Over the years, I have learned as a preacher that there are a few topics you can preach on that can easily make your hearers feel guilty. One is prayer: who can honestly say that they pray enough? Another is evangelism: many of us feel nervous about that and so it’s easy to ladle on the guilt.
And one other is giving: it’s easy to tug on the emotions on that subject. Just look at the highly emotive advertisements many charities produce, if you doubt me. Preachers can do something similar.
Well, today’s passage is about giving. But it’s in reverse. Paul speaks as the recipient, not the giver. And although elsewhere he quotes Jesus as saying, ‘It is more blessèd to give than to receive,’ here he tells his friends in Philippi about the grace of receiving.
It struck me that this would be a helpful approach to adopt. Some of us find it hard to receive. Others of us are rather too keen to receive!
So you’ve heard all those sermons down the years about being a cheerful giver; this is about being a gracious receiver.
I’ve identified three traits of a gracious receiver in these verses.
Firstly, thankfulness:
10 I rejoiced greatly in the Lord that at last you renewed your concern for me. Indeed, you were concerned, but you had no opportunity to show it.
Paul was so grateful that he ‘rejoiced greatly.’
I expect that when you were young you were taught to write thank-you notes to people who had given you birthday or Christmas presents. The age of the handwritten note may be fading away, but our kids still ask us for the mobile phone numbers of the people who have given them presents, so that they can send them text messages. In fact, every Christmas Day at present-opening time I sit there with sheets of paper, recording who gave what to whom, so these lists can be used for the thank-you messages.
How different this is from Trick Or Treat at Halloween, which is like a small-scale demanding of gifts with menaces. At least some things happen now to moderate that and to reduce the fear some elderly people have, by kids only going to houses with pumpkins outside. Whatever would happen to the economy of Rogate otherwise?
Thankfulness is an important discipline that reminds us all of life is a gift. We don’t need to wait for our annual harvest festival to affirm that ‘All good gifts around us are sent from heaven above.’
We may have saved for certain things. We may have earned them with hard work. But they are still gifts, because all that is good comes from the hand of God. We are dependent on the giving nature of our God for life itself and all its accoutrements.
God is a giver. The sun shines and the rain falls on the righteous and the unrighteous alike. In the Parable of the Sower, the farmer distributes the seed everywhere with an almost reckless extravagance.
Therefore thankfulness, especially when practised towards God, is a reminder of God’s grace. Whether he gives directly to us or through someone else, it is pure gift. It is not based on what we deserve, only on what we need and what he delights to give us.
We are thankful to a generous God. But this is something it took me many years to grasp. I came up in a family where the default financial atmosphere was one of struggle. That my parents couldn’t give my sister and me as much as our friends received from their Mums and Dads is something I carried over into my image of God. Yes, God the Father was a giver, but he only just about gave what we needed to scrape by.
I have learned differently since. I still affirm that God is Father, and not an indulgent grandfather. He doesn’t want spoilt brats for his children. But he is good, and he is generous, and these are all reasons for thankfulness.
In the ancient form of Christian prayer called the Examen, each evening we review the day that is about to pass, and we look back for where we can rejoice with thankfulness at what God has done. It’s an encouraging practice. I commend it to you.
Secondly, contentment:
Paul goes on to say,
11 I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. 12 I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. 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. 13 I can do all this through him who gives me strength.
Remember, Paul is sending this letter from prison in Rome. In those days, prisoners did not have their basic needs met by the state. If one of your family was imprisoned, you needed to supply them with the basics of life, even including food and drink. This is why Paul depends on gifts like these ones from his friends the Philippians.
What a contrast this is from when he was Saul, the up-and-coming scholar who also ran his tentmaking business. He was probably quite comfortably off then. He has experienced such oscillations in his standard of living.
But in the middle of such tumultuous changes in his lifestyle over the years, he can affirm that ‘I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.’
I don’t know whether you have been through similar ups and downs. I am sure some of you have. I certainly have. As I said a moment ago, my upbringing was financially challenging. But then when I was working as a single person, things were a lot easier. They were fine when we first got married.
Until we had children and Debbie ceased from paid work. Well do I remember the year when we would not have been able to afford new school uniform for one of our two unless I had received a funeral fee. For at that time, our friends at HMRC had managed to double-count my income and deny us the Child Tax Credits we were entitled to. On more than one occasion we only got the tax credits we were due thanks to the intervention of our MP.
Yet – did God change during that time? I would say ‘No.’ We still had whatever we needed, even if sometimes it was by the skin of our teeth.
God doesn’t change in his faithfulness. He doesn’t guarantee us wealth, but he does commit to looking after us in what he gives us. Perhaps Proverbs 30:8 puts it in a balanced way:
keep falsehood and lies far from me;
give me neither poverty nor riches,
but give me only my daily bread.
When we live in such an acquisitive society with its desire for more, more, more, what could be a more countercultural sign of living under God’s kingdom than doing so with contentment, because God is faithful?
Thirdly, reverence:
I’d like you to notice how Paul describes the Philippians’ generous gifts to him in verse 18:
I have received full payment and have more than enough. I am amply supplied, now that I have received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent. They are a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God.
This is the language of temple worship: ‘a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God.’ Paul sees the package Epaphroditus has brought from Philippi as way more than a food parcel. He treats the giving of the Philippians as being an act of worship to God. Therefore, he handles it with reverence. Their gifts are holy.
Now I am sure that in one sense that is exactly how the Philippians regarded their giving. To supply Paul’s needs was something they did as an expression of their faith. Their love for God is a response to God’s love for them in the gift of Jesus Christ.
Therefore, a fitting response of worship is for them to give. And just as the giving of sacrifices in the Old Testament often constituted support for the temple workers such as the priests and Levites who had no land of their own where they could farm animals for their food, so here the Philippians give as an act of worship to support a worker in the new temple, namely their apostle. Paul recognises what they are doing. It’s worship. Their gifts should be handled with holiness.
Some of you have heard me say that when I first wanted to go to theological college, I was denied a student grant. (Remember them?) God provided for me financially in a remarkable way. I cannot tell you the whole story now, but I want to pull out one example of the generous giving. An elderly and very prayerful single lady in the church gave me a cheque for a large sum of money. With it she wrote a letter. In it she said, ‘It seems that God is calling you to trust him to supply your needs. We will trust him to meet our needs, too.’ Those words told me that her giving was a sacrifice. It was an act of worship.
All this is why I’m not so keen to refer to the monetary gifts we bring forward in the service as ‘The collection.’ Collections are OK, if not good, such as when we hold a collection for a good cause. But what we give to the Lord is not a collection because he’s in need: he owns the cattle on a thousand hills, as the Psalmist says.
No: it’s an offering. We dedicate it. We treat it with reverence. We pray for those who will handle it. It’s part of our worship.
Conclusion
You may have seen the news story in the week about the death of the famous actor Timothy West at the age of 90. He had been married to the actress Prunella Scales for 61 years. And you may well know that in their final years together West was caring for his wife through dementia. One of the news reports showed a clip of them a year or so ago when they had reached their diamond wedding. The reporter asked what it was like being married for that long. Prunella struggled for words, but then planted a kiss on her husband’s cheek, and said, ‘Thank you.’ It was a beautiful moment.
There is a beauty in being thankful, being content, and treating gifts with reverence. It offers beauty back to the giver and gives glory to the Great Giver himself.
Sure, it is more blessèd to give than to receive. But this is one way in which that giver is blessed.
So let us never tire of being thankful. We have an eternity of thankfulness ahead of us.
Big Circumstance 