Stewardship: Stepping out of the margins – building on God’s dream
Abundant sowing leads to abundant harvests
Preached Sunday, November 25, 2007
Rev. David Tinney
Text:  2 Corinthians 9:5-8
Theme:  Tithing is good for the soul.  It is a means of grace that allows us to trust in God in a bold way 
so that God can work through us and transform the world around us.
    
    A little girl was sitting in church one Sunday and the offering plates were being passed around.  
Her mother gave her four quarters to put in as she did nearly every Sunday but this time when the 
plate came the little girl only put in one quarter.  Her mom frowned and gave that motherly icy stare 
but the little girl didn’t budge and passed the plate along.  
    After the worship service her mother immediately began the interrogation and asked why she 
chose to only give 25 cents.  The little girl boldly replied, “The pastor preached today that we should be 
cheerful givers and I am a lot more cheerful with 75 cents in my pocket.”  
    I think she missed the point.  This morning I am going to give you something to be cheerful about.  
I am going to preach a shorter sermon.  I know especially after last week when I confessed that I was 
going to change my preaching style and preach longer so that I would not be a “puny preacher” that 
this is going to come as a disappointment to many of you.  But I would like to save time today for the 
consecration of our pledges, something that is very important for me to do on a personal basis.  At the 
end of this sermon I will ask for you to bring your pledge cards forward and I will pray over each person 
and family.  I believe that if we are to make pledging a means of grace then we need to initiate that 
process with prayer.
    Today is the final day of our stewardship campaign and I hope and pray that you have prayed 
throughout this week about what you and your family are going to give.  I hope that it was not a 
decision that was made on the way to church and that in your haste you simply said let’s just raise it 
another five or ten dollars a week and call it good.  I hope you took this sermon series seriously and 
the call to step outside the margins serious and that you demonstrated holy boldness in your pledge 
this year.  If that would be true – that each of you stepped out in holy boldness – then at the end of 
the day our stewardship campaign will be a tremendous success no matter what the bottom line 
shows.
    If you remember I promised not to mention numbers, percentages, or expected totals in this 
stewardship campaign.  In keeping with that promise this morning I would like to address why we give 
and this just might be the most important sermon in the series.  Why do we give?  Do we do it just to 
meet a budget, maintain a building, and make sure we are paying the pastor’s salary?  Is there an 
expectation to giving?  What is this thing called a tithe?  Is a tithe 1/10 before or after the government 
gets its hands on my money?  
    These are some of the questions I get every year in stewardship time.  They are good questions.  
Perhaps you have silently asked one or more of them.  I hope that in this sermon I can answer them 
for you or at least give you a foundation for you to seek the answer for yourselves.  For me giving is a 
means of grace – an outward action or discipline that reveals God’s inward transforming love.  When 
we give generously, when we give boldly, when we give our first fruits it is an outward demonstration 
of obedience and trust in God.  In that act God then demonstrates how God can provide for our 
needs, provide for our care, and provide in such a way that we are more blessed than by not trusting. 
    Tithing is an Old Testament concept of giving 1/10th of your harvest or your income away to God.  
It used to be referred to as giving your first fruits because it was never considered to be giving away 
your leftovers.  You gave your best and you gave it to God first before you claimed anything for 
yourself.  In many ways tithing seems absurd in our modern world where our paychecks are 
automatically picked clean by taxes, social security, health insurance, 401Ks, automatic withdraws, and 
the like.  By the time we see our take home pay it shaved, shorn, and skinned.  We have a hard time 
thinking about giving God our first fruits when there are so many other entities standing in line taking 
their cut.  
    One of the most common questions I get today about tithing is about where it starts.  Several 
preface the questions with words like, “Of course you mean giving ten percent after the government, 
after the house payment, after the savings we are doing for the kids’ education, and after the 
payments on the second car…”  No, that is not where tithing begins.  It begins in the beginning.  That is 
what makes it so bold.  That is what makes it a spiritual discipline.  Giving a portion of what is left over 
at the end of the month doesn’t show trust in God.  Giving God the leftovers doesn’t involve holy 
boldness.  
    There are those who say that tithing was an Old Testament concept and Jesus never once 
mentioned it.  They are right.  But Jesus did with tithing what he did with all the Old Testament law.  He 
raised the bar.  In a way very similar to how he rewrote the law with the Sermon on the Mount he 
used the formula, “You have heard it said of old… but now I say…” and he raised spiritual expectations.  
Giving 1/10th was too rigid. People could give their tithe and never change their heart.  Remember the 
example of the widow in the temple?  She gave beyond a tenth and she gave without making a show 
if it.  Remember the rich man who came to Jesus asking what must he do to earn eternal life?  Jesus 
told him to sell all he had and give it to the poor and then follow him.  Jesus was not interested in a 
tenth, he was interested in all of our heart.  Remember when he said, “Where your treasure is there 
your heart will be as well?”  For Jesus a tithe or a tenth was not enough.  It was too legalistic.  He 
wanted our complete heart, he wanted transformation, he wanted complete commitment and one of 
the things that stands in the way is our treasure.  
    Paul picks up the dialogue of stewardship in his letters to the Corinthians.  He is in the middle of 
trying to raise money for those Christians back in Jerusalem who are going through hard times and he 
turns to the church in Corinth with some of the best material on giving that can be found anywhere in 
the Bible.  He tells about other churches that are giving abundantly even though they are not 
financially well off, he says that giving should not be an obligation but an act of gratitude for what 
God/Christ has already done for you, and he says that when we have abundance and there are others 
around in need it is a matter of fairness that we give.  Then he addresses our attitude when we give 
and says, “Do not give reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.”  Then he adds, 
“The one who sows sparingly will reap sparingly, but the one who sows bountifully will reap 
bountifully.”  
    Sow boldly – reap boldly.
    Cast your seeds widely and bountifully and you will see a great harvest.
    A pastor friend of mine told me that he derives a great deal of joy at pledge time by seeing how 
far he and his wife can trust God.  Each year they push their pledge to the outer ranges of reason or 
practicality -- beyond the boundaries of what would be safe and financially wise.  He says, “I do that in 
part because I believe God confounds our reason.  God makes the wisdom of humankind appear 
foolish; and the foolishness of God appear as true wisdom.  God makes it possible -- indeed highly 
probable -- that we can actually live better on 90% or even 85% of our income than we can on 100%.  It 
does not make sense in human terms, but it is true.”
    In a culture where collecting and acquiring possessions seems to be the ultimate goal, one would 
think that joy would certainly come from using 100% of your income to buy more and more toys.  But 
my friend says that is human folly.  Joy comes from living with less.  Joy comes from giving away, not 
acquiring.  Joy comes from ignoring the foolishness of human logic and listening to the wisdom of 
God’s foolishness.  
    For my friend, joy is essential to giving.  He would be the first to say if you are not happy about 
giving to the church then don’t give.  God does not appreciate a bitter giver.  For the Christian, giving is 
a voluntary act of the heart.  If there is sadness in the gift, or if you feel prompted by guilt or shame, or 
if you feel violated in any way, then the gift loses its value.  Christian giving is all about what is on our 
hearts, not what comes out of our wallets.  
    Christian giving acknowledges the One who blesses us in abundance and then demonstrates our 
ongoing trust that God will provide our every need if we boldly trust.  Let me show you this with a 
visual parable.  (Pull out a large bowl with ten apples in it)  I have a large bowl here filled with fruit – in 
this case apples.  For the sake of this illustration this represents the blessings that we receive every 
year from God.  Obviously our yearly blessings look very different from each other but for the sake of 
this illustration each of our blessings/resources are represented by this bowl of apples.  
    If you have ever done a budget then you know how difficult it is to divide up the fruits of your 
labor.  So just for fun let us take out three apples for taxes and social security, three apples your house 
payment, one apple for your car payments and perhaps we need to take out another for gas, one 
apple for food, clothing, household miscellaneous, (I love that category, it is one of my personal 
favorites because it contains so much stuff), half an apple for medical, and let’s say another half an 
apple for savings.  That’s nine apples so we have one apple left over for God.  This is our tithe.  
    But let’s be honest we left a lot of things out of the budget didn’t we?  We didn’t account for the 
kids’ education fund, or the cruise next year to Mexico, or the new roof we need on the house.  Again 
I would like to be honest and for you to tell me what usually happens to this final apple.  I will start.  
The first year that Carol and I decided to begin tithing it was the year that our son was born.  She 
stayed home and took care of him for several months and then took a job with Boise Cascade and the 
salary was outstanding.  Instead of giving away one tenth we justified the need for more recreation.  
We bought a sailboat with what should have been the Lord’s.  (The tenth apple will be cut into slices 
with the core separated.  I will pull one of the slices out of the apple and eat it.)  
    Now I have confessed one moment of not giving God my first fruit what might you add to it?  (As 
people talk about their other uses of money I will hand them a slice of apple until all that is left is the 
core.)  
    You see this is what we do too often with what is supposed to be the best given back to God.  This 
becomes something that is leftover – something that we toss away.  It certainly doesn’t bring us any 
closer to God.  It doesn’t demonstrate our trust in God.  It doesn’t show our gratitude for God.  
    The CORE (hold up the core) of our problem is that we didn’t give our best to God first.  We 
waited and allowed the pressures of the world to dictate how we would respond to God.  Generous 
generosity, bold giving, tithing all begin by putting God first in our lives and allowing everything else to 
be prioritized around it.  Holy generosity means putting our trust in God so God can work through our 
lives – not with what is left over.  
    
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