So here’s the outline. (Don’t faint. Yes, I’m giving you an outline, showing my work, tipping my hand. If you want to take notes on a sermon and never think you can on one of mine, today’s your day.) Ready? Point 1: It takes everyone in the community making material gifts as offerings for the Lord to make the church go. Point 2: It takes everyone in the community making spiritual gifts as offerings for the Lord to make the church go. Point 3: It takes everyone making material and spiritual gifts as offerings to the Lord out of hearts that are stirred and spirits that are willing to make the church go. If you want a short form, how about treasure, talent, and temperament? Or money, ministry, and motivation. I’m a bit weak at alliteration, don’t you know?!, but let’s get started.

Back story first. You will remember that the children of Israel had been delivered from bondage in Egypt by the mighty hand of God. Moses told the pharaoh that God said, Let my people go. Pharaoh didn’t much like losing his slave labor. No outsourcing to Malaysia yet. So God sent plagues on the Egyptians as incentive, the last being the angel of death that took the firstborn male child of all who did not put the blood of a lamb on the doorposts of their houses. Pharaoh lost his own son and finally cried uncle. He let the people go. But God didn’t want them leaving empty-handed. A tip here perhaps to God’s desire for fair wages. So the Israelites asked their masters and mistresses to give them gold and silver and clothing. The Egyptians were so ready to get rid of these people that they opened their safes and gave them plenty. So the Israelites had all this booty from Egypt they were carrying with them through the Red Sea and into the wilderness. What to do with it?

We receive compensation for our labors from our masters, too. If you work and get paid for it, you have material things that God has seen fit to make you stewards of. If you have received an inheritance and have accumulated wealth, same thing—you are a steward of those possessions. Maybe you have cash or stocks or land instead of gold and silver jewelry and the like, but the principle is the same. What will you do with it?

Moses announced the new organization of the community, along with the way religious life would be structured. The people of God would not be a nation with a king. They would be a new kind of political movement in which all the people had a stake in their lives together. Roots of democracy, perhaps? God alone would be king.

Now, I know some of you have a basic allergy to organized religion—which may be why you are a Baptist. But what makes most of you bristle about it is not the idea of people coming together to share their lives in worshiping God and serving our neighbors but the abuse of that by leaders who forget the mission and want the money anyway. Here we see that the people know they have a stake in this thing: they know it can’t happen without them.

The people of God knew they needed to organize their spiritual lives together, and they determined to build a portable sanctuary and to support priests to lead their religious lives. We have done the same thing in our way today. We have a more or less permanent sanctuary, and you’ve got me and my fellow priests to look after the holy things. But any successful venture requires capital. You can’t run a car without fuel, you can’t run a body without food, you can’t run a business without finances, and you can’t run a church without funds.

And yet we try. Year in and year out we hear the call for Wilshire to do more and more without more and more coming in. Some want us to provide the absolute finest ministry to preschoolers and children, but one of the weakest giving groups in the church is young marrieds with children. Most of you spare no expense on school tuition or activities for your kids, and you want the best program at church, too, but many of you must think other people ought to pay for it. The strongest group in giving is median adults, and rightly so, because they are at the peak of their earning power. The most consistent givers, and those who give the most sacrificially, are senior adults, many of whom live on fixed incomes. Like the widow who gave her last two pennies to the temple treasury in the gospel story, Jesus sees who is really faithful and who is not.

We all need to contribute. Everyone whose heart is stirred and whose spirit is willing must bring offerings to the Lord for the sake of the church’s ministry. And let’s be clear about what the money is for: not just for one’s pet project or personal interest; it is for the whole ministry of the whole church, right down to the sanctuary carpet and the sacred vestments. It’s great to designate money to this thing or that in the church—once you have given to the common treasury. This unified way of giving does just what the word suggests: it unifies; it builds trust; it strengthens community. Choir members should not have to pay for their own robes and music just because you don’t sing in the choir. And despite what I said earlier, young adults are not solely responsible for funding the children’s ministry. We all have a stake in all of it, since their kids are our kids in the family of faith.

Now let’s be specific. If you are a member of Wilshire, we expect you to tithe. That is, we expect all members—and we tell you this when you join, and we repeat it over and over again—to give ten percent of your gross earnings to the work of the Lord. We know that sometimes, special circumstances make it difficult at certain times, but often lifestyle choices are what prevents greater faithfulness. We believe this to be the biblical mandate for funding the mission of God in the world. And just so you know, no one is exempt from that expectation. Kim and I are tithers, which may seem a little weird, since I get paid by those gifts, and that means I am paying myself. But it’s still the right thing. All staff ministers are reminded periodically that they are expected to tithe. All deacons are so reminded, and you cannot become a deacon or a member of policy-making committees in our church without having given evidence that you are giving at a level that might be considered a tithe. We expect you to self-regulate, of course, and just this year, one fine young man in our church who was tapped by the New Deacon Committee acted in good conscience to remove himself from consideration because he had not yet succeeded in becoming a tither. I find that spirit so honorable that I would vote for him for governor.

So let’s everyone get on board in the spirit of the Israelites and see what God might do with us and through us by our generous and faithful giving of our gold and silver, our brooches and earrings and signet rings and pendants, our fine fabrics, our large and small currency, our pesos and shekels, and whatever else God has given us to be stewards of.

Note next that some in the congregation of Israel had special gifts of a different nature to offer. Bezalel was endowed by God, Moses says, with divine spirit, with skill, intelligence, and knowledge of every kind of craft. He and Oholiab were master artisans who offered their skills for the building of the sanctuary and the building up of the community.

And this is a resource we have in abundance here. The Bezalels and Oholiabs overflow the pews in this church. We could not have church without you, any more than we could have church without the funds that buy the materials for you to do your work. Yes, we need buildings and parking lots and furniture and supplies and curriculum and hymnals and instruments and electric and gas and phones and food and security. But we also need the people who use those things to glorify God and strengthen the faith of the people.

Our senior associate pastor emeritus, Preston Bright, likes to say that every Sunday a miracle of biblical proportions happens here. The people of God gather, and scores of leaders come early and stay late with great preparation and without pay to see that church happens. Sunday school teachers, directors, and outreach leaders. Singers and instrumentalists. Ushers and greeters. Committee members and mission volunteers. Prayer warriors and preschool worship care volunteers. We could not do church without you all. Some of you know that God has given you knowledge that needs passing on. Some of you know that God has given you skills that need sharing. Some of you know that God has given you helping spirits that must be expressed. If you are not in some service activity yet, don’t rob God of your talent any more than your tithe, your ministry any more than your money. We will help you find how to serve.

And did you note that Bezalel and Oholiab made sure they taught others to do the same? They were mentoring leaders. And if you serve in any role among us, you ought to have an understudy learning from you. That’s what a teaching congregation is all about.

Finally, understand that all of this must come from hearts that are stirred and spirits that are willing. No matter how straight I have been with you this morning about your responsibilities to God and the church, your response must not be to give more of your means or of yourself because we have shamed you into it. This is no spiritual shakedown. Apologies to James Bond (Casino Royale comes out this Friday, by the way), but in the work of the Lord your heart has to be stirred, not shaken. We don’t threaten; we plead. We don’t coerce; we persuade. And we seek to motivate you this way because we believe this is God’s way with us. God woos us in love and cajoles us along rather than strong-arming us into submission. And let’s face it: doesn’t love keep us going long after duty is done?

I told you a few weeks ago about my friend Carl Reeves, who heard a sermon on the radio and found his heart stirred to leave banking at mid-life and enter nursing school. There’s another twist to that story. Seems Carl’s mom was a child of the Great Depression, always security-minded and risk-averse. Carl reports: I can remember her say, “Carl, if you ever get a good job, keep it.” Carl finally got a good job. To say the least, mother was pleased. Then after eighteen years, I called to say I was leaving that job to go back to school. She knew I had lost my mind. Her history would not let her understand why anyone would make such a change. When I left her house, I felt that she was not only disappointed, she was mad. She never really got mad at me. That night I began to re-think what I was doing. Was this change worth hurting my family? The next morning she called. She said she would never understand why I was giving up all I had worked so hard to get. However, she said she could tell it was very important to me. Therefore, she was going to support me by paying my tuition for nursing school. This was Baylor and my mother did not have a lot of money. No matter what I said, she was paying for school. What can I say?

What can you say about people who give generously out of love, whether they agree or disagree with the direction? I think you can say thank you, first of all. And then you can spend the rest of your life living up to those gifts.

What I can promise any of you and all of you who give your money and your ministry out of the motivation of love is that your church will thank you, first of all. And then we will live together for as long as we are together trying to live up to your gifts.