The first thing that comes to mind when we think of God’s abundance is his abounding love: in Exodus 34:6 we have the well-known verse, ‘The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness’. When we talked about love the other week, we discussed how love is not just a passive emotion but is active, doing….and the abundance of God’s love is shown throughout the bible in his actions towards us. In Psalm 86 verse 5 it says: ‘You are forgiving and good, O Lord, abounding in love to all who call to you.’
The first great gift that God planned for us, apart from life itself, was perfection: and perfection must be an abundance of goodness! He created a perfect world for us as is shown in Isaiah 5v1-8. (read). However, we rejected God’s perfection not once but over and over again first Adam and Eve rejected it, preferring to make their own choice even if it led to disaster: the Israelites rejected God’s perfection – the promised land of milk and honey - over and over again, following idols and choosing rebellion. Jesus, the ultimate in perfection, was rejected by the people of his time and led away to crucifixion. But, all-knowing, God was from the very beginning abundant in mercy. He, being omniscient, knew what had happened in the Garden but nonetheless he came down to walk and talk in the cool of the evening; it was Adam and Eve who hid themselves from God, he did not abandon them in their sinfulness. And in fact even in this situation he gave them another gift, the gift of shame so that they would not come out and face him nakedly. Where there is shame, there is hope of repentance, but without it, as we are finding in our society today, without shame there seems to be no rein on some people’s behaviour. In Isaiah 55;7 it says ‘let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.’ And in Psalm 103;8 ‘the lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in mercy.’ I’m sure there are some of us here who can give examples of God’s great mercy towards them? The thing about God’s mercy is that we cannot store it in advance but the mercies of God are sufficient for the time of need. Ask for help at the time, not in anticipation of something that might never happen.
We know that every time a new name of God is revealed, this tells us more about him. Someone talked last week about the covenant with Abraham and about his willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac – because if the gift is loved more than the giver, then it becomes an idol. It was at this time that the name ‘The Lord will Provide’ was revealed for us (and incidentally in verse 2 of this chapter 22, the word ‘love’ is used for the first time in the bible). Even in his promises to Abraham, God’s extravagance is shown – his descendants are to be as numerous as grains of sand on the shore or stars in the sky!
We opened today’s meeting with a chocolate fountain. This was a bit of frivolity, something fun to start us off, a touch of luxury that perhaps you were not expecting. It had a more serious side in that it was meant as a symbol of God’s giving – not just the necessity for survival, not just ‘our daily bread’, but something extra, running over and satisfying our senses of smell and sight and taste and also our senses of pleasure and sharing and fellowship. If we simply think about God’s attitude to our food: in Genesis 1:29 he said: ’I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.’ later he widened this: in Genesis 9:3 he says: ‘Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything’. (and this extra gift was just after the flood, just after he had almost destroyed mankind because of disobedience and because ‘every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually’) It would have been perfectly possible for God to produce one item – say, for a simple example, rice – and say to us: this contains all the nutrients you will ever need, all the protein, fats, amino acids, vitamins and carbohydrates: you need nothing else, this is all you are going to have to eat for the whole of your lives. There are hundreds of thousands of people in the world for whom this is almost true in fact (except that unfortunately it doesn’t answer all their nutritional needs) but this was never God’s intention, this is a result of our world system today with the poverty that it brings to so many; and it must be the most incredibly boring diet, to have the same things for every single meal without any variety. But God is good, God said take whatever you want and satisfy not only your nutritional needs but your senses – taste, smell, sight, touch – even hearing if you think of the sizzle of cooking! -: he gave us foods of different colours and textures, different tastes, different levels of sweetness or acidity, and different things at different times of year – though we have done our best to wipe out any notion of seasonal produce by shipping things from one end of the world to the other, as if what God gave to each part of his world was not sufficient. He wanted us to enjoy our food as well as be kept alive by it, he wanted us to share his pleasure in variety and to use all the senses he gave us even in this most basic of needs. It is amazing, too, in what extreme places food can be found – the bushmen in the Kalahari can find food where you and I would see only scrubland and desert and would starve to death, but God gives the secrets of each place to those who live there, so that they can live.
There are so many examples in the bible of God’s overflowing provision for us: Psalm 23 spells out all the gifts – the still water, the green pastures, the table laid, the anointing, and states, ‘my cup runneth over’. In Deut 33;19 we read, ‘for they shall partake of the abundance of the seas and of treasures hidden in the sand. (blessing Zebulon) and in
Ps 132 15 I will abundantly bless her provision: I will satisfy her poor with bread. If you look through Kings and Chronicles, there are endless items in abundance – cedars, jewels, sacrifices, sheep, flocks and herds, fruit, wine…..all the good things of the world came to Israel in the time of her prosperity, as God had promised.
The most obvious single example of God’s generosity is the episode of the feeding of the five thousand, and the further feeding of the four thousand. This story contains so many threads – the tiny offering which seems so useless, Andrew’s little bit of faith (enough to bring the boy’s food to Jesus’ notice but not quite sure that it will be sufficient): and out of this, after thanks have been given to God, the faith and the people are fed, and we see that God does not provide ‘just enough’ (as he could well do) but twelve baskets full of scraps are left over, and on the second occasion, there are seven baskets left. This is God who pours out his plenty upon his people.
God is also abundant in protection. He promises Abraham in Genesis 15:1, ‘I am your shield, your very great reward’. There are numerous references to God as our rock, our strong tower, our refuge in time of trouble. But we cannot stay in the strong tower, we cannot remain in the refuge, we have to go out into the world and face the storms and battles: also, there are many occasions when we have to be soldiers for Christ. so we are given armour: we are told to stand firm, ‘with the belt of truth buckled round your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the sprit, which is the word of God.’ So we are protected when we go out, and held safe when we need refuge, there is no time when God’s protection is not ours.
God doesn’t make conditions when he gives: in Matthew 5:45 it says: (Your father in heaven) causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.’ He doesn’t only give to the deserving, his gifts are for all humanity. In Luke 6:38 we are told, ‘Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap.’ The moral is also pointed out: For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. We are left in no doubt that God will do as he promises, - as someone said, he cannot break the covenant, it is an everlasting covenant - but we have to mirror his ways. Like I said last week, we are in God’s image but less than God, and here too we are the image-but-less: we cannot give as God gives in amount and type, but we can give in the same manner as God gives: generously and without counting the cost.
This is made clear in Malachi 3: God says: ‘Will a man rob God? Yet you rob me.’ But you ask, ‘how do we rob you?’ ‘In tithes and offerings. You are under a curse – the whole nation of you – because you are robbing me. Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,’ says the Lord Almighty, ‘and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.’ ....but if we give to God in an open-handed manner – not just the due amount but over and above, a goodwill offering – he tells us that ‘I will open the floodgates of heaven….’ This is such a powerful image of God’s open-handedness, but we have to live by his rules, we have to fulfil our share of the covenant.
God has open arms and open hands, an open heart, God loves giving and wants only that we will receive. He doesn’t look back and regret his generosity (apart from wishing he had not made Saul King, that is!) He gave the greatest gift of all, even unto his only son, out of his love for us. Everything that we have and everything that we are come from him. It is only by scattering seed broadcast – widely - can a crop grow. . If all the seeds are bunched up into a tiny space, they will not grow and flourish: they crowd each other out and die for want of room. Picture the sower – seed in his pouch, hand swinging in a wide arc to sow the seed evenly and widely. Fling it out with both hands and a giving heart and it will come back to you a hundredfold: hold it to you and it will be as though buried in the earth never seeing the light of day. (Modern machinery is rather mean in comparison – it drops each seed precisely into its own little hole! And there is none left scattered on the verges for the birds to take, as there will be with even the most skilled sower.)
Part of a generous spirit is the idea of pleasure –the pleasure one takes in giving and the pleasure one gives. Pleasure doesn’t go with meanness and close dealing and counting out the pennies. That is thrift and care and fretting that there might not be enough: God is a god of pleasure – he does what it pleases him to do, see psalms. He doesn’t want us to be miserable and downtrodden by sin, he abundantly provided for us to be saved.
If the price has been paid, freely and with open heart, who are we to withhold what we have? Proverbs 28:20 says: A faithful man will be richly blessed, but one eager to get rich will not go unpunished’. What we are given by God is to be shared. There are a number of contradictions in God’s ways for us – dying that we might live, loving those that hate us – and giving that we may receive is another of them. We must love, abundantly, as God does – with all our heart, all our soul all our mind and all our strength, and we must give abundantly, as God gives: but the abundance must be in our hearts as well as our hands, giving reluctantly is not giving at all. There is a proverb which says, ‘he who gives quickly gives twice’,
This wasn’t meant to be a treatise about giving but it seems to have turned out a bit like that. I suppose it does follow on, because God’s abundance towards us is in his giving to us – his love, his faithfulness, his forgiveness, his mercy, his protection, our physical needs, his son for our salvation. We are made in the image of God and therefore we have to learn from him in this as well, that only by letting go can we hold on.
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