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Heavenly Father, our generous God. Speak to us through your Word, and by changing our hearts, change how we live. In Jesus name. Amen.

I’ve learned some things since joining the staff here a third of a century ago this month. Amongst them is this, that there are three things in life that we can be absolutely certain of: death, taxes, and the JPC Giving Review. Given a choice between those three, I’d choose the Giving Review every time.

And it’s right to think and act christianly about money. Otherwise we can find ourselves like flies in a spider’s web – one moment thinking we are flying free, the next trapped in the sticky mess of insidious materialism. But nonetheless, the subject of money can seem to fit uneasily with the great spiritual themes of grace and holiness and love and forgiveness. There’s a certain feeling of going from the sublime to the ridiculous. The truth is of course that if our faith doesn’t affect the nitty gritty of our daily lives, it’s virtually worthless. In this case, the sublime and the ridiculous belong together. And if you look at 1 Corinthians 16.1-4, you can see the apostle Paul making the same leap. Right before this, Paul was speaking with all his passion about the hope we have in the resurrection of Christ, about the destruction of death and the victory of Jesus. Then he says almost in the same breath (1 Corinthians 15.58-16.1):

Therefore, my beloved brothers [that is – in the light of the resurrection], be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labour is not in vain. Now concerning the collection for the saints:

In one move he goes from the resurrection to the collection. His head is in the heavens but his feet never leave the ground. The Apostle Paul’s preoccupations and visions were on a grand spiritual scale – but they were always real, earthed, practical. We need to make sure we have the same combination. Paul was preoccupied above all with the glorious gospel. 1 Corinthians 15.1 and following:

Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you…that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day…

We’ll never get our finances straight before God unless the gospel is our top priority as it was for Paul. What is the key to your problems and the problems of the world? Is it some change in government policy? Is it talks between Biden and Putin? Or a fall in energy costs? No. It’s the gospel – the good news of Jesus. And if like Paul we become preoccupied with the spread of the gospel that will lead us into other preoccupations as well. We’ll care about the church, the people of God. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 11.28-29:

And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to fall, and I am not indignant?

Do we love the church like that? Every local church is like a boiler house pumping out the good news of Jesus into the world around. The world’s central heating if you like. If the boiler isn’t serviced, if it’s not fuelled, the fire dies out and the world gets cold.

Mrs Jellyby is a character in Dickens’ novel Bleak House. Mrs Jellyby is a woman full of noble ideas of charity and service. She spends all her time rushing around organising one charity or another. But her own large family she totally neglects and the result is chaos and anarchy. All her charity work completely loses integrity as a result. We mustn’t neglect the church as Mrs Jellyby neglected her family. Like Paul we need to be preoccupied with the gospel – and with the church. And Paul has one very practical prescription for the Corinthian church to be getting on with and that was to get involved with giving to the church, in this case giving towards the collection that he was organising for the needy church in Jerusalem.

In on today’s verse he gives them instructions for their giving that contain a number of important principles that we need to take on board ourselves if we are to make the most effective use of the resources that the Lord has given to us. He says in 1 Corinthians 16.2:

On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up, as he may prosper, so that there will be no collecting when I come.

He wants them to make a planned contribution. So let’s look at how that’s to be done.

First of all, there’s the principle of priority for our giving.

On the first day…put something aside…

If procrastination is the thief of time it can very easily become the thief of what is due to God as well. One of the things that bugs me and that I constantly struggle with is making sure that if I set aside a period of time for a particular task, I actually use the time as planned. It’s so easy for other things to catch the attention, and my objective assessment at the beginning of the day of what needs doing today gets crowded out by other things that should not be top priority. The same is true of our giving. There are a thousand possible calls upon our money and hundreds of them can readily expand to fill the purse or wallet available. But no priority is higher than using our money in the way that God wills, and that must include giving to His work in and through the church. So the wise thing for us to do is to sit down before all our resources are allocated and settle with the Lord his will for us this year or whatever the period may be. We should plan clearly what we’re going to give and then work out the allocation of the rest afterwards. Giving takes priority. The earlier in our lives that we begin to live by that principle, the better. Of course it’s not always easy. But we don’t want to be giving the Lord the offal while we have all the juicy tender meat for ourselves. He is worthy of the best – the first fruits of the harvest.

Secondly, there’s the principle of regularity in giving. 1 Corinthians 16.2 again:

On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside…

Regularity and consistency in our giving gives a spiritual benefit to us. It’s not unlike fitness training. At university I used to row a bit – not exactly at the top level, you understand. One year I was in a novice eight and we all trained keenly and regularly week by week so that come the races we were ready and fit – and we did very well. I even have a little plastic trophy (my one sporting trophy) to prove it! The next year things slipped and I thought I could row in a college eight for the races, and I’d be OK if I gave my all on the day without bothering too much with training beforehand. I was wrong. It’s awkward half way through a rowing race when you suddenly find you can hardly breathe! You can’t exactly ask to get out for a bit.

Regular giving helps spiritual fitness. It constantly reminds us of God’s priority in our whole lives. It equips us for larger, urgent sacrifices of whatever sort that the Lord might call us to. If we’re not ready for consistent sacrifice, we won’t be ready if the Lord suddenly lands a major challenge on our plate. Regular giving benefits the church enormously as well of course, because it enables proper planning under God, not haphazard work in response to haphazard income. We will have the undying gratitude of our finance team.

Thirdly there’s the principle of universality. That’s a rather clumsy way of saying that Paul wanted everyone to give. Back to 1 Corinthians 16.2:

On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside…

In a relatively large church like this it’s easy to feel lost in the crowd or to forget the importance of each one of us, but every individual is influential in the body of Christ. Maybe because the Church of England has some historic resources (though we don’t benefit from those at JPC) there can be a feeling that my individual contribution is by and large unnecessary. If that takes hold, the result is not just financial plight but a great loss of spiritual power. Where there’s universal giving there’s a sense of belonging – of ownership even, under God; a sense of working together, with God, that he uses powerfully. Every single one of us is important. If you’re one of those who hasn’t started to give yet, please make this the moment to reconsider, and make a change.

Fourthly, another principle underlies the three little words in 1 Corinthians 16.22 store it up:

On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up…

This is the principle of self-discipline. In this case Paul was intending to visit the church some time later and he wanted the Corinthians just to sit on the money they were setting aside until he came, so it would all be ready. That required self-discipline in the area of their personal finances. Self-discipline generally involves either not doing something you do like doing, or doing something you don’t like doing, in the short term, for the sake of some kind of long term benefit.

After his latest triumph in the Australian Open, Rafa Nadal is arguably top of the list of tennis greats. Apparently nowadays he focuses on high-intensity workouts and exercises that strengthen the muscles around his knees and shoulders. Alongside that, he's scaled back his on-court training to a mere 2 to 2½ hours a day. That’s the kind of discipline it takes. Setting aside money that we could otherwise enjoy spending requires a disciplined long term view. I’m not sure we’re very good at that nowadays – apparently the average credit card debt is over £2000 per household. We’d often rather spend than wait. But the Lord calls us to make spiritual investments, and to build up treasure in heaven.

Then finally and fifthly there is the principle of proportionality. 1 Corinthians 16.2 one more time:

On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up, as he may prosper, so that there will be no collecting when I come.

Giving should be in proportion to our resources. The great evangelist and founder of Methodism John Wesley operated on this principle by setting himself a certain standard of living to cover his needs, and then whatever surplus he had was given away. As his income rose in real terms, so his giving rose by the same amount. Well, giving like that may be beyond our faith at the moment. But if so, remember that the Biblical starting point is a tenth (a tithe) and let’s be prepared to re-examine before the Lord the proportion of our income that we give. I knew a young man who went to work for a church for a year, and he had a paid day job to support himself. He kept what he needed just to cover board and lodging, and the rest he gave to the church. That money enabled the church to take gospel opportunities and do more ministry, and that’s what it’s all about.

We have a glorious gospel to proclaim and there is a wide door for effective work open to the church, here in the North East, and around the world. But the resources need to be released so that it can happen. When they are, God pours out blessings not just on us but on the many in desperate need who are waiting in darkness for the gospel to be brought to them. Let’s be a part of that happening through JPC. And let’s pray:

Heavenly Father, we acknowledge that everything we have (including our money) comes ultimately from your kind and generous hand. Help us to seek your will as we decide what to do with it. Teach us to be generous. And train us to be Godly and principled in how we handle our finances. In the name of Jesus, who became poor so that we might become rich. Amen.