and teachers of the Law throughout Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem are very serious. Their accusations against Jesus—that he works on the Sabbath (through his healings) and that he welcomes and eats with sinners—are punishable by death, according to the Law.

So how does Jesus respond to these serious accusations? By telling a parable:

“Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent. “Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Doesn’t she light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.’ In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” ” (Luke 15:4-7)

The main point of Jesus’ parable, as he notes, is that there is rejoicing over repentant sinners. But, interestingly, the sheep and the coin don’t seem to repent. They don’t seem to do anything except be lost and then be found. All of the action is done by the shepherd and the woman.

This is the reason why the Pharisees and the teachers of the law mutter: The tax collectors and sinners didn’t go through the proper steps and procedures outlined in the Law for repentance. All they did was be found by Jesus and follow him. So it means that they are still sinners.

The Pharisees and the teachers of the law know what the scripture says about sinners, especially the Psalms, which says that sinners will be punished. If the tax collectors and sinners repented, wouldn’t the Pharisees and the teachers of the law repent?

No! We know that because when John the Baptist came, tax collectors and sinners repented, but the Pharisees and teachers of the law did not rejoice.

“(All the people, even the tax collectors, when they heard Jesus’ words, acknowledged that God’s way was right, because they had been baptized by John. But the Pharisees and the experts in the law rejected God’s purpose for themselves, because they had not been baptized by John.) Jesus went on to say, “To what, then, can I compare the people of this generation? What are they like? They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling out to each other: “‘We played the pipe for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not cry.’ For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and you say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is proved right by all her children.” (Luke 7:29-35)

This is the point which Jesus makes in the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15. When the second brother returns home, the first brother did not rejoice and feast with the rest of the father’s house. So the Pharisees and teachers of the law exclude themselves from the Kingdom through their failure to rejoice over the Lord’s work of saving sinners.

But aren’t the Pharisees and teachers of the law the 99 righteous sheep who did not need to repent?

With that question, we come to the heart of the parable. To understand Jesus’ answer, we need to hear from a former Pharisee: Paul the Apostle. He writes this about himself:

“circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.” (Philippians 3:5-6)

Paul was one of the 99 righteous who did not need to repent. He was “blameless” according to the law. He was in right relationship to the Law, so he had no reason to repent. But he was not in right relationship with God and others.

The Pharisees and teachers of the law in Luke 15 are in the same position. There have no need to repent according to the law. But, says Jesus, there is no rejoicing in heaven over such people. That is because Jesus did not come to bring people into right relationship with the law.

What the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law could not see—and what many of us Christians today cannot see—is that Scripture talks about two completely different kinds of righteousness and two completely different kinds of sin. Paul describes the two different kinds of righteousness like this in Philippians 3:9: One he calls “a righteousness of my own that comes from the Law”, and the other he calls “the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith”.

And what of the two different kinds of sin? We can distinguish these by calling them “lowercase-‘s’ sins” and “uppercase ‘S’ Sin”. Lowercase-s sins are individual infractions against the law. They are often spoken of in the plural, like in the Lord’s Prayer when we say, “Forgive us our sins.” When the Pharisees and teachers of the law call people “sinners”, they are referring to people who have committed such sins and have not repented of them. Calling them “lowercase-‘s’ sins “ doesn’t mean they are “small sins”. It means all sinful actions we do—including big sins like murder, sexual sin, lying, and stealing.

Uppercase “S” Sin refers to Sin as a power—the power that holds all human beings in slavery. Paul writes about “Capital-S Sin” in Romans 5:12:

“Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned.”

Sin and sins are related. We are enslaved to Sin and so, as a result, we commit sins. The temple and John’s baptism could deal with sins, but the were powerless against Sin. Against Sin, we are completely helpless…like lost sheep or a lost coin. This is why Jesus uses word like “lost”, “sick” or “indebted” to describe sinners. When Jesus uses these words, he is talking about Sin.

If you are really lost, someone has to find you. If you are really sick, someone has to heal you. If you are really in debt, someone has to pay for you. On our own, we can repent of sins, even non-Christians do that if they have a strong conscience. But Sin goes way deeper than conscience.

Our conscience cannot feel Sin, and we are not even aware of it. and faith are opposites: “Capital-S Sin” is rebellion against God, while faith is trust in God. Paul says it like this in Romans 14:23:

“everything that does not come from faith is sin” (Romans 14:23)

Faith, forgiveness, and repentence are Sin-overcoming gifts that can only come to us from God as we hear his voice:

“Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ.” (Romans 10:17).

Faith cannot come to us through an explanation of the gospel or through general encouragements about God’s existence or God’s love for us. Faith can only come from the proclamation of the gospel itself. Only the gospel itself is God’s own word and voice.

When angels are rejoicing in heaven, are they rejoicing because someone made a good decision to repent? Are they saying, “Hey, good job, sinner, you made a good choice!”

No! They are rejoicing because Jesus has sought, found, and granted repentance to one more sinner. That is something only he can do.

The Church really needs to recover this proper understanding of two kinds of sin and two kinds of righteousness. Because we do not understand these difference, we do not understand our role in the world and have become like the Pharisees and teachers of the law.

How?

The Lord calls us to address the Lowercase-s sins of our fellow believers, but not the Lowercase-s sins of the world.

“What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked person from among you.” (1 Corinthians 5:12-13).

This is why the church is never shown in the New Testament as protesting and trying to change the laws of the world. Addressing Lowercase-s without first addressing and overcoming Capital-S Sin means that we do not understand sin, righteousness, the Lord, or his gospel at all.

When we speak to the world, the Lord only authorizes us to address Capital-S Sin. We do that through the only message he has authorized us to share in the world: the gospel. It is through the gospel that the Lord reveals that he is the friend of Capital-S sinners. It is through the gospel that He addresses Capital-S sinners as lost, sick, and deeply in debt to Sin. It is through the gospel that he sets Capital-S Sinners free from the law of sin and death.

But, today, the church is completely focused on judging and condemning the lowercase-s sins of the world. It is always out there protesting sinful laws and trying to change them. In this, we are imitating the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, not the Lord. The Lord has one purpose for coming to the world, and it is not to uphold Christian values:

“For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:10)

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When you give a banquet…

Posted on September 9, 2025 by Pastor Foley

“But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” (Luke 14:13-14)

In Luke 14:1-6, Jesus heals another person on the Sabbath. This is the third time which Jesus has healed on the Sabbath in Luke. Each time, the religious leaders who witness Jesus’ miracle harden their hearts. The first time, they complained to each other. The second time, the synagogue leader complained to the congregation. And, this time “they remained silent” (Luke 14:4).

We can see the root of the conflict in Luke 15:2:

But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, ‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.’ (Luke 15:2).

The root of the conflict is about how God works. We know that God works through Jesus and that everything that Jesus does is the work of God because Jesus is God. But the religious leaders do not acknowledge Jesus as God. They call him, “This man”.

In Luke 14, it says that the religious leaders were “watching him carefully” (Luke 14:2). If the religious leaders had not hardened their hearts, they would recognize that Jesus is doing things that only God can do.

Like the man who had his eyes opened in John 9:32, they would have seen that “Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind.” As Jesus said, “Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves.” (John 14:11).

When Jesus speaks, he generally quotes or refers to scripture. But he doesn’t say, “In Isaiah 16, it says…” because, being God, the word is his word. And, when Jesus quotes the word, he generally applied the part of the scripture about God to Himself.

He also applies the Messianic scriptures to himself, such as when he began his preaching ministry in Luke 4, quoting Isaiah 61:1 and saying, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

In the scripture from today, Jesus asked the religious leaders, “Which of you, having a son or an ox that has fallen into a well on a Sabbath day, will not immediately pull him out?” (Luke 14:5). By doing this, he is not just trying to advocate for the right of human beings to heal people on the Sabbath. He is doing so as God.

Jesus is saying the same thing here as he says in Matthew 7:9-11:

Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!

Luke 14 is not about advocating the right to heal on a rest day. It is about Jesus being God and the religious leaders trying to prevent that from happening.

After this healing, Jesus tells a parable.

Now he told a parable to those who were invited, when he noticed how they chose the places of honor, saying to them, “When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest someone more distinguished than you be invited by him, and he who invited you both will come and say to you, ‘Give your place to this person,’ and then you will begin with shame to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” (Luke 14:7-11)

The important phrase here is “when your host comes” (Luke 14:10). Jesus is not just giving important advice about being humble here. He is quoting Proverbs 25:6-7, which the religious leaders would undoubtedly know.

Do not exalt yourself in the king’s presence, and do not claim a place among his great men; it is better for him to say to you, “Come up here,” than for him to humiliate you before his nobles. (Proverbs 25:6-7).

Jesus is the king. He is warning the religious leaders not to exalt themselves in his presence. He is telling them that he himself will humble them on the day of Jesus’ own great banquet, which he then tells them about in the following passage.

It may be difficult for us to understanding these things. But we need to read the scripture as the full revelation of who Jesus is and what Jesus does. When we look at Isaiah 58, we can see how Jesus fulfills the scripture.

Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? (Isaiah 58:6-7)

If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath and from doing as you please on my holy day, if you call the Sabbath a delight and the Lord’s holy day honorable, and if you honor it by not going your own way and not doing as you please or speaking idle words,”(Isaiah 58:13)

A large part of Jesus’ ministry is keeping the Sabbath the way that he, as God, wants it to be kept. Jesus is not saying, “Don’t be too legalistic. Make sure to leave time for rest and fun with your family.” And Jesus never tells us, “Look forward to heaven, where you can meet your deceased relatives and pets and have fun playing golf and dancing” as if the point of the afterlife is to live out the best parts of our current life without all the parts we don’t like.

In fact, Jesus tells us that the Sabbath is not about having fun with our family and friends. He tells us, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers[b] or your relatives or rich neighbors” (Luke 14:12). And, inasmuch as the Sabbath is a small picture which God gave to Israel to know what life will be like in the kingdom, life after death will not be about having fun with our family and friends forever. In the kingdom, we will sit across the table from the “the poor and crippled and blind and lame”. And the reason we will do this in the kingdom is because it is the way we spent our sabbaths.

Our thinking about the Sabbath and heaven is more similar to the religious leaders than it is to Jesus. Jesus’ complaint about the religious leaders is not that they are too legalistic, but that their behavior looks outwardly holy, but is primarily for their own benefit.

We may protest, “No, I’m different. The religious leaders were just being absolutely mean and trying to stop people from being healed on the Sabbath”. But the religious leaders had a good reason for why they tried to oppose Jesus’ healing. They believed that the reason why Israel was struggling in Jesus’ day is because the people of Israel were living in ways that were no different from the rest of the world. They believed that, in order to get God to act on their behalf, they had to get serious about being different from the world. The Pharisees especially felt that keeping the Sabbath day is one of the main ways that they could be different from the rest of the world.

As modern Christians, we have the same wrong thinking. We think that, the more we fast, the more worship services we attend, and the more we show God that we are serious about our faith that God will work on our behalf. We may even want to show God that we are serious that, when we are sick on Sunday, we pray, fast, and go to a lot of worship services on Sunday and focus on getting healed on the next day, hoping that God will heal us as a result of what we have done. We believe that God has good gifts to give, but is not giving them to us yet because we have not been serious about them yet.

In all religions, we human beings are the subjects of the verbs. We do something and then God responds to us. Either he blesses us because we are serious about him. Or he punishes us because we are not serious about him. That is how we expect and want God to work.

But Jesus shows us that God, not human beings, is the subject of the verbs. On the Sabbath, God is the actor, not human beings. Likewise, in the kingdom, God is the actor. He brings gifts. He brings his presence. He brings his forgiveness. He brings healing. He brings food. He brings is not because we have been good, not because we have been serious about him, but because he is good. For us as human beings, the question is “Will we receive the gifts that he brings?”

In the parable of the wedding banquet in Luke 14, we learn that most human beings reject the gifts God seeks to give us because we do not like the way he runs his banquet. He calls us out of our human flesh and blood relationships and friendships and into his family. His family is composed of the people who are of no value in the present age. In fact, associating with these people (the poor, the handicapped, the lame, the blind, the outcast, the prisoners) will lower our status in the present age. But he says that they are his family. If we want Jesus, we have to accept his family as our family even more than our flesh and blood family.

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“Sell your possessions and give to the poor”

Posted on August 26, 2025 by Pastor Foley

If you google “Did Jesus command Christians to sell their possessions and give to the poor?”, you will find many pastors preaching about how Jesus only gave this specific command to the rich, young ruler and not to Christians in general and that Christians in general should give 10% of their income to the church.

But if you look at Luke 12:22-33, we can see that Jesus told his disciples to sell their possessions and give to the poor. Pastors who preach on this scripture say that this was a specific command to the twelve apostles and not to everyone and that Christians in general should give 10% of their income to the church.

But if you look at Acts 2:45, we can see that over three thousand of the early disciples sold their property and possessions to give to the poor. Pastors who preach on this scripture say that this was a practice of the early church, but not for all Christians and that Christians in general should give 10% of their income to the church.

But we cannot pick and choose which scriptures do and do not apply to today based on if we are comfortable with them or not. For example, we would never say that Jesus’ command “do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear” only applied to the twelve apostles. Of course it applies to today—and it is in the same sermon where Jesus called on his disciples to sell their possessions!

Later on, in Luke 18, when Jesus addresses the rich young ruler, he simply gives the same command to the rich young ruler that he gave to his disciples in Luke 12. And when the disciples were shocked at Jesus’ command to the rich young ruler, Jesus didn’t afterwards tell his apostles, “Don’t worry. This was not a command for all disciples, but just for the rich young ruler”.

These days, many Christians are concerned about the sexual revolution. Christians readily agree with Paul’s command in 1 Corinthians 6:15 that we should not unite the members of Christ with a prostitute. But they are confident that we should unite the members of Christ with money, despite Jesus’ statement that “you cannot serve both God and money” (Matthew 6:24). Instead, they quote 1 Timothy 6:10, saying that money is not evil, but the love of money is the root of evil. They claim that money is a good thing that is necessary for ministry, and that people can do more ministry with more money.

But, in the same passage, Paul tells Timothy, “As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy.” The wealth of this age is not an ingredient for building the kingdom of God. This means that rich people can let go of what they have in order to receive the wealth of the age to come, which God has freely given in the kingdom of his Son.

Jesus said, “Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” (Matthew 19:24). Many pastors try to explain this away by saying that there used to be a gate to Jerusalem called “the Eye of the Needle” that was very small so that camels who wanted to pass through had to get on their knees. So, if rich people want to get into heaven, all they have to do is be humble like kneeling camels.

But this sermon illustration is completely untrue. We know from archaeology and history that there was no such gate. But we know even more surely that Jesus was not referring to a certain gate or the humility of rich people by the next few verses.

“When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, “Who then can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” (Matthew 19:25-26)

The main issue is that the kingdom of God is not built from the wealth of the present age. It is a gift from God. All that we have to do is to receive it, proclaim it to God’s enemies, and share and enjoy it with all who receive the mercy of God in Christ.

That is why Jesus is never focused on the percentage of money which you are giving to the church. Jesus said, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Luke 12:34). So, if you are giving 10% to the church and 90% to yourself, it means that 10% of your heart is with the church and 90% is with yourself. Even if you give 51% to the church, your heart is still divided.

And note that Jesus never directs his disciples to give “to the church”. He always directs them to give “to the poor”. Paul gives the reason in 1 Timothy 6:17: God “richly provides us with everything to enjoy”, from the riches of the age to come which has already begun in the reign of Christ. In this “present age” money is necessary to accomplish things. But all that is necessary in the Kingdom of God is God.

Therefore, accumulating money in the present age to use it for whatever you want to use it for makes no sense. As Paul said in Colossians 3:2-3 “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:2-3).

When Jesus says “Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys”, he is not saying “Sell your possessions and make a lot of money to use for ministry.” Instead, he is saying, “You do not need money to do ministry. Get rid of your money so you can do ministry.”

Jesus said, “Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.” God has already given us the Kingdom. We cannot increase the Kingdom with our money. We can only receive it, proclaim it, live according to it, and pass it along to share and enjoy with others.

That is why rich churches and rich people have no advantage over poor churches and poor people when it comes to doing ministry in the Kingdom of God. Rich churches cannot do more ministry than poor churches. Rich people cannot do more ministry than poor people. They may be able to do more things. But doing more things and doing more ministry are completely different matters. In fact, thinking that you are doing more for God with your money is arrogant (1 Timothy 6:17)

What does Jesus mean by “storing up treasure in heaven”? Does it mean that whatever you donate in this present age turns into treasure that you can redeem when you go to heaven? No, because you are not going to heaven when you die. Our life is in Christ, and we live wherever he is and, right now, he is in heaven (Colossians 3:1-4).

Then what is “treasure in heaven”? Treasure in heaven comes from living according to the Kingdom while you are still here in this present age. This is why Jesus tells us not to worry about what we eat or wear in the present age; God provides these things to his servants. He just does it in totally different ways than the ways that people generally acquire things in this present age.

People who live according to this present age’s resources (including many churches and Christians), they cannot understand this. As a result of this, they do not trust God. What they trust is that money is necessary to do ministry. But people from the Kingdom age know that God always provides for his work in ways that we cannot imagine or understand. And we can always trust the Lord.

When we live today according to the wealth of the coming Kingdom, which God provides in his way, in His time, for His purpose, we are actually storing up treasure for ourselves in the Kingdom to come. It is a reward for our trust in Him in this age. It is not a spiritual wire transfer of money from this age to the age to come. The currencies are completely different.

That is what Jesus is sharing in Luke 12. Jesus is not focused on money. He is not focused on how much you should give or wear. He is focused on this Kingdom, which he says the Father has been pleased to give to us. He is telling us not to be afraid. Even though he is sending us out into the world with no wealth from this present age and we may be persecuted, imprisoned, or killed, we do not need to worry because God always provides for his servants from the wealth of the age to come.

The way that God provides for us looks different from the way money provides for us.

And note here that we are talking about God providing for his servants. When someone appealed to Jesus to arbitrate between he and his brother, Jesus replied, “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?” (Luke 12:13-14). Jesus has no interest in the wealth of the present age. He calls you away from your plans, goals, money, birth families, etc. When we are baptized into Christ’s death, our branch is cut off from this world’s tree. And Christ’s plan and purpose become our plan and purpose. His way of life becomes our way of life. In fact, His life becomes our life.

Jesus did not bless Peter, Andrew, James, and John’s fishing business. He called them away from it. He did not call Matthew to become a more honest tax collector. He called Matthew away from his tax collecting. In the same way, Christ calls us away from our purposes and goals in order to become his servants and carry out his purposes and goals.

What is Jesus’ purpose? Jesus’ purpose is to bring His Father’s offer of mercy to his enemies at the end of the age before Jesus comes back to judge the world. So, he sends us to his enemies with his terms and offer for them to surrender.

This is basic about the Christian life, but most Christians miss this. Jesus is not making a promise that, if you believe in Him, he will fix all your problems in the present age for a 10% tithe-commission.

You died to this present age when you were baptized into Christ’s death. He called you out of this age without taking you out of this world. You are living at the dawn of the Kingdom of God while you are still here. The deal is not “Give me 10% and I will bless your life.” The deal is “Sell all you have and come, follow me. I provide everything my servants need for the work I call them to do.”

Notice, Jesus does not say, “Sell all you have and become poor”. He says, “Sell all you have and come follow me.” This doesn’t mean decreasing the amount of your possessions. Because we have died, nothing we have belongs to us anymore. It doesn’t make sense for us to accumulate more possessions or more money for ourselves. So we do what Jesus says in Luke 6:30:

“Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.” (Luke 6:30).

We give without demanding back because everything we have is a gift from God.

Jesus’ command to sell our possessions is a call to a one-time decision that changes our relationship to the wealth of this age.

Christians fulfill this command in a variety of ways. Zacchaeus gave back to other what he had stolen to them. The disciples just walked away from everything he had. Pastor Trevor sold everything he owned at a McDonalds parking lot over a matter of days. Dr. Foley and I sold everything we had and put the money in this ministry.

That doesn’t mean that you wander around in caves like a homeless beggar. In fact, the Apostle Paul had a rule in his churches:

“For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: ‘The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.’” (2 Thessalonians 3:10).

Neither did Jesus live like a monk or a beggar.

It means that instead of settling down, you go where he sends you. You accept what he gives you without holding onto it tightly. You use it joyfully. But you do not own it. You let all things, including money, pass through your hands as philanthropy for others.

The Kingdom of God is not given to us as a possession. It is given to us to enjoy and share and pass on to others.

There is an old Jewish saying that, “In heaven, no one has any elbows.” It means that nobody can feed themselves there. Instead, you feed others and others feed you. But we experience that life now because, as Paul says, “We have already died.” We don’t need our elbows anymore because we are serving each other. And God always provides more than enough for us to serve each other with. And he teaches his servants to be content with whatever he provides whenever he provides it.

Even at times when he does not seem to be providing much of anything to us, we are still content because we know that whatever he provides is whatever we need to do what he asks us to do as his servants.

“I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.” (Philippians 4:12-13).

These are profound truths, and I would hope that you think on them deeply and act on them. But I have a feeling that the main question you will have in your mind at this point is, “So are you saying that we should not tithe to our church?”

My response is two questions?

  1. “Why are you only giving away 10% of your money? What are you keeping the rest for? Do you really think it belongs to you?”
  2. “Why are you only giving to your church?”

In the Old Testament, where the “tithe” comes from, the Israelites gave 10% of their crops to support the temple and the ministers. But Christians are in the New Covenant, not the Old, and all of us are ministers of the New Covenant. Just like Christ, we don’t only give 10% and we don’t only receive 10%. We give away all we have. Not only our money, but our purposes and plans we used to have for our lives. We give those all away. And then we follow Christ. And we serve him as he directs us according to his plans and purposes using his resources and not our own. He provides us more than tithes. He has already entrusted the Kingdom to us. The whole thing! That is why he says, “Don’t be afraid”.

Of course, give to your church, give to Christian ministries. But don’t do it because God needs the money. The Kingdom of God is never short on money. Give because holding onto the wealth of this present age keeps us from receiving the Kingdom which God has given to us freely through His Son.

God graciously accepts what you give, and he recycles it for His purpose. But he is not willing to receive only a 10% commission from you. He wants you to leave behind the wealth of this age and how it works in order to receive the true wealth that belongs only to the age to come. He has given it to us now, because the new creation has dawned in the reign of Christ. In the Lord’s hands, there is no difference between 5 loaves and 5,000 loaves.

Remember also that everything we have said today about rich people applies to rich churches also. The only difference is that the amount of accountability which Christ will demand from rich Christians is higher than what he will demand from poor Christians. Remember in the book of Revelation that the Lord called a rich church to sell all it had in the present age and to buy from him what can’t be bought with any amount of money in the present age.

There are things that only poor churches can buy. And being rich should never be a qualification to become an elder in Christ’s church.

Our own experience at Voice of the Martyrs Korea is that among our donors, it is the Christians and churches who are not rich in this age who are the most generous, and the Christians and churches who are rich in this age who are the least generous. There are a few exceptions (just like there were some generous rich folks in Jesus’ ministry), but sadly not many. The kingdom just does not make sense to the rich.

But let’s leave aside these matters for today.

Because now we have an appointment at the Lord’s Table. Here it is God’s good pleasure to continually give us the kingdom. It looks like only bread and juice in this present age, but through it he provides us our daily bread from the age to come, and the promise that he will provide what we need to do the work he gives us to do, until that day when he returns, bringing with him the age to come in all its fullness.

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