Offerings For Jesus
FIRST QUARTER 2023
SABBATH SCHOOL INSIGHT #4
JANUARY 28, 2022
“OFFERINGS FOR JESUS”
Our lesson this week provides us with an important reminder that God has intended that our offerings should not be considered a burden or an obligation but rather a blessing and an opportunity!
In Sunday’s lesson we read that “we love God because He first loved us,” which is followed by this EGW quote from Counsels on Stewardship:
“The Lord does not need our offerings. We cannot enrich Him by our gifts. Says the psalmist: ‘All things come of Thee, and of Thine own have we given Thee.’
“Yet God permits us to show our appreciation of His mercies by self-sacrificing efforts to extend the same to others. This is the only way in which it is possible for us to manifest our gratitude and love to God. He has provided no other.” —The Review and Herald, December 6, 1887. CS p. 18.
As the Creator of all things, we see that God is allowing us to show our appreciation of His goodness, love and mercy, none of which we deserve. God is after our hearts and a people that will reflect His character in their lives.
Let us now explore together some additional quotes from Ellen G. White and Ellet J. Waggoner which I hope will give us some additional insights as to the importance of our willingness and desire to provide offerings for Jesus!
- Ellen G. White
“God does not receive the offerings of any because He needs them and cannot have glory and riches without them, but because it is for the interest of His servants to render to God the things which are His. The freewill offerings of the humble, contrite heart He will receive, and will reward the giver with the richest blessings. He receives them as the sacrifice of grateful obedience. He requires and accepts our gold and silver as evidence that all we have and are belongs to Him. He claims and accepts the improvement of our time and of our talents as the fruit of His love existing in our hearts. To obey is better than sacrifice. Without pure love the most expensive offering is too poor for God to accept.
“Many have their hearts so fixed upon their earthly treasure that they do not discern the advantage of laying up for themselves treasures in heaven. They do not realize that their freewill offerings to God are not enriching Him, but themselves. Christ counsels us to lay up treasures in heaven. For whom? For God, that He may be enriched? Oh, no! The treasures of the entire world are His, and the indescribable glory and priceless treasures of heaven are all His own, to give to whom He will. ‘Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.’” — Ellen G. White, 2T p. 652.
- Ellet J. Waggoner has a similar perspective as we will see in the following quote:
“In fact, no other offering but that given with the whole heart is acceptable to God. First, he demands that the individual yield himself. Son, give Me thine heart, is the request which God makes. Those who do this, realizing that they are not their own, but ‘are bought with a price,’ will not give grudgingly. They will only regret that they could not give more. They will first give themselves (1 Corinthians 8:1-5), and in giving themselves, they give all. The people gave and gave willingly of their very best. So, God gave his only begotten Son. That which is bestowed grudgingly upon the cause of God is not a gift. The Lord does not need it, and it is of no advantage to the one who thus bestows it.
“In his second epistle to the Corinthians, the apostle Paul makes the grace of Christ the grand spring of all Christian giving. Giving that is prompted by anything else is not Christian giving. As an incentive for them to give liberally, the apostle said: ‘For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might be rich.’ 2 Corinthians 8:9. The plan of salvation begins and ends with a gift. ‘God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’ John 3:16. Christ ‘gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.’ Titus 2:14. And when the work of redemption shall have been completed, the saints will share a glorious immortality as the free gift of God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. This consideration should incite to prompt our cheerful giving . Indeed, it will lead to such giving on the part of every soul who feels the worth of the Saviour’s love. Surely it is a slight thing to give the temporal riches which come from God in the first place, and belong to him, when he so freely gives to us eternal riches. “The riches of his grace” is an expression often used by the apostle Paul. But the grace of God is a gift, and consists wholly in giving; we are exhorted to be ‘good stewards of the manifold grace of God.’ 1 Peter 4:10. The Spirit of willingness to give is a grace, and a manifestation of the grace of God. See 2 Corinthians 8:1-5.
“The great lesson which God would teach men, and which man needs to learn, is that all belongs to God. And from Him all came, to Him all belongs. He created them by His mighty power; they were redeemed with the precious blood of Jesus. He who recognizes this, and truly yields himself to God through Christ, has learned a great lesson. All service for God will then be willing service; all our offerings will be willing offerings. Selfishness will be swallowed up in love. He will be happy, not because he thinks of self, but because he has forgotten self in his love for God and for souls for whom Christ died. He will not ask, how little can I do and be accepted? but, how can I render back to God the least of all his mercies?” — Ellet J. Waggoner, Signs of the Times, March 25, 1889, p. 186, emphasis supplied.
I love the expression above: Selfishness will be swallowed up in Love. Only God could do that – our selfishness swallowed up by His agape love and His sacrifice! God is truly working on our hearts!
- Ellet J. Waggoner
“No person is ready properly to give anything to the Lord until he is ready to say with the Psalmist, ‘The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein’. The very essence of giving is acknowledgement that God is, independently of anything we may do, the rightful owner of all things; that the thing we give is His and was His before we gave it.
It would not be possible to give that which is due the Lord from us, in any other way. But what glory and strength has man to give unto the Lord? Even if man possessed some glory and strength, how could he possibly give to the Lord ‘the glory due unto His name?’ It is very evident that all any person can do to this end is simply to confess that infinite glory and strength belong to God, and that God has them. And so likewise in presenting any other gift to Him, as a gift of money, we must give it as an acknowledgment that all our wealth really belongs to Him. Nor can we say that we have given ourselves to Him unless we did it as a confession that we were His already, both because He created us and by the blood of Christ.
“Yet, though we have nothing worth giving to the Lord, He has wonderfully and graciously provided that in offering Him this feeble praise we should actually glorify Him, and He accepts our gifts as graciously as though He were on even terms with us, and gives us all the credit of having done Him a service.” — Ellet J. Waggoner, Present Truth UK, August 16, 1894, p. 517.
- Here is another Ellen White quote dealing with how giving offerings impacts the need and desire for Christian character building in our lives:
“Let us not love in word, the apostle writes, ‘but indeed and in truth.’ The completeness of Christian character is attained when the impulse to help and bless others springs constantly from within. It is the atmosphere of this love surrounding the soul of the believer that makes him a savor of life unto life and enables God to bless his work.
“Supreme love for God and unselfish love for one another—this is the best gift that our heavenly Father can bestow. This love is not an impulse, but a divine principle, a permanent power. The unconsecrated heart cannot originate or produce it. Only in the heart where Jesus reigns is it found. ‘We love Him, because He first loved us.’ In the heart renewed by divine grace, love is the ruling principle of action. It modifies the character, governs the impulses, controls the passions, and ennobles the affections. This love, cherished in the soul, sweetens the life and sheds a refining influence on all around.” — Ellen G. White, Acts of the Apostles, p. 551.
- Just one last EGW quote in closing:
“It is not for you to expect every blessing of God and return nothing. Through Christ we possess all things; without Christ we should have had nothing but poverty, misery, and despair. Shall we respond to this love which Jesus has bestowed upon us? To be sons of God is to possess all things. What more can you want? If the Christian is not content with such an inheritance, nothing can give him contentment. We are indebted to the Lord for all we possess. Then let us return to the Giver all that He claims as His own. Let us not commit robbery toward God.
“He who so loved man that He came from the realms of bliss, from His royal throne, and humiliated Himself to clothe His divinity with humanity, has given us unmistakable tokens of His love and the value He places upon man. He who has made for us this infinite sacrifice summons us to estimate the value of the soul, to strike the balance between earthly gain and heavenly loss, between temporal success and everlasting failure....
“Christ points you away from the earthly to the heavenly. He invites you to lay up your treasures above.... Will you say as you present your offering to God, Of Thine own, O Lord, we freely give Thee? ... All the means you may give will not buy for you salvation. You must give yourself. In surrendering yourself to the claims and influences of the Saviour your life may be as a fruitful branch in a beautiful vine. The fruits of the Spirit may adorn it. Clusters of rich graces will appear, such as love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, and meekness, which will make it attractive.” — Ellen G. White, In Heavenly Places, p. 305, emphasis supplied.
As we consider these offerings for Jesus, may we be willing to give ourselves so that we may be fruitful branches in Christ’s vineyard.
Blessings,
John Campbell