The diseased lamb was laid without scruple or hesitation on God's altar,
and not one of these tricky priests durst have taken it to Court in
order to secure favour there. Generalise that, and it comes to this--the
gifts that we lavish on men are the condemnation of the gifts that we
bring to God; and further, we should be ashamed to offer to men what we
are not in the least ashamed to bring to God. Let me illustrate in one
or two points.
Let us contrast in our own consciences, for instance, the sort of love
that we give to one another with the sort of love that we bring to Him.
How strong, how perennially active, how delighting in sacrifice and
service, what a felt source of blessedness is the love that knits many
husbands and wives, many parents and children, many lovers and friends
together! And in dreadful contrast, how languid, how sporadic and
interrupted, how reluctant when called upon for service and sacrifice,
how little operative in our lives is the love we bring to God! We durst
not lay upon the altar of family affection, of wedded love, of true
friendship, a love of such a sort as we take to God and expect Him to he
satisfied with. It would be an insult if offered to 'the governor,' but
we think it good enough for the King of kings. Here a gushing flood,
there a straitened trickle coming drop by drop; here a glowing flame
that fills life with warmth and light, there a few dying embers. Measure
and contrast the love that is lavished by men upon one another, and the
love that is coldly brought to Him. And I think we must all bow our
heads penitently.
Contrast the trust that we put in one another, and the trust that we
direct to Him. In the one case it is absolute. 'I am as sure as I am of
my own existence that so-and-so will always be as true as steel to me,
and will never fail me, and whatever he, or she, does, or fails to do,
no shadow of suspicion, or mist of doubt, will creep across the sunshine
of our sky.' And in contrast to the firm grasp with which we clasp an
infirm human hand, there is a tremulous touch, scarcely a grasp at all,
which we lay upon the one Hand that is strong enough always to be
outstretched for our defence and our blessing. Contrast your confidence
in men, and your confidence in God. Are we not all committing the
absurdity of absolutely trusting that which has no stability or stay,
and refusing so to trust that which is the Rock of Ages? God's
faithfulness is absolute, our faith in it is tremulous. Men's
faithfulness is uncertain, our faith in it is entire.
We might contrast the submission and obedience with which we follow
those who have secured our confidence and evoked our love, as contrasted
with the rebellion, the reluctance, the self-will, which come in to
break and mar our submission to God. Men that will not take Jesus Christ
for their Master, and refuse to follow Him when He speaks, will bind
themselves to some human teacher, and enrol themselves as disciples in
some school of thought or science or philosophy, with a submission so
entire, that it puts to shame the submission which Christians render to
the Incarnate Truth Himself.
And so I might go on, all round the horizon of our human nature, and
signalise the difference that exists between the blemished sacrifices
which each part of our being dares to bring to God and expects Him to
accept, and the sacrifices, unblemished and spotless, which we carry to
one another.
But let me say a word more directly about the subject of which Malachi
is speaking. It seems to me that we may well take a very condemnatory
contrast between what we offer to God in regard to our administration of
earthly good, and what we offer on other altars. Contrast what you give,
for directly beneficent and Christian purposes, with what you spend,
without two thoughts, on your own comfort, indulgence, recreation,
tastes--sometimes doubtful tastes--and the like. Contrast England's
drink bill and England's missionary contribution. We spend £10,000,000
on some wretched war, and some of you think it is cheap at the price,
and the whole contributions of English Christians to missionary purposes
in a twelvemonth do not amount to a tenth of that sum. You offer that to
the spread of Christ's kingdom. 'Offer it to your Government,' and try
to compound for your share of the ten millions that you are going to
spend in shells and gunpowder by the amount you give to Christian
missions, and you will very soon have the tax-gatherer down on you.
'Will he be pleased with it?'
This one Missionary Society with which we are nominally connected has an
income of £70,000 a year. I suppose that is about a shilling per head
from the members of our congregations. Of this congregation there are
many that never give us a farthing, except, perhaps, the smallest coin
in their pockets when the collecting-box comes round. I do not suppose
that there is one of us that applies the underlying principle in our
text, of giving God our best, to this work. I am not going to urge you.
It is my business now simply to state, as boldly and strongly as I can,
the fact; and I say with all sadness, with self-condemnation, as well as
bringing an indictment against my brethren, but with the clearest
conviction that I am not exaggerating in the smallest degree, that the
contrast between what we lavish on other things and what we give for
God's work in the world, is a shameful contrast, like that other which
the Prophet gibbeted with his indignant eloquence.
II. And now let me come to another point--viz., that we have here
suggested and implied the true law and principle on which all Christian
giving of all sorts is to be regulated.
And that is--give the best. The diseased animal was no more fit for the
altar of God than it was for the shambles of the viceroy. It was the
entire and unblemished one that would be accepted in either case. But
for us Christian people that general principle has to be expanded. Let
me do it in two or three sentences.
The foundation of all is 'the unspeakable Gift.' Jesus Christ has given
Himself, God has given His Son. And Jesus Christ and God, in giving,
gave up that we might receive. Do you believe that? Do you believe it
about yourself? If you do, then the next step becomes certain. That
gift, truly received by any man, will infallibly lead to a kindred
(though infinitely inferior) self-surrender. If once we come within the
circle of the attraction of that great Sun, if I might so say, it will
sweep us clean out of our orbit, and turn us into satellites reflecting
His light. To have self for our centre is death and misery, to have
Christ for our centre is life and blessedness. And the one power that
decentralises a man, and sweeps him into an orbit around Jesus, is the
faithful acceptance of His great gift. Just as some little State will
give up its independence in order to be blessedly absorbed into a great
Empire, on the frontiers of which it maintains a precarious existence,
so a man is never so strong, never so blessed, never so truly himself,
as when the might of Christ's sacrifice has melted down all his
selfishness, and has made it flow out in rivers of self-surrender,
self-absorption, self-annihilation, and so self-preservation. 'He that
loseth his life shall find it.'
Then the next step is that this self-surrender, consequent upon my
faithful acceptance of the Lord's surrender for me, changes my whole
conception as to what I call my possessions. If I, in the depths of my
soul, have yielded myself to Jesus Christ, which I shall have done if I
have truly accepted Him as yielding Himself for me, then the yielding of
self draws after it, necessarily, and without a question, a new relation
between me and all that I have and all that I can do. Capacities,
faculties, means, opportunities, powers of brain and heart and mind, and
everything else--they all belong to Him. As in old times a nobleman came
and put his hands between the King's hands, and kneeling before him
surrendered his lands, and all his property, to the over-lord, and got
them back again for his own, so we shall do, in the measure in which we
have accepted Christ as our Saviour and our Guide. And so, because am
His, I shall feel that I am His steward to administer what He gives me,
not for myself, but for men and for God.
Then there follows another thing, and that is, that Christian giving,
not of money only, but of money in a very eminent degree, is only right
and truly Christian when you give yourself with your gift. A great many
of us put our sixpence, or our half-crown, or our sovereign, into the
plate, and no part of ourselves goes with it, except a little twinge of
unwillingness to part with it. That is how they fling bones to dogs.
That is not how you have to give your money and your efforts to God and
God's cause. Farmers nowadays sow their seed-corn out of a machine with
a number of little conical receptacles at the back of it and a small
hole in the bottom of each, and as the thing goes bumping along over the
furrows, out they fall. That drill does as well as, and better than, the
hand of the sower scattering the seed, but it does not do near as well
in the Christian agriculture in sowing the seed of the Kingdom.
Machine-work will not do there; we have to have the sower's hand, and
the sower's heart with his hand, as he scatters the seed. Brethren!
apply the lesson to yourselves, and let your sympathies and your prayers
and your wishes to help go along with your gifts, if you intend them to
be of any good.
And there is another thing, and that is that, somehow or other, if not
in the individual gifts, at all events in their aggregate, there must be
present the fact of sacrifice. 'I will not offer unto the Lord burnt
offerings of that which doth cost me nothing,' said the old king. And we
do not give as we ought, unless our gifts involve some measure of
sacrifice. From many a subscription list some of the biggest donations
would disappear, like the top-writing in one of those old manuscripts
where the Gospel has been half-erased and written over with some foolish
legend, which vanishes when the detergent liquid is applied to the
parchment, if that thought were brought to bear upon it. God asks how
much is kept, not how much is given.
Now, dear friends, these are all threadbare, elementary, 'A.B.C.'
truths. Are they the alphabet of our stewardship and administration of
our possessions?
III. One last suggestion I would make on this text is that it brings
before us the possible blessing and possible grave results of right or
wrong Christian giving.
'Will he be pleased with it? Or will he accept thy person?' Will the
governor think the hobbling creature, blind of an eye, and infected with
some sickness, to be a beautiful addition to his flock? Will it help
your suit with him? No!
It is New Testament teaching that our faithfulness in the administration
of earthly possessions of all sorts has a bearing on our spiritual life.
Remember our Lord's triple illustration of this principle, when He
speaks about faithfulness 'in that which is least,' leading on to the
possession of that which is the greatest; when He speaks of faithfulness
in regard to 'the unrighteous Mammon' leading on to being intrusted with
the true riches; when He speaks of faithfulness in our administration of
that which is another's--alien to ourselves, and which may pass into the
possession of a thousand more--leading on to our firmer hold, and our
deeper and fuller possession of the riches which, in the deepest sense
of the word, are our own. One very important element in the development
and advance of the religious life is our right use of these earthly
things. I have seen many a case in which a man was far better when he
was a poor man than he was when a rich one, in which slowly, stealthily,
certainly, the love of wealth has closed round a man like an iron band
round a sapling, and has hindered the growth of his Christian character,
and robbed him of the best things. And, God be thanked! one has seen
cases, too, in which, by their Christian use of outward possessions, men
have weakened the dominion of self upon themselves, have learned the
subordinate value of the wealth that can be counted and detached from
its possessor, and have grown in the grace and knowledge of the Lord and
Saviour Jesus Christ. Dear friends, God has given all of us something in
charge, the faithful use of which is a potent factor in the growth of
our Christian characters.
It is New Testament teaching that our faithful administration of earthly
possessions has a bearing on the future. Remember what Jesus Christ
said, 'That when ye fail they may receive you into everlasting
habitations.' Remember what His Apostle says, 'Laying up in store for
themselves a good foundation against the time to come, that they may lay
hold on eternal life.' Let no fear of imperilling the great truth of
salvation by faith lead us to forget that the faith which saves
manifests its vitality and genuineness, by its effects upon our lives,
and that no small part of our lives is concerned with the right
acquisition and right use of these perishable outward gifts. And let us
take care that we do not, in our dread of damaging the free grace of
God, forget that although we do not earn blessedness, here or hereafter,
by gifts whilst we are living or legacies when we are dead, the
administration of money has an important part to play in shaping
Christian character, and the Christian character which we acquire here
settles our hereafter.
Brethren! we all need to revise our scale of giving, especially in
regard to missionary operations. And if we will do that at the foot of
the Cross, then we shall join the chorus, 'Worthy is the Lamb that was
slain to receive _riches_,' and we shall come to Him 'bringing our
silver and our gold with us,' rejoicing that He gives us the possibility
of sharing His blessedness, 'according to the word of the Lord Jesus
which He spake, It is more blessed to give than to receive.'