Generosity and Giving: 1 Chronicles 29:1-20

You're listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun in practical ways. It's Friday. It's Friday. Hey, good, good one. We are the Bible guys. We want to welcome you here. And if you're listening, uh, you know every day, then you already. Know today is Friday and we are not doing what made Chris mad today. We are not. This is an exciting one. Is it exciting? It kind of is, yeah, because it's new, new things, right. I definitely like new. So but I was gonna laugh and. Go here's here's what does says that says. I know this might show you guys for a loop, but let's be nice this Friday. You will each take turns giving each other the most ridiculous and over the top compliments possible. This is a compliment battle. That's what we've got going on. Is this a compliment? This goes against our friendship? Friendship? It feels uncomfortable, it does. Let's just not make. That contact contact. Hey, but we've done this before. We've definitely given each other love. Right, sure, sure we have, we have we have, yes, come. On, but but yeah, but it is funny though, so sometimes it does feel unnatural to do it. So anyway, so yeah, we're gonna do it. So who's gonna start? Holy cow? Okay, so I'm not good at these. Yeah, so I typed into chat. GPT you did. I knew you did. That's so great? All right, all star. You're the kind of person who makes the sun jealous. Honestly, you light up every room way better than it ever. I was gonna shoot for real compliments. You're gonna do poetry about the sun. Well it's over the top, dude. Well that is true. That's right. You make you make the sun jealous because of the light it exudes from you fill everywhere. Ye yeah, that that is beautiful. Yeah, that's really great. What a sentiment, Jeff. We're reading about Solomon, and everybody who grew up in church knows that Solomon, declared by God, was the wisest men who ever lived. But after a five hundred Bible Guys episodes with you, I'm not so. Sure this is. This is episode. Hey, I'm not so sure, Jeff. Yeah, I'm a wise guy. You are. You are like Solomon of Bold Wow. Yeah, thank you that is nice. Well you said over the top, over the top. That's it's ridiculous, this absurd, absurd. Okay, if awesomeness we're a kingdom, you would be the supreme ruler. Wow, this is uncomfortable. I was gonna shoot for real compliments. All right, how about this one? All right? If you want to go the most outrageous thing in the world, how about this, Jeff, I think you might be not only the sharpest pasture I've ever been around, but possibly the best looking. Oh no, you don't make eye content. That's terrible. That's great, it's terrible. I'm also I'm actually loving this at this point. Okay, No, this is awful. Yeah, everyone lucky enough presence awful is basking in pure light and genius? Well you've already said I'm better than the sun. Is jealous, I. Know, but I meaning in your presence. Now, that's what we're that's what you're saying. All right, basking in my presence, those around me, basking the presence of your light and genius. Yes, that's pretty good. All right? How about this One's this terrible? This is terrible? How about this one? She whiz uh. Everyone everybody on your staff wakes up every day and in order, they thank God for life, and then just below that, they think they think they're lucky stars and God. Above that, they're able to work with Jeff Forrester, and they have you as a boss. See. I feel like that's tongue in cheek. I don't know if I think that's true. Well, everything's sort of tongue. No, I'm trying to think of like, you know what remind me of that is there's a clip by mad Men. Didn't I show you this where he goes, he goes. You should he goes every day when you wake up, you should thank me and God forgiving you the opportunity. That's that's where I got that from. Okay, are we done with this one? I think do you think? Yeah? Yeah? You know, honestly, Chris, I think you're. Okay, Yes, thank you, thank you? I think you're okay to a. Good Is that? Is that good enough? It feels good to me? Now. I want to go take a shower. I could. I could come up with real compliments. I could too, I could. Okay, Okay, but. We've talked about that before, right that as busy as we are and as much as we do, we just have to be. With people we like, otherwise we're going to be miserable all the time. Yeah. And by the way, that would be a good way to cap off this segment. Well, when you hire somebody at Heritage, you always gave the same speech and you say, we. Choose you to be a part of this team. Yeah, we don't hire people to do work. We choose people to be on our team, right, And we choose people we like. Right because because life is too short to work with somebody on a really high level. Uh, you know that you don't enjoy being around? Yeah, absolutely, why would you just stay miserable? Uh So obviously you know there it's more than just choosing people we like. But the likability factor really helps build a good culture. Right if everybody gets along likes each other. So character is incredibly important. So the first thing we look at character and then you know, are they compatible with the team and is this going to work well? And then competency obviously. So there's lots of things you have to look at, but that do we like you or not is super important. Chemistry is super important. So yeah, okay, well you know, so talking about chemistry and building teams, it reminds me of David really got committed to building the temple and. You stuck with it. Good for you. I forget all. So we're trying if you're a new listener, we just recently decided we want to try to start having like the worst transitions ever, because it's weird to go from this dumb game every every day to talking about the Bible. So we just decided instead of fine real transitions. Especially when the game is so goofy, and then let's just say, like you're reading a scripture that's like so heavy, right, Yeah, So there's really no great transition no matter what you do. So the last two days we've talked about Solomon becoming king, yes, right, and all of the intrigue around that, and add and Igen try to steal the throne right before that, We're going to jump back a little bit because what's about to happen and. What David did. He kind of sets the table for Solomon before Salomon becomes king. And this is the first time David promises and not the first time, but the first time he announces that Solomon's going to become king. So here's what it says. David has up to this point been twenty nine. Yeah, David up to this point has been bringing in the officials. He's he's collected a bunch of resources, all these things, and then he kind of establishes with his officials, I really want Solomon to be the king. And David even designed the new temple, because in chapter twenty eight he actually gives the instructions and he gives the design to Solomon, the plans that he'd had made, and then he says, Hey, I've collected all this stuff for you, and it's. Supposed to look like this. It's gonna be incredible. Hey, I don't think I've ever done this, but I want to reference first Chunter is twenty eight something we skipped over it. This is such a great thing. Look at versu over nine, he says, and Solomon, my son, learn to know the God of your ancestors. Intimately, worship and serve him with your whole heart and with a willing mind. For the Lord sees every heart and knows every plan and thought. And if you seek him, you'll find him. That's a very famous scripture. Yeah, and if you forsake him, he'll reject you forever. So take this seriously. The Lord has chosen you to build the temple in the sanctuary. So be strong and do the work. Great. He's giving him such great advice. And what a fantastic intentional moment for a son to say, love God, sir, father, yes, very sorry. Yeah. Yeah, for a father to say to his son, and a king to a subject, but more importantly father to his son and say this is what you do, search and get to know God intimately. Take this seriously. That's one of the best moments. It's fantastic. Ever yeah, ever, I just happened to glance at it. Good job, David, Yeah, good, noes's great. So then he lays it all out and then he ends that chapter verse twenty says, be strong and courageous and do the work right. Don't be afraid to discourage for the Lord God. My God is with you, which is fantastic. So anyways, verse chapter twenty nine, verse one, he says, Then King David turned to the entire assembly and said, my son Solomon, whom God has clearly chosen as the next king of Israel, is still young and inexperienced. The work ahead of him is enormous. For the temple he will build is not for mere mortals. It is for the Lord God himself. Using every resource at my command, I've gathered as much as I could for building the Temple of my God. Now there is enough gold and silver, bronze and iron and wood, as well as great quantities of onyx and other precious owns, costly jewels. And all kinds of fine stone of marble. And now, because of my devotion to the Temple of my God, I'm giving all of my private treasures of gold and silver to help in the construction. This is in addition to the building materials I've already collected for His holy temple. I am donating more than one hundred and twelve tons of gold from Ophir and two hundred and sixty tons of refined silver to be used in overlaying the walls of the buildings, and for the other gold and silver work to be done by the craftsmen. Now, then, who will follow my example and give offerings to the Lord Today? Then the family. Leaders, the leaders of the tribes of Israel, the generals and the captains of the army, and the king's administrative officers all gave willingly for the construction of the Temple of God. They gave about one hundred and eighty eight tons of gold, about ten thousand gold coins, three hundred and seventy five tons of silver, six hundred and seventy five tons of bronze, and three hundred three thousand, seven hundred and fifty tons of iron. They also contributed numerous precious stones, which were deposited in the treasury for the House of the Lord under the care of Jehiel, a descendant of Gershon. The people were joiced over the offerings, for they had given freely and wholeheartedly to the Lord, and King David was filled with joy. Then, David, praise the Lord and the presence of the whole assembly, Oh Lord, the God of our ancestor Israel. May you be praised forever and ever. Yours, Oh Lord, is the greatness and the power, and the glory, and the victory and the majesty. Everything in the heavens and on earth is yours, O Lord, and this is your kingdom. We adore you as the one who is over all things. Wealth and honor come from you alone, for you rule over everything. Power and might are in your hand, and at your discretion people are made great and given strength. Oh our God, We thank you and praise your glorious name. But who am I and who are my people that we could give anything to you. Everything we have has come from you, and we give you only what you first gave us. We are here only for a moment, visitors and strangers in the land, as our ancestors were before us. Our days on earth are like a passing shadow, gone as soon without a trace, O, Lord, our God, even and this material we've gathered to build a temple to honor your holy name comes from you. It all belongs to you. I know, my God, that you examine our hearts and rejoice when when you find integrity there. You know I've done all this with good motives, and I have watched your people offer their gifts willingly and joyously. Oh Lord, the God of our ancestors, Abraham, Isaac and Israel, make your people always want to obey you. See to it that their love for you never changes. Give my son Solomon the whole hearted desire to obey all your commands and laws and decrees, and to do everything necessary to build this temple for which I have made these preparations. And then David said to the whole assembly, give praise to the Lord our God, and the entire assembly praise the Lord, the God of their ancestors, and they bowed low and knelt before the Lord and the King. Wow. Yeah, wow. So you and I probably can't even imagine the amount of god one hundred and eighty eight tons of gold tons. Yes, David gave one hundred and twelve tons himself, right, and then they add at one hundred and eighty eight more. Yeah. So I looked it up, and depending on the price of gold, is somewhere between fifty five and sixty million dollars per ton. Whoa say that again? It's between sixty five or between fifty five and sixty million dollars per ton in today's value of gold. So sixty per tons. Yeah, let's just round it up to sixty. It's going up anyways, just sixty. And you're talking about it, and he did six hundred and twelve He did six hundred, David by himself six hundred and twelve tons. Oh well, one eighty eight and one twelve It is two hundred, isn't that right? No, it's three hundred, oh yeah, duh, yeah. But I was trying to highlight for David's gift. Three hundred yes, so that's eighteen billion billion. That is incredible. But if you go just David's no, no, no, no, no, no, we got to do it, right. It's sixty million times three years, one hundred, sixty million times three hundred is eighteen thousand million. Yeah, it's eighteen billion dollars eighteen billion, yeah, yeah, yeah. But what I was going to highlight first before we get to the to the total eighteen million sacrifice, yeah, is David's right. So David gets up and he gives, oh, I'm sorry, he gives six point seven billion dollars worth of gold, right from his own money. Yeah. Then he go he goes beyond that, he gives two hundred and sixty tons of silver. That's another couple billion dollars right, right, So dude steps up and gives like ten billion dollars, right, not including the other treasures, the iron that he gave, the gems that he gave, all those things, right, which, by the way, you don't often when you read David's stories, Hey he came king, you don't often picture him as being a multi gazillion. Billion there, yeah right, right right, I don't often see David that way to you. Right, No, but you know, they took spoils from every from every victory and all those kinds of things. That's that's where he built his wealth. And then tribute because he had other nations that were bringing tribute to him. Right So, yeah, But what I think. Is amazing here is one he's telling his son before he brags about his money, before he does anything else. He said, Solomon, there's nothing more important than your walk with God. Right So, and then he turns to the people and says, hey, listen, he's got it. He's young, he doesn't even he has no experience, and he's got this incredibly important responsibility of building the temple. Nothing's more important than building this temple. And then David says, I'm so committed to it. I'm going to give my own wealth. He doesn't take it from the Kingdom's treasury, he doesn't take it from he doesn't go collect taxes from maybe as he goes, this is my wealth, and I'm going to give ten billion dollars. And then his generosity inspired all of his officers and his leaders and all these family people, and they gave, like you said, they added to it billions upon billion. It's upon billions. Yeah, can you imagine how magnificent the temple was? Yeah, and how magnificent it was that all these materials were just for the for the temple. Hey, I gotta I gotta throw this in here. So I got have you ever been to the Vatican? Yes, okay, so you know you know the significent. Well, right, so I remember talking to a person who was, you know, just who loves all that and he's totally devout and you know, and uh, and I had made a comment and I said, they had a punch bowl and this punch bowl was worth it was solid gold, and it was probably worth three million dollars, right, just this punch bowl. And it wasn't just a punch bowl like you can hold in your hands. It was like too big for you know, you to even lift. Okay, and and and it was they called it a punch or some kind of bowl or something, but anyway, it was just made out of this pure gold, and it was probably worth three million dollars. And I was like, are you kidding me? You could you could take. That punch bowl and you could you know, melt it down and you know, feed it entire country, right, Like that's just ridiculous And then the person who was with me said, or you could think of it as like the Old Testament, how God is honored in wealth and the very best, the best, right, that's the best what we have. Yeah, And I said, where do you get that from? And he said, well, when they built the Temple And I said, yeah, that's when God lived there. God doesn't live, you know, necessarily just in the Vatican. He lives everywhere. So yeah, I'm pretty sure that God's house and his address that would have justified that. Like, I'm not sure if you know this or not, but God flooded out of the Holy of Holies and he's everywhere now, so I'm not sure that the same rules quite apply. So I had this like argument and this guy was like totally offended, right, he was like, he disagree with me entirely. Well, I do, I do believe that the attitude that David is giving this this over the top generosity that God deserves my very best, because for sure is we didn't who am I and. Who are your people? That we could give you anything? Right? Right, we should desire first of all, he said, because you gave us everything, we didn't give you anything that you didn't give us first. And that's the attitude of generosity when we come to God and we go God, everything I have is yours. The house you gave me is yours. The car you gave me is yours. Let me use them for you. The bank account I have, the resources that I have, these are yours. One. God's not broke and he's not going to owe you anything, so you can't outgive him right. And we find that. So when several years ago, Heritage decided we were going to invest heavy in the next generation, and we wanted to make a world class space for our children, and we need to raise a bunch of money. And the economy was a little tight in that moment. It wasn't it wasn't hard, but it was you know, we had some people that were struggling a little bit. And so my wife and I we decided that we were going to give the biggest offering that we've ever given in our life. And I went to and I told her, I said, I think I'm going to tell people what we're going to give. She goes, oh, no, Jesus said. You can't tell people when you give alms on this, don't blow trumpets. I say, I'm not blowing trumpets, and this isn't alms. So there's a difference between tithes, which is God's command you give ten percent of your income. That there's not even any wiggle room on that when he says, then I will pour out the windows of heaven or open ones, even pour out blessing on you. Right. God's blessing comes when you tithe. So the tithe is rent for living on this planet. Offerings are God, I'm so grateful and I really believe in this thing and this cause, and I'm going to give to it and then alms. That's the third way of giving in the Bible is when you see, like Jesus would see a poor person, or somebody would see a poor person. Peter and John see a poor person on the street, and he goes, silver and gold, have I none, but such as I do have I give to you. Right. And it's that spur of the moment, just taking care of a poverty issue. Right. So tithes is obedience, it's rent for living on the planet. Ten percent. Offerings are you believe in a cause, you believe in what God's doing, and God's been good to you, You're going to be generous back, and then alms is taking care of other people. So in this moment, I said, you know, this isn't a tie thing, and it's not an alms thing, Bonnie, it's an offering thing. And David got up and led the people, and the people were inspired by his generosity. So we're gonna give. So we gave by far the largest gift, maybe the largest gift will ever give before we die. I don't know that I'll have the resources to do it again. But in that moment, we gave our whole retirement at that time because we cared about children and teenagers here to church right, and I had a couple of people go, you shouldn't have told us that. But I had several people come and say, your generosity inspired me. And I realized God has given me so much, and I use this passage, I use this prayer. David said, God, I don't have anything. Nothing in my life is mine. It all came from you. So I don't even feel worthy to give it back to you. What do I have to get? The only thing I have to give you is what you gave me. And in that time, my wife and I we decided not to get We were going to buy a house and it was going to be her dream house, and we decided not to. We decided and said we were going to use the resources to do this. And you know, I just told you yesterday we closed on a house far greater than the house that we would have done, than we would have done, you know, five years ago, and God blessed us. God is like, I'm not going to owe you anything. And I don't think that there is ever any shortage of God's resources for God's people when we recognize none of it's actually ours, all of it is his. Who am I that I even have the privilege of giving you this gift? And when you do that, look what God does. God blesses David beyond comprehension. God protects Solomon, and then hey, we're going to get into it next week. Solomon's reign is beyond comprehension. David's dream for Solomon, God exceeded his dream a thousand times over. Yeah. Right. I love how he gives everything. And then after he gives everything, his posture is, but who am I and who are my people that we can give anything to you? I love it. Everything we have just comes from you and we give only what you first gave us. We're here for but only a moment, visitors and strangers in the land, as our ancestors were before us. Our life is a vapor. James says, right, it's here one minute, it's gone the next. And so David is, you know, here he's giving this massive offering. Everybody around him is probably like, wow, that's such, that's you know, so inspiring, and that's such a great thing. And yet David says, who are we? We think we're doing something great, but guess what, we're nothing and nobody. Who are we to give anything back to God? We're not giving back to God. It's God's right and so God and so his mentality is such that he recognizes at any given time that God is the author and owner of all things. My life changed the day I realized I do not give tithes and I do not give offerings. I bring them back right right. And I'm telling you my life changed when I realized I don't give God anything. I'm just bringing it back to him. That's great, saying you deserve it, right, and that's changing. I have a pastor friend of mine who wrote some books. He made some money he really did some really great things. He was setting up his end of life plans. I mean, he's still alive, he's not dying. He just planning ahead. Right. He has some wealth, and he was talking with a financial advisor and realized through trusts and through a couple of things, he could wind up offsetting a lot of taxes for his children if he set up these trusts this way, and that would leave even more money. And God convicted him and said, what if instead of you leaving it to three, what if you left it the four. And he took that excess. Money bought a couple of life insurance policies that go to the Kingdom, not to his children. So children get the same amount of money they were going to get. But because of the savings and things in the way he structured his death benefits to his family, he had these savings. And he stood there he talked to me. He got all teared up, and he said, you know what I am going to get the day I die. I'm going to give the biggest gift I've ever given to God, and I'll be there to see him when he gets it. Yeah, isn't that such a brilliant thing, right? I love this where he's saying, I'm strategizing for my end. David is coming to the end and he's going to get I'm given to give it back to God and give it all to him. He blessed me. I'm going to give it to him. We know Solomon didn't suffer, right, Salomon who winds up being the wealthiest man that had lived up to that point. Yes, right, So he wasn't giving something from Solomon. He was just giving his own wealth and God blessed and David's family was thriving. So I love this passage. That's why I wanted to read it. Yeah, I didn't want to miss it. That's great. Well, hey, that is definitely our time, and it was a great passage today. And we'll pick up tomorrow, which is actually Monday on the Bible, guys, we'll see that