S68E2 | God Math Part II | Wisdom | Pst. James Muchai

Good morning Nairobi Chapel. It's so good to see you all this morning. Please stand to your neighbor give them a warm smile, tell them it's great that you're in church today for our visitors. My name is James Mosha, I'm one of the pastors here at Nairobi Chapel on Gongrud and I have the privilege of bringing you know the second and final installment of our Samoan series called God Math and I want to start us off with a question and it's a multiple choice question and this is the question. I want you to think of a friend of yours, preferably a friend who's not sitting next to you and I want you to answer this question. This friend that you have in mind, if you ask them why do we give in church, what would their response likely be? Okay so I want you to, it's not your answer, it's your friend's answer and I'm gonna ask that they put it up on the screen because I want us to answer to pick from several options and this is the question. If I asked my friend why do we give in church, they would likely say, option number one they would likely say because it's church tradition, how many of you say my friend, don't judge your neighbor, they are talking for their friend, praise the Lord. My friend would likely say because it's church tradition, if this is you raise your hand, no one would say because it's church tradition, to me so I am. Option B, how many of you would say because the church has many bills to pay? That's what your friend would say. None of your friends think the church has many bills, okay I can see some hands, your neighbor is not judging you, the answer is not you, it's for your friend. Tell your neighbor he's asking about your friend. Someone is nervous because they think we are looking at them. Alright how many of you think their friend will say, I have always wondered about this and for the record I find it a little fishy. This would be your friend's answer, I see the hands at the back there, there are some honest people there, you people don't have friends who are suspicious about what church, why church is always asking for money. Option D, my friend, tell your neighbor it's your friend. My friend would say to maintain the expensive lifestyle of pastors. How many of you, this is your friend's answer, you just know, this is where many of you are. How many of you say all of the above, option E? Alright now those of you who didn't raise your hand, I assume your answer is option F which is other. How many of you, there's another reason, aha I can see some hands going up. Now turn to your neighbor and tell them the other, what is that other that you think your friend would say, I'm gonna give you guys a moment and you can have that conversation with your friend. Why do we give in church, what would your friend say? This is a question we asked last Sunday, we asked why did God instruct his people to give, why did God instruct his people to give? And we said that the instruction to give was an invitation to live by divine wisdom, that's the answer that we found in the scripture, that there exists superior wisdom in the scripture, spiritual truth, we called it God math for purposes of this series, that's what we are calling God math. And we said that God was inviting his people to align their lives to that spiritual truth and that was the reason that he was inviting them to give. And we said that here at Nairobi Chapel, we too are invited to align our lives to the spiritual truth that is hidden for us in the scriptures. And so we have a specific invitation that we shared last Sunday and that's the invitation to bring our tithe into the Lord's house as part of how we are aligning our lives to the truth that we find in God's Word. Our reading from today will come from Proverbs chapter three. I'm going to read just two verses, verse nine and ten, and I'll be reading from the New Living Translation. Proverbs chapter three, verse nine and ten. This is what it says, honor the Lord with your wealth and with the best part of everything you produce. Then he will fill your bonds with grain and your vats will overflow with good wine. I'm going to focus on verse nine and so I want us to read that verse together. Verse nine, I want us to read it together if we can put it up. All right, let's read verse nine. One, two, go. Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the best part of everything, everything that you produce. That's what I want us to focus on today. And this is what we are going to do. I'm going to draw out for us two points that I see, but I'm going to use questions to draw them out. The first question is the question we answered last Sunday. Why did God instruct his people to give? In this statement, honor the Lord with your wealth. I see a second answer to that question. I see that what the author of the Proverbs, likely Solomon was saying, is that the invitation to give was an invitation to worship God. Because he's saying that what happens when we honor the Lord, when we bring our wealth, when we give, what's happening is that we are honoring the Lord. It's an invitation to express, it was an invitation to express their reverence to God and to worship him. And so where last Sunday we said that God's instruction to give was an invitation to align their lives to spiritual wisdom. I'm saying that today I also see that it was an invitation to a life of worship. It was an invitation to a life that acknowledges God in his greatness and in his divinity and in their giving. They would be expressing their worship and their reverence to that great God. So the first question, like I said, the first lesson I see is anchored on this question. Why did God instruct his people to give? He instructed them to give because it was an invitation to worship. Now this is the second question and this is the one we'll focus on trying to answer this question. And the question is this, why was there a specific prescription regarding their giving? Because I see in verse nine of Proverbs three that God invites them to worship with their giving. He says honor the Lord with your wealth. Honor the Lord in many ways. In this specific verse he's saying with your wealth. And so there I see an invitation to worship. But on top of that I see a specific, you know, clear instruction, a prescription of what part of their wealth they were being invited or instructed to worship God with. I don't know if you caught it. This is what it said. He says honor the Lord with the best part of what you produce. Other versions use the word fast food of your crops or, you know, fast food of your produce depending on what version you're reading. But the implication there is very clear. Honor the Lord with the best of what you produce. And the question I want us to ask ourselves is why? Why this very clear prescription of how they were to worship? And before we answer that question, I want to paint for you a picture. I want to present you with a scenario. Imagine with me that there was a guy who lived in Israel and he was a phenomenal rancher. He was extremely effective at his job. But he also desired to worship. Now he was a rancher and so he has, you know, he has, he has this champion bull, you know, it weighs 500 kgs, half a ton. And because he understands that he ought to come and worship his God. This champion bull is what he brings to the temple or to the tabernacle, to the place of worship. And so the animal is brought and it's slaughtered and it's placed on the altar and it's offered before the Lord and the fire is lit, et cetera, et cetera. And it's presented as an offering to the Lord. This is a question I want you to ask your neighbor of that champion bull, 500 kgs of prime beef, praise the Lord. Of that champion bull, of that 500 kgs, how much did God consume? I want you to turn to your neighbor and answer that question. The animal has been brought to the altar. It has been offered to the Lord. The sacrifice is to the Lord, not to the priest. The priests are the guys offering it. How much of it did God consume? Imagine with me there was a farmer in Israel and he has a bumper harvest and he's harvested, you know, 10 tons of grain. And he understands he had heard about the tithe. He knew that the Lord required him to bring his tithe to the Lord's house. And so of his 10,000 kilograms of grain, he brings a thousand, a full ton of grain. He brings it to the Lord's house, to the place of worship. This is my question to you. Of that 1000 kgs of grain, how much of it went to heaven? The answer is obvious, isn't it? To both these questions, the answer is none of it. God consumed none of the flesh of that champion bull. None of the grain ended up in heaven. I'm saying this to make a point as we wrestle with our question. I'm saying this to say to you that God did not invite them to give because he needed their offering. That's the point I'm making. I'm saying to you that when God said bring the best portions, it was not because he was looking to consume the best portions. And so I bring us back to the question, why this specific prescription? Why does God insist on being worshipped by His people in such a specific way? To try and answer this question, I want to take us to a different portion of scripture. I'm one of those people who grew up in Sunday school. When we woke up on Sunday morning, when we were young, we were not wondering what the plan was for Sunday. The plan was church. Praise the Lord. And for the record, whether our parents were going or not, we were going. And so I knew many Bible stories because that's what you learn in Sunday school. But there's a story that used to confuse me a little bit. And that's what I want us to look at. And that's the story of Cain and Abel. And if you're not acquainted with it, a little context. You know, God created Adam and Eve and their first two kids were boys. Cain was the elder and Abel was his brother. And one day these two young men, these two children grew up into men and they each desired to worship God. And so they brought the Lord an offering. And one offering was accepted by God and the other offering was rejected. I'm going to invite us into the scripture. That that that that reality that one offering was rejected is what used to confuse me. And that's what I want us to look at today. And so we are going to read from Genesis chapter four. I'm going to read from verse one to five and then we'll zoom in on what I want on the portions that I want us to learn from. This is what it says. Genesis chapter four, verse one to five in the New Living Translation. Now, Adam had sexual relations with his wife Eve. And she became pregnant when she gave birth to Cain. She said, with the Lord's help, I have produced a man. Later, she gave birth to his brother and named him Abel. When they grew up, Abel became a shepherd while Cain cultivated the ground. When it was time for the harvest, Cain presented some of his crops as a gift to the Lord. Abel also brought a gift, the best portions of the first born lambs from his flock. The Lord accepted Abel and his gift, but he did not accept Cain and his gift. This made Cain very angry and he looked dejected. I told you this portion of scripture used to confuse me. It used to confuse me because it felt unfair to me. And the unfairness was anchored in this statement or the sense of unfairness. Abel became a shepherd while Cain cultivated the ground. That's a that's a portion that that's a statement that confused me. And I'll start with a caveat. I told you guys I was a Sunday school kid. I knew that in the Old Testament, God was worshipped with offerings and animals were slaughtered, they were put on an altar and then they were set on fire, AKA Nyamchom. OK, so I knew that part. I knew that that's how they worship God, the Israelites and all the people in all the Bible stories, because you see, I mean, I didn't know there were other offerings. I know about it now that there were grain offerings and I don't know the bread of the presence. There are many other offerings. I didn't know then because when you know when you're teaching Sunday school, you don't prepare your lesson from Leviticus. Send you do you have any Sunday school teachers in the house? And so all I knew is that God was worshipped with animals offered on, you know, on an altar and and and burnt. And so my thought process and my sense of unfairness used to go something like this. This guy came is a farmer, but God is a Nyamchom guy. How is it his fault? He just brought what he had. Now, God accepted the offering of the guy who keeps animals because it's what God likes, but this guy, he doesn't have animals. It's not what he's keeping. And so I wrestled. I used to wrestle with this thing and I kid you not. I wrestled with it until when I was in campus. That's when I read this portion of scripture a little closer and I caught some details that some of you may have caught. And so I'm going to have us read from verse two to verse five. And I won't even start from the beginning and I won't get to the end so that we can move along. This is what it said. It says when they grew up, able became a shepherd while Cain cultivated the ground. But three, when it was time for the harvest, let's read this together. Cain presented some of his crops as a gift to the Lord. Verse four, let's read together. Abel also brought a gift, the best portions of the first born lambs from his flock. The Lord accepted Abel and his gift and so on and so forth. And he rejected and he did not accept Cain and his gift. What did Cain bring? Did you catch it? What did Cain bring? Cain brought some of his crops as a gift to the Lord. Abel also brought a gift, but Abel's gift was marked by two things. There are two realities, if I can call it that, or two things that two attributes of the offering that Abel brought. Number one, it was marked by the fact that he brought the best portions that of the animals. He was a livestock farmer. And so his offering is of animals, but of the animals that he slaughtered to bring an offering, he didn't bring all of it. He didn't bring some of it. What did he bring? Only the best portions that his offering was selective. And the thing he selected to bring to the Lord was the best of what he was offering. So the first characteristic I see in Abel's gift is that he brought the best portions. But the second thing I see is this, that it wasn't just the best portions, it was the best portions of the first born, that he was selecting the best portions. But the animal that died to produce the best portions was actually the first born. Now, I've never kept livestock for a living, though I hope to one day, you know, negotiations ongoing, if you know what I mean. So you can pray for me. This is my speculation. When I become a livestock farmer, not how I said when, praise the Lord, because we live by faith and not by sight. When I become a livestock farmer, I suspect I will attach a little more value to the first born animal than to the others. It's going to be a milestone. I'll probably cherish it a little more. That's my thinking. I haven't done it before, but that's my suspicion. And so I'm saying this to you to say that I suspect there's a higher price in offering the thing that was a first born, the animal that was a first born. And that's what Abel did. I suspect there is a temptation once the animal has been slaughtered, there's a temptation to retain what was best of it. But Abel in his sacrifice, what does he bring? He brings the best of the first. That's the offering that he brings to the Lord. And so what I learned later after I, you know, came to understand it wasn't about Niam Chong versus vegetables, praise the Lord. What I learned after is that the reason Keynes offering was rejected, it had nothing to do with whether the offering was flesh or crops. It had everything to do with the nature of the offering. Abel brought the best of the first, while Keynes offering was an offering of some. The thing I learned from this portion of scripture is this, that there exists an offering, the nature and quality of which God rejects. That an offering was brought to him by his people did not guarantee that the offering was accepted. So I'm going to say it again. There is a nature and quality of gift that the Lord rejects. He says, this one I refuse to receive. That's what happened with Keynes. And I want to pause here a little bit because you might be wondering why this sounds, why this sounds a little hard or a little harsh. And so I'm going to pause here and tell you a little bit about God. The prophet Isaiah was taken up into heaven and this story is recorded in Isaiah chapter six. And Isaiah says that when he's taken up to the throne room in heaven, he refers to it as a temple. And he says there are these beings that he describes as mighty seraphim. And all they are doing is worshiping God. And they are so powerful that their voices alone are shaking the temple. That's what the Bible says in Isaiah six. And this is what they were saying in their worship. It says in verse three of Isaiah six, they were calling out to each other. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of heaven's armies. The whole earth is full of his glory. They were worshiping him all the time. In the book of Revelation, the apostle John is taken up into heaven and he finds himself in a throne room and he says there was someone sitting on the throne and he describes the magnificence of what he was seeing. And there are different kinds of beings in that room. And he called, you know, he talks about, you know, elders and living creatures and so on and so forth. And this is what the Bible says in Revelation chapter four and verse eight. It says day after day, night after night, they keep on saying, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. The one who always was, who is and who is still to come. The prophet Isaiah and John the revelator lived about 800 years apart. The people in heaven were still persuaded that God was worthy of worship. I'm saying this to say to you that God is worshipped eternally in heaven. The verses, the words you might have missed in the reading from Revelation is this day after day and night after night. They keep on saying all they do is worship God. And so God is worshipped eternally. This is what this means for Cain and Abel. It means that before they decided to bring their offering, you know, before the Lord, before they decided they wanted to worship God, there was no deficiency of worship in God's existence. I'm saying to you that God was not in heaven wondering, Aki, who will worship me today? That's not what was happening. That he was fully, fully existing in worship from eternity to eternity, from eternity past to eternity future. God is worshipped eternally. The scriptures reveal these things to us, that he is the God of all creation, the God of the universe. The Bible calls him Alpha, Omega, the beginning and the end of all things. When we, when, when his people will come to worship him, it wasn't because he needed it, it was because he allowed them the privilege of worship. That God who is worshipped eternally is the God to whom Cain brought an offering of some. What was close by? What was easy? What cost him little? What was easy to let go and would quickly be forgotten? Was the offering that he brought to that God? And God looked at it and he said, no, because he didn't need it. And the sacrifice that was the offering that was precious, that was brought by able, able who brings us an offering from the best of the fast. That offering, God accepted. There's an offering, the nature and quality of which God rejects. It's in the scripture. You know, in the law of Moses, God gives very clear instructions as to what the people were to worship him with. One of the phrases you can't miss for how often it is repeated is that everything that was brought to the altar was to be without blemish. They were not to bring the animal that was too slo