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 GIVING: GOD'S PROMISES
TO HILARIOUS GIVERS
Preached by Dr. Gene Scott on June 12, 1988 Every man according as he purposeth in His heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver. 2nd Corinthians 9:7 He hath dispersed, he hath given to the poor; his righteousness endureth for ever… Psalm 112:9 JESUS SAID IN MATTHEW 6, “TAKE HEED that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven. Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do…” The word “alms” appears twice in these verses, but the same English word was used to translate two different Greek words. In the best Greek manuscripts, the word for “alms” in verse 1 is dikaiosunen, which means “righteousness.” Righteousness is an expression of God’s own nature breaking forth on the stage of history. Therefore, we could translate verse 1, “Take heed that ye do not your righteousness before men…” In verse 2, the word for “alms” is eleemosunen, from which we get our English word “eleemosynary.” An eleemosynary institution is an institution that exists to give money for worthy causes. When God’s word is rightly divided, we can see that the Greek words for “righteousness” and for “giving” are used synonymously. No one would debate that a fundamental purpose of the church is to contribute toward righteousness. God has clearly defined His view of righteousness, but the world wants to superimpose its own definition of righteousness, which does not include giving. This has been one of the devil’s tactics since the beginning. Even in the Garden of Eden, Satan came along and told man that God didn’t really mean what he said. We have looked at enough Scripture for it to be clear to all who have eyes to see that God places giving center stage. Paul said in 2nd Corinthians 9:7 that God loves a “cheerful giver.” The Greek word translated “cheerful” is a form of the word hilaros, from which we get our English word “hilarious.” Paul was not describing someone who cheerfully says “Good morning, God!” and then plunks 10 cents into the offering plate. God loves the hilarious giver! Wherever there is a rich source of blessing in God’s word, wherever there is a promise of something good that God intends for His people, you can count on Satan to distort and caricature it until the jewel of truth is lost. Satan robs the church of God’s blessings by getting crazy people to twist God’s word out of context until the church becomes so repulsed by a subject that preachers will not talk about it for fear of being associated with the crazy people. This is especially true of God’s promises related to giving. Both simple-minded and devious-minded evangelists preach the false doctrine that you can give to God in order to get rich. Because of this abuse of God’s word, respectable preachers will not even preach about what God has promised to do to express His hilarity toward the hilarious giver. So, let’s rescue the baby from the bathwater! God has promised some wonderful things to those who give His way, to those who are righteous as God defines righteousness. Immediately following Paul’s declaration, “God loves a hilarious giver,” he gives God’s promise to the hilarious giver: “And God is able to make all grace abound toward you.” Don’t read this promise out of context, because text without context is error. The only person who is able to claim this promise is a hilarious giver. People have told me, “I’ve never heard the word of God taught like you teach it. And when I get back on my feet, I’m going to start giving!” Those kind of people never seem to get back on their feet. The more wealth they get, the more difficult it becomes for them to give. They never start giving. In 1st Kings 17, God told the prophet Elijah, “Go to Zarephath. I have commanded a widow there to feed you.” Elijah went to Zarephath, and when he arrived, he did indeed find a widow there, but she didn’t have anything to give him. She told Elijah, “I only have one meal, just enough for me and my son. We are going to eat it and die.” But Elijah said, “Feed me first.” Imagine what would happen if a modern evangelist treated a widow like that. The newspaper reporters would probably accuse the evangelist of impure motives for going to that widow’s house in the first place. And you can imagine how bad the headlines would be once they found out she only had enough food for one meal and was about to die. There is a passage in the New Testament about a poor widow who had only two mites, which she cast into the treasury. Put this passage in the context of a hilarious giver. Jesus commended this widow, saying that she put more into the treasury than anyone else did. Now, I am not suggesting that anyone should give away all of their possessions; I am saying you can be a hilarious giver even if you have very little. God doesn’t want you to give away everything you have. I teach that tithing should serve as a limit on your giving to prevent you from over-giving. Paul said, “Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity,” that is, not motivated by grief or by need. Most of the church world engages in fundraising methods that completely contradict Paul’s command. They plead, “We need money to feed hungry children!” or “We need money to send out Bibles!” or “We need money to build an extension on this building!” God’s word clearly says that our motivation for giving should not be grief or need. But if the church is not supposed to raise money by appealing to your emotions, what is left? The Holy Spirit of God working in you to reproduce His nature in you! God’s Spirit in you makes you want to give for no other reason than God’s reason: God loves a hilarious giver! Do you realize how revolutionary this teaching is? Watch any religious television program and notice how many appeals for money are based on tears and needs. God’s Spirit in you makes you want to give hilariously. God’s Spirit produces the same kind of response that makes a young lover spend the first money he earns to buy something for the woman he loves. You might say, “That’s idealistic.” That’s right; God is idealistic. He keeps working with us, though He seldom sees the response He longs to see. God never once said, “I love tongue-talkers.” He never said, “I love people who live a perfectly moral life for My name’s sake.” He said that He loves the hilarious giver, and that every man should give as he purposes in his heart. What is your motivation for giving? That is what God looks at, which is why I said that you can give hilariously without having much but you should not give if you are motivated by grief or by need. The next time a crying evangelist tries to persuade you to give, simply say, “God commands me not to respond!” But when a preacher speaks of God’s greatness and His love toward us, and you feel the impetus to testify to the value of His word, let your giving flow freely. God loves the hilarious giver, and His rewards are to that person only. Paul said in 2nd Corinthians 9:8 that God is able to make all unmerited favor abound toward you, “that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work.” Literally, it says that God will make you able to stand alone, lacking nothing. Paul then quotes from Psalm 112: “As it is written, He hath dispersed abroad; he hath given to the poor: his righteousness remaineth for ever.” In this verse, the Greek word for “righteousness” is dikaiosune. I have already taught that this word was used by Jesus as a synonym for giving. Therefore, we could translate this verse, “His givingness remaineth for ever.” When you become a hilarious giver, God who dispenses wealth, guarantees that you will never run out of something to hilariously give. I never want people to be motivated to give to God because of what He promises to give them in return. If you give to get something in return, then you are not giving at all; you are only gambling. When we give God’s way, He promises abounding grace and the ability to stand alone, lacking nothing. He promises the ability to disperse abroad; that is, we will be givers not only to God but also to charity. And He promises that our givingness will remain forever. Let’s look at more of God’s promises in Psalm 112. Verse 2 says, “his seed shall be mighty upon earth: the generation of the upright shall be blessed.” There are many mothers and fathers with broken and bleeding hearts, worrying about their children and feeling there is nothing they can do. They worry their lives away, when the only answer to those worries is to trust in God who can watch over their children at all times. You can count of God to back His word. He stands behind all of His promises. Numbers 23:19 says “God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? Or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?” God says in Jeremiah 1:12, “I will hasten my word to perform it.” The original Hebrew text says He is watching over His word. I could describe this idea using the imagery of a magnifying glass catching the rays of the sun and concentrating all that power on one spot. God will take all the power at His disposal and focus it on His word to make it come to pass. God has promised, “His seed shall be mighty upon earth: the generation of the upright shall be blessed.” You cannot claim this promise without satisfying the condition precedent, which is being a hilarious giver. You know whether you are one or not, and God certainly does. Only if you are a hilarious giver can you rest secure and confident in the knowledge that God will fulfill this promise for you and your children. It may not happen today or tomorrow, but God’s promise is that He will bless your descendants. You might say, “But that was Abraham’s promise.” It is ours as well. God through His Spirit gave Paul the ability to reveal the hidden mysteries that angels bent down low to look at and prophets sought after. God revealed them to Paul in order that he might teach us the truth of the kingdom. Paul revealed that the promises of Psalm 112 are to the hilarious giver, and to no one else! God can overpower your children in the same way that He overpowered Paul when He shined down a light from heaven and turned Paul around in his path. Your children might find it hard to run away from God. Most people plan to leave their possessions to their children in their wills, as if that will take care of them. Christians would be better off being hilarious givers and letting the great “Willer” Himself look after their children. Someone might say, “Well, if these are my promises, I’m going to get hilarious about my giving!” It doesn’t work that way. If you act in faith on a promise of God, He places His Spirit in you, which generates a new creation in you. You keep His Spirit in you by your continuing acts of faith. That Spirit will change you, and you will become a hilarious giver. God has promised that wealth and riches shall be in your house. He will increase your supply, which will enable you to keep on being a hilarious giver whose givingness endures forever. You might ask me, “Are you saying that this will really happen?” No, God is saying it! Pardon me for being ludicrous, but there is no way that I would be fool enough to make such an unrealistic promise! Frankly, there are times when I don’t believe it myself, but God believes it and He is the one who made the promise. What is the next promise in this psalm? “Unto the upright there ariseth light in the darkness: he is gracious, and full of compassion, and righteous.” I could preach all day on each of these words of promise in verse 4, but let’s just focus on the word “light.” Some people stay confused for their entire lives. They wonder why they cannot get any sense of direction. God has promised to give insight, the ability to see where you are going in the midst of the confusion that troubles this present world. Hilarious givers become people who have a sense of direction because there is light on their path. What should you do when you are confused? Find a promise of God and act in faith on it in order to get His Spirit working in you. Cultivate a relationship with God, and when His Spirit in you stirs up the urge to give, give hilariously. Suddenly, in your darkness, God’s promises will give you light. Many people are waiting for God to do something in their lives. They say, “If God would give me direction, I would start giving.” It doesn’t work that way: hilarious givers are the ones who receive the light. Verse 5 says, “A good man sheweth favour, and lendeth: he will guide his affairs with discretion.” You might think that hilarious givers would quickly go broke, but instead they become personal “banks,” figuratively speaking. Instead of being borrowers, they become lenders. They are given a guarantee of shrewdness and discretion in business; they become good managers of their affairs. God is not limited in His ability to bless. People entertain all sorts of foolish ideas about what God can and will do. For years, I have heard fundamentalist preachers say that the Holy Spirit can help you overcome your desire for cigarettes, for liquor, and for sex. They think that the Holy Spirit cannot work on your mind except to eliminate fleshly desires. In their view, God could not possibly do anything as miraculous as making you into a smart businessman or businesswoman. God’s word says that if you are a hilarious giver, He will look after your children, give you wealth and riches, and make your givingness endure forever. He guarantees light to guide you and the ability not only to give, but also to lend and to be wise and discrete in business. Verse 6 says, “Surely he shall not be moved for ever…” Some people have no sense of security. They are always expecting some calamity, some natural or social earthquake that will take everything away from them. God guarantees immovableness! Wouldn’t you want to have the lifestyle guaranteed in this psalm? The eternal God of all power, who has promised, “I will hasten My word to perform it,” guarantees these promises to hilarious givers! Verse 7 says, “He shall not be afraid of evil tidings: his heart is fixed, trusting in the LORD.” Do you ever feel terrorized when the phone rings or when the postman is at your door? Do you ever want to cry out, “Who is calling now?! Who died now?! Where is the attack coming from?!” For some people, sheer terror dominates their whole day. But God has promise, “Surely he shall not be moved for ever…He shall not be afraid of evil tidings: his heart is fixed, trusting in the LORD. His heart is established, he shall not be afraid, until he sees his desire upon his enemies.” This psalm gets better as we go along. The part that Paul quoted is in verse 9: “He hath dispersed, he hath given to the poor; his righteousness endureth for ever; his horn shall be exalted with honour.” In the Bible, horns are a symbol of power. This verse promises that the hilarious giver’s power shall increase with honor attached. “The wicked shall see it, and be grieved; he shall gnash with his teeth, and melt away: the desire of the wicked shall perish.” God doesn’t want people to give from grief, but giving hilariously certainly causes the world to have grief. The wicked ones desire that we should perish, but God has promised that the desire of the wicked shall perish. These wonderful promises are meaningless to people who have not met the condition precedent. These are conditional promises, and the condition precedent is hilarity in giving. When people do not meet the condition, they fail to obtain these promises and they often lose faith. But to the hilarious giver, all of God’s power is behind these promises: Your children will be blessed, wealth and riches will be in your house, and your givingness will endure forever. You shall have light in the darkness and no fear of bad news, and the desire of the wicked shall perish! Hallelujah! Reprinted with permission from Pastor Melissa Scott  Recently many you have asked us to resume with our section in the newsletter for “Prayer Requests.” We stopped publishing the “Prayer Requests” a while back. This was due to the large amount of frivolous requests being made; more selfish than anything else, with no consideration of what God’s will might be in any particular matter. It is obvious that everyone wants to be freed from prison, but have you ever thought of praying for someone else’s need, instead of focusing on yourself all the time? It is sometimes amazing at how God will respond when we are more concerned with the needs of others and the propagating of the Gospel, instead of constantly worrying about our own needs and problems. At any rate, we are considering the request for published prayer requests again. 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