sermonette: What Is an Offering?

Back to Basics
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 07-Oct-25; Sermon #FT25-01AMs; 19 minutes

It has been 41 years since my baptism. I know, I do not look that old. That was May 1984 as John Reese well knows. He's, he congratulates me on my baptism every year. Many of you have been church members for even longer than that, many more years than I have.

And I look at the, the intervening years and I think, wow, they have gone by in a flash. Then I begin to think I've learned a great deal over those 41 years not just scripturally, you know, the wisdom that comes from from God's word, but also experientially by the things that God has put me through over those 41 years. And I hope that Uh, expansion of knowledge and, and wisdom has resulted in growth in righteousness, and, and wisdom of course and as Pat mentioned in the the prayer there in my relationship with Jesus Christ and I'm sure that you feel the same with your own conversion that you. Understand that God has been working with you down the years and, and helped you to grow ever more like His Son Jesus Christ.

Now, we older people often take certain things for granted because we have advanced beyond the basics, right? We forget that new members come into the church regularly and we are having babies like I will not make a metaphor there um but we we have babies and they grow up and they need to learn the basics before they can learn the more complex things. Cause they, they just lack the depth of understanding, so we have to teach them. We take Hebrews the 6th chapter verse 1 literally and leave the elementary principles of Christ behind and rarely if ever do we revisit those basic doctrines.

Then we preachers in our zeal to go on to perfection or to help you go on to perfection in the knowledge we impart to the church, uh. We have to remember that. On occasion, we have to define terms, go over basic material, and rehearse the biblical foundation every once in a while. So, I want to rehearse the basic elements of offerings today, and why we give them.

The sermon that will be a review for many of you. I hope it is a review, but it may be helpful to our young people and our newer members just to get the foundation firm once again. Fought for them for the first time. Now, first, some definitions.

In English, according to the New Oxford American Dictionary. An offering is generally. A thing offered I hate when dictionaries do that. They used the word in the definition. It was like, that's pretty useless.

Uh, but a thing offered, especially as a gift or a contribution, that's the the important part. It includes the more theological definition a thing offered as a religious contribution or a religious sacrifice or token of devotion, that's fine. Now our word derives from Latin. Pretty much the same word, a fairre made up of ob, which means toward or before, and fair, which means to bring.

So it's to bring toward or to bring before someone else. In Old Testament Hebrew, where offerings are discussed most in the Bible. There are 2 terms. You probably know the first one because Jesus speaks of it.

This term is Corbo. Either K O R B A N or Q O R BAN as they are transliterating it these days. That word, Korban means that which is brought near to God. So it's something you bring to God you bring it close to him as an offering, and it implies that one is devoted to God and you have given a certain portion for his use, and if you remember what happened in the New Testament in the gospels where Jesus was talking about this, he was saying people were devoting widow's houses and such to.

To the temple and keeping it out of those who had need. And they were trying to make themselves look good by giving all of this to God rather than helping the widows. The other word that is used in the Old Testament is mincha, M I N H or that sound, uh. A H A H means gift or tribute.

So they are very similar words, we could call them synonyms. I'd like to go to Genesis, the 4th chapter. Here's the, the new Bible's test here. Genesis the 4th chapter 1 through 5, and we are going to read the first mention of Minha, so gift or tribute.

We're going to read the 1st 5 verses here in chapter 4.

Genesis 4:1-5 Now Adam knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain and said, I have acquired a man from the Lord. Then she bore again this time his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. And in the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought an offering. Minha. Of the fruit of the ground to the Lord Abel also brought of the first born of his flock and of their fat, and the Lord respected Abel. And his offering, but he did not respect Cain and his offering, and Cain was very angry and his countenance fell.

OK. This is a sermon at, so we lack the time to go into this in, in greater detail, but we can extract a few basic points that are, are important to us in understanding offerings. First, Making offerings to God is an ancient. And after ancient practice, I should say, and after obedience, it is the second act of worship that is mentioned in scripture.

No, Adam and Eve did not do very well in the obedience part, but it's implied there that they did obey God before they disobeyed God. So The important point here though is that offerings started at the very beginning. OK, the second point, Offerings are tied to the work.

That Cain and Abel did in their normal lives. They came, the offerings came from the fruit of their labors. So, Kane was a tiller of the ground, and he gave something from that. And Abel was a shepherd, he kept sheep, and he gave of that.

Of what he had done OK, the 3 very important point, the most important point in terms of our relationship with God is that God does not respect all offerings. He makes a judgment Sometimes something about Kaine's offering. Did not please God. Now, we teach that Cain gave an offering of the fields and so it was most likely a grain offering.

And you have to know what these, these offerings in the Old Testament symbolize, but the grain offering symbolizes love toward man. You would the priest or the person that was sacrificing giving an offering would normally give a burnt offering and the grain offering went on top of it and all the other things were combined on this particular offering. And, but Cain only gave. The grain offering, which meant that his viewpoint, if you will, his, his motives were toward man.

He was the first humanist, we might say. While Cain Gave a burnt offering from the flock. And that symbolizes love toward God. That his first priority was God.

And so he gave uh. A life, not just, you know, plant life. Yeah, that's a lower form than a, a sheep or or a lamb. And in this case Abel gave a better offering.

Then Cain did because Abel showed that his love was toward God first, whereas Cain said his love was toward other men first. So seeing Kane's attitude in the whole story, the greater problem then, as God clearly saw, was in his heart. It was in his character and in his motives. God saw and judged that Cain's offering was not a worthy offering, and so he rejected it.

And of course, Cain's actions subsequent to this proved that God was right. And it led to Kane's killing of his brother. Because he could not get over the fact that God had not accepted him and that his brother had been accepted. He was very jealous of his brother.

So, what we can learn from this is that an offering can be done in vain. Because it can be done with a wrong motive. And God, as we know, looks on the heart. He sees right through our justifications and our excuses, and he knows.

For what reasons? We do things. And he made a perfect judgment in this case and rejected Kane's offering because You put all these things together. He was either 1, trying to get something from God, or 2, he really did not care, and he just gave what he had on hand.

There and so. He gave a bad offering. He gave wrongly. OK, let's move forward into the Bible to a scripture that we often come to during offertories.

And that is Deuteronomy 16. Verses 16 and 17.

Deuteronomy 16:16-17 Deuteronomy 16:16. 3 times a year, all your mail shall appear before the Lord your God in the place which he chooses at the feast of Unleavened bread, at the feast of weeks, and at the feast of Tabernacles, and they shall not appear before the Lord empty-handed. So this is a commanded offering. Uh, he wants his people to uh, give, uh. But hold on for a moment. Uh, let's read verse 17. Every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of the Lord your God, which he has given you.

Now also ancient. In the world is the principle of bringing a gift before one's sovereign or overLord. If we would have the time, we could go see that the Queen of Sheba brought gifts to Solomon. Uh, the magi in Matthew, uh.

What is it? 2 there? Uh, 1 or 2. they brought gifts to the newborn king, Jesus. In this way, an offering is also a form of tribute that was one of the definitions that we saw earlier.

It's a gift or a payment from a vassal to his king as an acknowledgment of submission or obligation or even gratitude or admiration. This fits with our status within the covenant that we have made with God. We have taken him if you will, as our sovereign we've agreed to that and we owe him our allegiance and our obedience and our love. It's all written in there as part of the covenant and so we could think of an offering as a tribute to him.

Just one of the ways we can think of it, but it it fits. So an offering is a symbol of our subservient status toward him, before him, and our gratitude then also for his manifold blessings that he showers upon us. Now 3 times here, 3 times a year refers to the 3 holy day seasons, particularly the three pilgrimage festivals where the Israelites would all come up to Jerusalem to the tabernacle or to, well, Jerusalem, the temple, and uh.

They literally came before God. They presented themselves as it were before His throne, which the mercy seat depicts, and they would give offerings. Now, we do this on the 7 annual holy days within those 3 seasons, when we come before God spiritually in holy convocation. Now, one thing we need to note here is that God does not set a fixed amount.

We are to contemplate. Think it through how much God has blessed us. In the past year. And even longer term it doesn't need to be just the past year, but we can, he wants us to sit down and, and really come to understand how much he has made a difference in our lives, how much we owe him and uh.

Acknowledge that through an offering. Now, he gives no figure. He doesn't say you're to give $100 for each blessing, or you know, he doesn't do that at all. He says, you think about it, you fix a price on it, you fix a value upon God having called you, given you this precious knowledge, and done all the work for you up to a certain point, it's a lot of, a lot of work that he did and a very little amount that we actually have to do.

OK, let's go to II Corinthians 9. II Corinthians 9. And we just read verses 6 through 8. II Corinthians 9, I mean I Corinthians that will not do.

II Corinthians 9:6-8 6 through 8. But this I say he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity, for God loves a cheerful giver, and God is able to make all grace abound toward you that you always having all sufficiency in all things may have an abundance for every good work.

Now, this section actually speaks to giving an offering for the relief of those who are undergoing famine in Judea. But it fits the principle here in, in our giving of holy day offerings. In this principle, we can, we can return to Kane's attitude, Kane's bad attitude, and Thus to Abel's good one, evidently.

Did Kaine give grudgingly or of necessity? Perhaps Did able give abundantly and cheerfully and with the purpose of pleasing God? Probably. Did Abel think his offering through, realizing that God had given him grace and blessing, and that God was responsible for all the abundance that they had.

I would say yes. From everything we know about Abel, it seems that he was a very thoughtful man. Was that the difference Between rejecting Kane's offering and accepting A's. You have to think that it probably is.

Let's finish in Psalm 107. Psalm 107. And we will read verses 1 and 2 and then drop down to verse 19.

Psalm 107:1-2 Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endures forever. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom he redeemed from the hand of the enemy,

now down to verse 19.

Psalm 107:19-22 Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and he saved them out of their distresses. He sent his word and healed them and delivered them from their destructions. Oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord for His goodness and for his wonderful works to the children of men. Let them sacrifice the sacrifices of thanksgiving and declare his works with rejoicing.