Introduction:
Who comes to mind when you think of the world’s wealthiest people? Bill Gates? Warren Buffet? Your great uncle? (Wouldn’t that be nice?) Forbes Magazine says that Bill Gates, the cofounder of the Microsoft Corporation has a net worth of approximately $66 billion dollars. Warren Buffet, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway has a net worth of $46 billion dollars. That is more than you and I could make in hundred’s of lifetimes.
Yet, the ten’s of billions of dollars that Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are worth, doesn’t begin to match what one man in the Bible gave to the work God.
Before he died, David, the second King of Israel, wanted with all of his heart to build a temple for God. For most of his 80 years, David had given his whole heart to God, and he begged God to let him build the temple. But God turned him down. And told David, you can’t build My temple, but your son, Solomon can build Me a temple.
Not to be discouraged, David developed the architectural plans and began amassing building materials, so Solomon would have everything he needed to build the temple. Here are the instructions he gave to Solomon:
14“I have taken great pains to provide for the temple of the LORD a hundred thousand talents of gold, a million talents of silver, quantities of bronze and iron too great to be weighed, and wood and stone. And you may add to them. 15You have many workmen: stonecutters, masons and carpenters, as well as men skilled in every kind of work 16in gold and silver, bronze and iron—craftsmen beyond number. Now begin the work, and the LORD be with you.” 1 Chronicles 22:14-16
Lets put these quantities into modern terms, to give us some perspective on the size of David’s gift.
A talent weighed about 70 pounds. That means that David gave roughly 3,750 tons of gold or about 7.5 million pounds. Multiply that by 16 to get the number of ounces, and as of Thursday of this week gold was selling for a low of $1,550 a troy ounce. So David’s gold donation alone was worth: $186 billion dollars. Add to that his 37,500 tons of silver worth today about 32 billion dollars and even without considering, the other materials given, you come up with an offering that three or four times larger than the entire fortune of one of today’s richest people. We don’t know how much David had left over after giving it, but his gift had to be one of the largest donations in the history of the world.
What in the world would motivate such an extravagant gift?
I believe it was David’s crystal clear recognition that every single thing – every shekel, every cow, every sandal, every fringe on his garment – had come to him from the hand of God, and it was only right to give back to him lavishly as a demonstration of his gratitude.
#1. When We Get In Touch With Our Heavenly Father, We Become Extravagant In Our Response To God Because He Is Extravagant By Nature!
A. When we think about the nature of God, ideas come to mind like: “God is Love,” and “God is Just,” and “God is Holy.” And they are all true! But we miss something by not recognizing the superlatives that go with each aspect of His nature.
- A superlative expresses the highest degree of grammatical comparison of an adjective or adverb. It refers to something or somebody of the highest quality and the highest admiration.
B. The angel in Isaiah’s vision cried, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord!” It was an extreme exclamation. “Holy” by itself means that someone is already perfect, sinless, pure and righteous.
C. But the angel felt compelled to shout it three times for emphasis. That is because God isn’t just kind of holy, or kind of loving, or kind of just. He is lavishly, abundantly, excessively, bountifully holy, loving and just in every part of his being. God is limitless. He is extravagant!
#2. It Is This Extravagant Reality Of God That King David Got In Touch With.
A. The closer we get to Jesus, the clearer God’s extravagance registers in our hearts and hopefully it flows up to our consciousness.
B. Today, I want to call you to a radical, dramatic complete commitment to Jesus, in response to God’s immense love for you!
C. Solomon got the message, at least for the first part of his life. His father’s over-the-top devotion to God captured the young King’s heart.
D. So Solomon builds a beautiful temple for His extravagant God. When the temple is complete, Priests carry the Ark of the Covenant into the Holy of Holies, and a cloud fills the temple with God’s presence. Solomon offers a prayer of dedication and then:
63Solomon offered a sacrifice of fellowship offerings to the LORD: twenty-two thousand cattle and a hundred and twenty thousand sheep and goats. So the king and all the Israelites dedicated the temple of the LORD. 1 Kings 8:63 NIV
E. I have a hard time grasping the significance of that moment. What are the sounds, smells and sights of sacrificing 142,000 animals in a colossal worship service?
F. The Lord didn’t command Solomon to sacrifice so much. It was simply the overflow of his gratitude for all God had done for him and his people.
G. Some are thinking, well that is fine for David and Solomon to offer such extravagant gifts. They were rich kings and could afford it! Extravagant worship isn’t reserved just for the wealthy.
41Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. 42But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a fraction of a penny.
43Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. 44They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.” Mark 12:41-44
H. Why did this poor woman give everything she had to God? Because she had a heart of overwhelming gratitude and glad obedience. How much was her gift worth to Jesus? Enough for Him to point to her as a shining example for all of us.
I. Extravagant worshippers capture God’s heart! Jesus noticed her. Does your worship get God’s attention?
J. Kathy and I took a major step of faith when I resigned my position at Regent University and we moved our family to Chicago’s North Shore to plant a new church. The day we moved into our rental home we had a snow-storm. Earlier, we noticed there were bright yellow ropes hanging about 5 feet off the ground in the parking lot. We couldn’t figure out their purpose until that storm left 2 feet of snow and then we figured out, the ropes told you where to park when the snow covered up the parking spaces.
K. We cashed in my retirement and we gave the monies to our new church. We were having a hard time getting used to the Northern culture and the few church members we had were having a hard time getting used to we Southerners.
L. During this time, I heard the Lord whisper to my heart: “Teryl, surrender!” I figured he must be talking to the wrong person. I said: “Lord, what else do you want me to surrender?” “I’ve resigned my job, we have moved up North, I have given my retirement funds to the new church. I am renting a house that I can’t really afford, I am paying private Christian School tuition for our girls that we can’t really afford… and you want me to surrender even more?”
M. I began reminding God that my idea was to be a businessman, but gave up that “worldly ambition,” to become a pastor. I had dreamed of going into insurance and real estate. I had dreamed of having more wealth than anyone in my family had ever enjoyed. I wanted to make it big. I wanted to prove that I was smart and somebody. And when I answered the call to go into full time ministry, I knew that meant being concerned about money to pay bills, and perhaps even worse, being one of “those” people.
N. I was more than a little resentful when God whispered to me, “Teryl, surrender!”
O. But over the years, I have learned just how much I don’t know about surrendering to God and the Lord seems delighted to keep teaching me. The truth is I am still very much learning and I have a long ways to go.
P. Today, we are celebrating Communion. Sometimes we forget that the 12 Disciples were just regular flesh and blood people like you and me. John McAurther says “they were just common men with an uncommon calling.” Jesus didn’t select them because they were special, extraordinary or especially talented. Several of them were fishermen, one was a tax collector, one was a rebel, a few others were thrown in. Like you and me, they were unworthy and unqualified.
Q. But Jesus saved them and filled them with the Holy Spirit and used them to turn our world upside down.
#3. The Next Time You Feel Like A “Nobody,” Remember That You Are Exactly The Kind Of Person Jesus Chose to Change The World!
A. At the Last Supper, when Jesus passed the bread and held up the Cup, He was challenging these men to a radical commitment to Him that few of us understand. He said the bread was representative of His body that would be broken for us. Scripture refers to the church as the body of Christ. The bread is a representative of our connection to each other, our community, our togetherness.
C. Battle-tested soldiers tell us that the bond they share with men who are in the same foxhole – is the strongest relational connection they know. When people are willing to die for the same cause, the sense of community they share is supernatural. When Jesus said: “Take the bread,” among other things, He was teaching us about true Christian community. Together we live and die for a shared cause: the honor of our Savior and the extension of His kingdom.
D. The Cup signifies commitment. The wine was representative of His blood,that He would sacrificially spill the next day for them and for us. When He said: “Drink the Cup.” He wanted them to drink deeply of His grace and His power to forgive sins and to allow that truth to sink deeply into them.
E. As Jesus blessed the Cup and passed it around, I think the disciples understood it was a sign of commitment. Not just God’s commitment to redeem us, but our commitment to say: “Jesus, I am all in!” “I am pushing all of the chips to the middle of the table.” “You have all of me!”
F. They drank the cup that night and they meant it, at least 11 of them did! Yes, they ran from trouble a couple of hours later and they hid from the authorities in the weeks following Jesus resurrection. But on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came upon them in power, they became lions of the faith! In the coming years, they roared with the message of Christ to every corner of the known world. The extravagance of their devotion is seen in their deaths:
• Simon the Zealot was crucified like Jesus with nails in his hands and feet.
• Jude, also known as Thadeus, died on a cross.
• Matthew was slain with a pickaxe in Ethiopia.
• Phillip was stoned to death
• James the great was beheaded
• Thomas was rammed through by a spear in India
• John was boiled in a pot of hot oil, somehow he survived, and was exiled to the island of Patmos off the coast of Turkey.
• Simon Peter was crucified upside down.
• Andrew was crucified
• James the lesser was stoned and later beaten to death with a club.
• Nathaniel was crucified.
Judas betrayed Jesus that night and a few hours later he hanged himself in shame. For Judas, following Jesus was never about selfless devotion or commitment. He was only with Jesus, when Jesus had something Judas wanted.
Yet, Judas isn’t that much different from consumer “Christians” today. When it began to look like following Jesus would cost Judas something, he changed course and found a way to make a profit from his relationship with Jesus.
The Cross of Christ sets us free from sin, but it calls us to devote every ounce of our being to the One who bought our freedom.
9Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? 20For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20
#4. Every Single One Of Us, Not Just Pastors And Church Leaders, But All Of Us Are Called To Be Extravagantly Devoted To Jesus, In Every Way And Every Day.
Today, I want you to come to the altar area and to take the bread as the body of Christ, broken for you, and eat it. And take the Cup and drink deeply of His grace and mercy and SURRENDER YOUR LIFE TO JESUS IN A NEW WAY AND A NEW DEPTH.
PERHAPS YOU HAVE DRIFTED INTO A CONSUMER CHRISTIANITY AND ARE SERVING JESUS, ONLY FOR THE BENEFITS AND THERE ARE MANY BENEFITS… BUT YOU NEED TO CLEAR AWAY THE COBWEBS Of COMPLACENCY FROM YOUR HEART, AND EXPERIENCE THE CLEANSING FLOOD OF HIS FORGIVENESS IN A FRESH WAY. MAYBE YOU’VE BEEN PLAYING IT SAFE IN YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD. IT’S TIME TO PUSH ALL OF YOUR CHIPS TO THE MIDDLE OF THE TABLE AND TO SAY MAYBE FOR THE FIRST TIME – “I’M ALL IN! I SURRENDER. I AM ALL YOURS. I BELONG TO YOU.
(Message originally delivered April 7, 2013)
