Go take out your Bibles and turn to the book of Deuteronomy. This evening we're looking at Deuteronomy chapter 26, verses 1 through 15. If you're using one of our pew Bibles, you can find that reading on page 212. Deuteronomy 26 is continue the series through this book. Long series. Deuteronomy 26. First, let's pray. Gracious God, you have indeed furnished our lives with innumerable tokens of your goodness. You've decked us with health and life. Every good thing that we enjoy comes from your hand. But we do thank you that chief among your blessings is that you are a God who has spoken. that we have the gift of your word, that through the instrument of your scripture, we have fellowship with you, that we come to a text this evening that is no dead letter, but is alive. And not only has it been breathed out once and for all by your Holy Spirit, yet still through these words, you continue to breathe out and to create new life in your people. And so come, O Holy Spirit, this evening and do that as we pray. through the reading and preaching of your word. We ask this in Christ's name, amen. Deuteronomy 26, when you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you for your inheritance and have taken possession of it and live in it, you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground which you harvest from your land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket And you shall go to the place that the Lord your God will choose to make his name dwell there. And you shall go to the priest who is in office at that time and say to him, I declare today to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our fathers to give us. And the priest shall take the basket from your hand and set it down before the altar of the Lord your God. And you shall make a response before the Lord your God. A wandering Aramean was my father, and he went down into Egypt and sojourned there, few in number. And there he became a great nation, a nation great, mighty, and populous. And the Egyptians treated us harshly and humiliated us and laid on us hard labor. Then we cried to the Lord, the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. And the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm with great deeds of terror, with signs and wonders. And he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. And behold, now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground which you, O Lord, have given me. and you shall set it down before the Lord your God and worship before the Lord your God, and you shall rejoice in all the good that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house, you and the Levite and the sojourner who is among you. When you have finished paying all the tithe of your produce in the third year, which is the year of tithing, giving it to the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, so that they may eat within your towns and be filled, Then you shall say before the Lord your God, I have removed the sacred portion out of my house, and moreover, I have given it to the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, according to all your commandments that you have commanded me. I have not transgressed any of your commandments, nor have I forgotten them. I have not eaten of the tithe while I was in mourning or removed any of it while I was unclean or offered any of it to the dead. I have obeyed the voice of the Lord my God. I have done according to all that you commanded me. Look down from your holy habitation from heaven and bless your people Israel in the ground that you have given us as you swore to our fathers a land flowing with milk and honey. Praise God for his word. The act of gift giving can be a tricky thing. We give gifts, perhaps most often because we feel a compulsion to do so. The rhythms of our society's calendar provide regular occasions for that kind of compulsion. Every February 14th, you are guaranteed to go to the grocery store and find a crowd of husbands roaming it with a look of panic on their face as they search for flowers and chocolates in the hope of not checking in for the evening at the couch motel. Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, which is next Sunday, by the way, men. You're welcome. Father's Day, Christmas, birthdays, anniversaries, graduations. Unless your role model is Ebenezer Scrooge, you generally do not question whether a gift ought to be given on these occasions. Of course, we know that this sense of compulsion to give gifts comes with many dangers as well. Gifts can be given in rote ways without thought or care. Gifts can be given in excess to gratify materialistic desires. And gifts can be given in acts of manipulation in order to curry favor and get what you want out of another person. There are many cynical ways to give a gift. Yet, giving gifts does not have to be thus. In a healthy relationship, gift-giving can be a sincere expression of love, care, and gratitude. Special gifts that come from much thought and attention to an individual person's desires, even small gifts that may eventually find their way to a thrift store or a yard sale, all can be vehicles to communicate appreciation and affection. The real difference between a gift that is given in a problematic way and a gift that is given in a healthy way is really, in the end, not about the gift itself, but rather about the relational dynamics which surround the exchange. That exact same locket can either be an instrument of heartfelt devotion or an instrument of sinister leverage. More fundamental than the gift are the lives and hearts of those involved in the giving and the taking. When we consider what it means to give to God ties and offerings, to make vows and promises to Him, this is even more important. for us to bear in mind. In the mad delusions of our sin, we can easily slip into thinking that we can somehow manipulate God through rote acts of gift giving, or even through rote acts of obedience that lack our heart. We can easily reduce our relationship with the Lord to a sort of mercenary affair in which We think that in fulfilling certain obligations, we can then expect that God will most certainly give us blessings. The scripture constantly speaks of the dangers of this perverse approach to our relationship with our creator, but the solution to such a twisted view of things is not to abandon giving to the Lord. The solution, rather, requires a change of heart. It requires us understanding and embracing the genuine dynamics of genuine love, devotion, those things as the matrix in which we express our gratitude to the Lord for all that we render to Him. Or to put things another way, It requires for us to understand the dynamics of the covenant of grace. It is that covenant of grace which forms the framework for the law that we find here in Deuteronomy 26 about various offerings. Here we meet true covenant context of what it means to offer up to the Lord, not only tithes and offerings, but to offer up to him our very selves. So the truth I want you to see this evening from scripture is this. Give your resources and your life in love to your gracious Redeemer. Give your resources and your life in love to your gracious Redeemer. Three points that we will consider. First, a covenant offering. Second, a covenant confession. And third, a covenant life. So a covenant offering, a covenant confession, a covenant life. So let's begin with our first point, a covenant offering. These verses here in Deuteronomy 26 deal with two different offerings that the Israelites were to render to the Lord on a recurring basis. The first of these we read about in verses one through two is the offering of firstfruits. Deuteronomy 26 does not mention this, but it assumes that you've read the rest of the Law of Moses, which I'm sure you have. And what the rest of the Law of Moses says about when these offerings were to be presented. Leviticus 23 in particular is the chapter that mentions two feasts in which Israel was to celebrate what is known as the first fruits. There's one first fruits that happens right after the Passover. And then there is another one that happens seven weeks after the Passover. The first fruits were an offering that were given to the Lord that what the Israelites did is they brought the very first of the produce that they had begun to harvest from the grain that they had sown in their fields. And you might ask, Moses, well, how could there be two different first fruits because there can only be one first? The answer is because they're first fruits from two different kinds of crops that grow in different ways in different times. Passover happens during the month of Abib. In Hebrew, Abib means barley, and there's a reason for that. Israel relied primarily on two staple crops for her survival, on barley and wheat. the barley crop matured a whole month before the wheat did. And so Passover was celebrated right when the barley harvest had ripened, but the wheat harvest had yet to ripen. And so there was one feast of first fruits that happened on the day after Passover in which Israel would present to the Lord the first sheaf of the barley harvest. But there was another feast, the Feast of Weeks, which you will know better as the Feast of Pentecost, that was also a festival of first fruits. It was the first fruits of the wheat harvest. And the wheat harvest would ripen later. And in both cases, what Israel would bring to the Lord, they would bring on an appointed feast. And that was an important context because in the act of feasting before the Lord, Israel had ingrained into her heart a crucial reality on a yearly basis. They would come before the Lord during the Passover, and then again during the Feast of Weeks, and they would hold in their hands already the beginnings of what God had blessed them with. And they would offer up to the Lord the initial installment of this harvest in recognition that the whole harvest in its entirety came to them as a gift from their covenant Lord and King. And so celebrating a feast for the first fruits, it taught them to understand that the provisions that they were about to enjoy, what they were about to harvest from their fields, that came from the hand of Yahweh. And that's important in Israel's context because it reminds them of this. It is not Baal, it is not Asherah, it is not Chemosh, it is no other God but the Lord who granted fertility and blessing to their crops. He gave. In fact, the verb give is used six times in the course of this chapter. In verses one, two, three, and then again in nine, 10, and 11. The verb give is used to describe how Yahweh had given to Israel the land that had yielded them their harvest. The offering of the first fruits thus lived and breathed in the context of Israel's covenant relationship to the Lord. The giving of those offerings at those different feasts, what they would be is it would be a time for Israel to come and to renew her covenant with the Lord. to renew her commitment to him as he was the great king who had given them the land and had blessed them in it. Now, a second offering's mentioned in verses 12 through 15, the tithe of the third year, the tithe of the third year. If you go back to Deuteronomy 14 and verses 22 through 29, you'll find there Moses reiterating the laws of tithing that are found in other places in the Torah. And there we find that the tithe of the third year, the third year tithe, was specifically designated to supply the Levites with the provisions that they needed to live. You see, the tribe of Levi was unique. The tribe of Levi was not allotted their own territory within Canaan. They had no specific section of the land that belonged to them like the other 11 tribes. They were unique. They were given a different sort of inheritance. Their inheritance was that they were granted the privilege as a tribe of being the priestly tribe, the tribe that would serve the Lord in his tabernacle and lead Israel in her worship. And so thus, their livelihood was dependent upon the gifts that were given to the Lord by the rest of the people. So the Apostle Paul will appeal to this practice to justify why you need to pay pastors in First Corinthians. And so one of the principal functions of the tithe was that it ensured that the Levitical priesthood was provided with the economic support that they needed to devote their labors to the worship that happened at the tabernacle and not be busy in this sort of agricultural production that the rest of Israel engaged in. But of course, that tithe of the third year was in a system in which Israel tithed of her resources every year to the Lord. And to tithe, you may have heard this word in the church, perhaps you don't know what it means. It literally means to give a tenth. That's what tithe means, to give a tenth. Israel was to set aside a tenth of all of the wealth that was given to her, generated by the productivity of the land of promise, and to give it back to the Lord. And the tithe was not optional. The tithe was obligatory. It belonged to the Lord. That's why when you read the prophet Malachi, he comes and confronts Israel about her failure to bring the tithe to the Lord, and he says that in doing that, they are robbing God. That's based on a vital principle that informed the whole of Israel's life in the promised land. You see, Israel did not actually own her territory. Her name was not on the title of the deed to Canaan. She was granted the privilege of living on the promised land by her covenant lord who owned that land, the suzerain, the great king, Yahweh, he was the proprietor of the land of Canaan. Israel lived on the land of Canaan at his pleasure as a kind of sharecropper. And the tithe then was based on this principle. Israel gave it to the Lord in recognition of the fact that every head of grain that she harvested, every fig she ate, every drop of oil that she might pour, every cup of wine she might drink, all of it was gifted to her by the benevolence of her covenant-keeping God. And so tithing was this pedagogical tool. It was an instrument of learning. And what it sought to do is to instruct Israel to love the Lord, to serve him, and to understand rightly the blessing she enjoyed. Regardless of how you might think about whether tithing exactly 10% of your income is maintained as a requirement in the New Testament, I know reformed people disagree on that. Whatever you might think about that, this principle still stands. In your giving to the Lord, you are catechizing yourself in a way. You're instructing yourself to understand your wealth and your resources, a right to see them for what they are. They are gifts that the Lord has given to you. You give him, as we sing, but his own. And in the act of giving, you're to learn that reality, to learn to love the Lord, to serve him in glad recognition that everything you have, you have by his pleasure and as a trust from him. You are not the owner of your wealth in the end, you are a steward. So we speak of stewardship. A steward does not own the thing they steward. Someone else does. You are a steward who has been delegated with the care of what you have oversight over by the true owner of that thing, and the true owner of that thing is God. Now, we have no altar to sacrifice upon in the new covenant. Our gifts are not given in the mode that is matched here, not closed with all the ceremonial features of the Mosaic law. But the underlying principles that are involved in Israel's tithing and offerings are fundamentally the same for us. We do not give to the Lord because he lacks resources and needs what we have. When we give to God, we give him what's already in his possession and what he gave first to us. But we give all the same in the joyful dynamics of what it means to live in covenant with the Lord and to be his sons and daughters. It's like a small child who brings their daddy a present on Father's Day. Never have I thought to say to my daughters when they've done that, thank you for giving me this gift that you bought for me out of the money I gave to you. No, I say thank you. Because we do this when we come to the Lord. We give him a present, which he has funded himself. And we give it to him joyfully. And he delights in that. In that act of giving, we're brought into the warmth of what it means to be his children, those who delight to do his will, to rejoice in thankfulness and gratitude for his love. And though we do not lay a tithe upon a literal altar, are giving to the Lord, it is no less an act of worship. And that's why it is fitting that the context of that is in corporate worship, in the liturgy of the church. Ever wondered why? Offerings are taken up during the church service. This is why. It's part of the regular rhythm of the worshiping life of the church to do this. Certainly, that act can be approached with a kind of cynicism in which we, doing it, seek to leverage God to try to get what we want from him. It can also be viewed with the sort of cynicism that sees in the collection plate nothing more than another opportunity to shake down the congregation. But if you understand the dynamics of what it means to live in the grace of God's covenant, the covenant he has made with you in Christ, then neither of those thoughts ought to rent space in your head. We give because he has given. And what he has given is far more than the material provision that we enjoy in our daily bread. We see that clearly here in when Israel is to confess before the Lord in her presentation of her offerings. That brings us to our second point, a covenant confession, a covenant confession. In verses 5 through 10, we read the content of a confession that these Israelites were supposed to make as they brought their offering to the Lord. That confession certainly focused on their life in the land as each individual Israelite enjoyed the blessings of what Yahweh had given to them specifically. Note verse 10. The giver declares that the Lord gave them the land. Their confession is not, I have given you this fruit out of the land that I have conquered, but rather I have given you this fruit out of the land that you have given me. However, that confession about the Lord's gift of the land to this specific Israelite, it's still situated in this long history of the Lord's mighty acts of salvation for his people. In verse 5, the worshippers to state, a wandering Aramean was my father. He went down to Egypt and sojourned there, few in number, and there he became a nation, great, mighty, and populous. That's most likely a reference to the patriarch Jacob. Abraham and Isaac could be in view as well. But Jacob is the patriarch who had a protracted stay in Paddan Aram, hence the name Aramean, among the extended family of Abraham's father, Terah. We read about that season in Jacob's life in Genesis chapters 28 through 31. And of course, Jacob is the one who eventually settles in Egypt. And that confession leads into a remembrance of Israel's oppression in Egypt at the hand of Pharaoh, verses 6. And then in verse 7, how they cry to the Lord. And then the exodus and the conquest of the land, they're remembered and confessed in verses 8 through 9. It is only after a recitation of that long history that a particular Israelite then could understand why he could do and say what we read in verse 10. His offering is the result of a centuries-long chronicle of the Lord's redemptive deeds. And the worshiper, in confessing these things, recognizes himself to be a participant in that redemptive history. Note the pronouns that are used in verses six through nine. They're not they and them, but we and us. In this confession, an Israelite understood himself to be included in that history of salvation. They were not even born yet. And still all the same, they were to understand themselves as participants in the Exodus. And you see this same pattern, it holds for you, Christian. When you read scripture, when you survey the unfolding narrative of redemptive history, these things are not merely stories from the past. They are your story if you're in Christ. If you're in Christ, then you've become a participant in this narrative of salvation that has been playing itself out for millennia. It's a narrative that has climaxed in the person and work of Jesus. And at that mysterious intersection between the Father's election, the Son's work, and the Holy Spirit's application of it to you, you've been made a participant in redemptive history, a redemptive history that finds its center in the death and the resurrection of Christ. This is the mysterious dynamic that can allow Paul to say, I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. When you read that, you might say, what do you mean? You have been crucified with Christ, Paul. I've read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. None of those gospels record you, Paul, being nailed on a cross next to Jesus. What do you mean you've been crucified with Christ? Paul means what this Israelite means here, as he confesses in Deuteronomy 26, that he was brought out of Egypt. The same basic logic. This Israelite was not enslaved in Egypt himself. He was not brought out from there by the Exodus. And yet, in a real sense, he was all the same. And so too with Paul. Though Paul was not there physically getting nailed to the cross with Jesus, he was there really all the same. Because in his union with Christ, when Jesus was crucified, Paul was crucified. And this is the thing, Christian. When Jesus was crucified, you too were crucified. You have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer you who live, but Christ who lives in you. What we find here in this confession in Deuteronomy 26, it's the connection between what theologians call historia salutis and ordo salutis. That is to say, the connection between the history of redemption that has been accomplished in Christ and how that redemption connects with your life in the present as the Holy Spirit takes it and applies it to you. This is the mystery of your salvation. This is the mystery of this bridge between God's acts of redemption in centuries past and your existence here and now. You were brought out of Egypt. You were nailed to the cross. You were raised from the tomb. You have been ascended unto heaven. And all of that because you were in Christ. And as you were in Christ, as those things happened to Christ, they happened to you. That's the logic of salvation. That's why we do what this Israelite here at Deuteronomy 26 has to do. When we worship, we confess. Think about what's happening here at Deuteronomy 26. This is a confession of faith that this Israelite is to utter. It is his creed. It is his creed. Most of you are aware by now that though I grew up Christian in a pastor's home raised by godly parents, I did not grow up a Reformed Presbyterian. That happened when I went off to college. They say people experiment in college. I did, I suppose. I experimented with tulip in the Westminster Shorter Catechism. Shortly after becoming a fully self-identifying Presbyterian, I returned home one summer to worship at my father's church during a college break and had this conversation with a lady there in my father's church. And I started talking about how I'd become a Presbyterian, and somehow in our conversation it came up that Presbyterians do things like recite the Apostles' Creed during their worship services. And then she said something to me that I will never forget. She said, yes, Greek thinking is about creeds, but Jewish thinking is about deeds. As if the reciting of creeds were some sort of pagan imposition on Christianity. I didn't get this at the time, I do now. What I didn't get was things like this here in Deuteronomy 26. The oldest creeds of our faith are found in the Old Testament. And it's not merely what's confessed here in Deuteronomy 26. The Shema, hear O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one, Deuteronomy 6. Synagogues to this day recite that. Confessing a creed is not a practice that arises out of some sort of pagan imposition on Christianity. It's right here in Deuteronomy 26. This is a liturgical creed that the Israelites are to recite. It's to be confessed when? As they come to the altar of the Lord in an act of worship. And this is what we do. This is what we do in our own practices. We confess our faith together every Lord's Day. We assemble in worship with all the saints, not just here, but across time and space, and we speak our creed in devotion to the Lord. We confess that Christ came down from heaven for me and for my salvation. that for my sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate and rose again on the third day. We declare these things in worship like this Israelite here, not as disinterested observers of a history that's long past, but as participants in a drama that envelops your life here and now. This is the covenant context for what it means for you to give to the Lord. You give to him an acknowledgement of your participation in his excessive generosity, of all that he has given to you, a generosity that includes not merely his provision for your daily bread, but the fullness of the salvation that he has given to you and his son. We do not give to him thinking that somehow we could repay a debt that we owe. What could we possibly render to the Lord that could do that? Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too small? Love so amazing, so divine, it demands my soul, my life, my all. That's what we find here. In Deuteronomy 26, these offerings, they're tokens of an entire existence that is given over to the Lord in service of Him. That brings us to our third point, a covenant life, a covenant life. In verse 13, we see that the Israelites were to assert before the Lord that they had given the tithe of the third year to the proper recipients. that they gave it in care, not only for the Levites, but also those who were socially vulnerable to the sojourner, the fatherless, the widow. And so we learn that this act of giving arises out of love of neighbor, care for the poor. In verse 14, they were to declare that they had done this in a way that conformed to the codes of holiness. They were not unclean while eating the tithe. And these gifts, they had to be given out of a life that was expressed in this way thus. Holiness to the Lord, love of neighbor, and that connects with something that's communicated here by the structure of the book of Deuteronomy. The very structure of the book of Deuteronomy communicates something. Here in chapter 26, we are nearing the end of this book, if you can believe that, after four years. Chapter 26 concludes the legislative section of the Book of Deuteronomy. Chapters 12 through 25, they reiterate various laws that were to regulate Israel's life in the land. Before them, in the opening chapters of the book, chapters 1 through 11, those chapters of Deuteronomy recounted the Lord's mighty acts of redemption. and the covenant that he entered with them at Sinai, along with Moses' admonitions about that. The laws of chapters 12 through 15 emerge then out of that, out of the gracious work of the Lord in that history of salvation. And chapter 12 begins that section with this law that directs Israel to worship, to worship at the altar, the place that the Lord her God would choose to put his name. And then the remaining chapters from there lead into how all of the life of Israel was to be given an obedience to the Lord in various ways. And chapter 26 now comes as a capstone to all of that legislation, and it returns to the subject of chapter 12 by speaking again now of the altar of the Lord. You see, the precepts, the core precepts of the book of Deuteronomy are framed on both sides like bookends with laws dealing with how to worship the Lord at his altar, here in chapter 12 and now here in chapter 26. And the point is this, right worship and right living are inseparable. This is the true context of what it means to give to the Lord in acts of worship. The gifts that we give to him, they have to emerge out of this matrix of a life that is given over wholly into his service. That's what makes the difference between tithes and offerings that are given rightly and those that are given merely as some sort of cynical attempt to manipulate the Lord. It's not what is given, but how it is given and the life from which it's given. covenant relationship that you have with the Lord, it must envelop everything about your existence. All of your moments and days are to be given over to Him in love and devotion, given to the one who brought you out of Egypt, the God who came down from heaven and was crucified for you under Pontius Pilate and was raised again and has ascended to heaven. Christian, you are to give to the Lord what he's already given to you. And while it is more than financial, it is certainly not less than financial. The tithes and the offerings that we give to him, they're a reflection of the same covenant dynamic we find here in Deuteronomy 26. We render to the Lord what he's given to us in glad recognition of his lordship, his love, But in doing that, we don't exhaust the offering that we are to make to the Lord. For beyond all the dollars and cents that we put in offering plates, we are to give to him our very selves. The whole of your life devoted in love and service to him. This is the nature of Christian obedience, and it matches what we see in the Book of Deuteronomy. The Book of Deuteronomy is not some legalistic scheme. Obedience for Israel was never an affair in which she tried to work to earn her merit, the goodness of the Lord, the goodness of his salvation, to sort of earn it by right. That's not how the book of Deuteronomy works. Her obedience flows out of the fact that the Lord has redeemed her. That's what we learn from the Ten Commandments, the preface to the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments are introduced by this critical orientation to them where the Lord declares to Israel, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. The obedience of Israel's life of worship and service to the Lord was an expression of gratitude for the salvation he had given to her. Is there not a way to earn that salvation or repay him for that salvation? but to live in thankfulness for what he has freely given. In the course of my life, I've given many gifts to my parents on many different occasions. Never have I thought that in doing so, somehow I could make up the balance sheet of what I owe them as their son. If you were to tabulate 18 years of room and board, The cost of education, clothing, medical bills, sporting events, entertainment, help with college, and who knows what else. There is no way that what I've ever given to them begins to approach the sum total of what they've spent to bring me up as their son. And what's more, how could I even possibly put dollars and cents to the way they shape my character and form my Christian faith? Raising me up in the instruction of the Lord. You do not give gifts to your parents because you think that somehow you could repay them. You give gifts to them because you love them. And you know that there's no way you could repay them. And how much more is this the case with your God? Nothing, nothing would suffice to close the gap of the debt that you might owe to the Lord if your relationship with him was reckoned on a balance sheet of debits and credits. Nothing. And so that is not the point. You do not give to leverage him. You do not give to repay him. You give because you love him. And you love him because he first loved you. Give your resources and your life and love to your gracious Redeemer. Let's pray. Lord, we are grateful for the claim that you've staked in our lives, that you've purchased us, and you've given us so much beyond our reckoning, not just in how we experience your daily care for our physical needs, but beyond that, the immeasurable gift of what you've gifted us in Jesus, that we have been brought out of Egypt, and we've been granted a promised land, and that one day we will come into possession, not of Canaan, but of a new heavens and a new earth. Life eternal in fellowship with you, And so, Lord, help us that we would live in gratitude, that we would give in gratitude, that we would be generous unto you, to others, and that beyond that, the whole of our lives would be yielded to you in service and in love, not to repay you, but to be thankful to what you've given to us freely. We ask these things in Jesus' name, amen.