LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1981, Page 85

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CONVENTION SERMON

Our Giving God

In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard
work we must help the weak, remembering the words the
Lord Jesus Himself said: “It is more blessed to give than to
receive.” (Acts 20:35)
Well, God ought to know, for He is above all, the
’ Giver. His book tells us so. Some view the Bible as a
document mostly made up of laws, rules, demands,
° threats. It includes these elements because it faces
realistically the sinfulness of man. But the Bible can
also be called “‘God’s Book of Gifts,” freely given, unlike
. a Sears Roebuck catalog that attaches a price to every-
thing. In fact, the term “give” occurs over 2,000 times
‘throughout the Scriptures. Jesus alludes to the Father’s

“giving noless than 14 times in the 26-verse Highpriestly

Prayer in John 17.
The concept is no less real in Luther’s Small
Catechism:

He has given me my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my
members. He will give unto me and all believers in Christ
eternal life. Our heavenly Father gives us His Holy Spirit.
God gives daily bread indeed without our prayer. Baptism
gives eternal salvation to all who believe this. He gives to us
the keys of the kingdom. In the Supper, forgiveness of sins,
life, and salvation are given us through these words.

All these gifts come with or are a result of God’s

giving to the whole world His only begotten Son (John
3:16), “our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave
Himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to
purify for Himself a people that are His own, eager to do
what is good” (Titus 2:13-14). With this realization we
delve into the words of our text.

I. Hard Work and Helping the Weak

_ Paul speaks of hard work, which is necessary to help
the weak. The weak are those who do not have the
necessities of life. Paul even speaks of his own needs
and those of his companions. In our terminology today,
he would be called a worker-priest, making and selling
goods so that the people he served would not be bur-
dened, having to support him.

This is a good time to say that even hard work does
not always guarantee success. But we are not called
upon to get results; we are here to receive God’s forgive-
ness in Christ and, grateful for this, we do His biding.
Results are in God’s department, not in ours. Paul
writes:

I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God madeit grow.

So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything,

but only God, who makes things grow. The man who plants

and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be
rewarded according to his own labor. For we are God’s

a workers; you are God’s field, God’s building (1 Cor.

Remember the woman who anointed the feet of Jesus
with perfume? Not a great thing in the eyes of men. But
it was the best she could do. “She did what she could,”
said Jesus (Mark 14:8). “She anointed (RSV) My body
beforehand to prepare for My burial.” Dull-witted men
failed to grasp Jesus’ repeated announcement of His

85

Vice-President Robert Sauer

death by violence, but she did not. She believed Him and
realized that there would be little opportunity to anoint
His body for His burial.

Hard work, then, is an act generated by faith in order
to meet whatever needs there are, ultimately for our
Lord. And here is the blessing, that “this service that
you perform is not only supplying the needs of God’s
people but is also overflowing in many expressions of
thanks to God. Because of [this], men will praise God” (2
Cor. 9:12).

What are the needs of the weak? There are physical
needs, so we feed the hungry. There is the need to know
so that people can do, so we support especially the
church’s educational efforts. But the greatest need is for
all the people to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. So we
gather together and pray the Lord to send laborers into
the harvest, and we pledge our support for their needs
while they do this on our behalf. And that is the blessing
of being the giver: the realization that our gifts, like
waves, spread out to countless people for their eternal
welfare.

So, He gives and we get. We give and others get. But
where does that leave us? Or, as Peter asks, “Lord, what
will we get out of this?” (Matthew 19:27 adapted). There
is always the voice of the Old Adam who lurks in us,
always a Diotrephes, as John says of him in his brief
third epistle, ““Diotrephes, who loves to be first, will
have nothing to do with us” (3 John 9).

And there is always the same answer: “You will be
made rich in every way” (2 Cor. 9:11). God is no piker.
The gifts we give are multiplied both in what they do
and also in the Lord’s lavish returns. And for those
things which we have not received but have wanted, we