Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Does Claiming Your Giving on Your Taxes Negate Spiritual Blessings? | Questions You're Asking | Deuteronomy 14.22-23

Episode Date: October 12, 2020

What's more important: what we do or why we do it? Follow along as https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/staff/keith-simon/ (Pastor Keith Simon) does a deep dive into Scripture to uncover what God truly cares about as we continue our series on https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcast-series/questions-youre-asking/ (Questions You're Asking). Interested in more content like this? Listen to https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/is-greed-your-god-learning-to-follow-jesus-luke-12-13-21/ (Is Greed Your God?) from our last series on https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/is-greed-your-god-learning-to-follow-jesus-luke-12-13-21/ (Learning to Follow Jesus). Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. To learn more, visit our https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/ (website) and follow us on https://www.facebook.com/TenMinuteBibleTalks (Facebook), https://www.instagram.com/thecrossingcomo/ (Instagram), and https://twitter.com/thecrossingcomo (Twitter) @TheCrossingCOMO and @TenMinuteBibleTalks.  Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. And I'm Keith Simon. Right now, we're answering questions that you're asking. A lot of these are coming from our Facebook page. So if you follow 10-minute Bible Talks on Facebook, you can ask questions that you want us to answer or vote on questions that other people are asking. Does God care that I read my Bible or why I read my Bible? Does God care that I serve, or does he care why I serve?

Well, today's question we're going to tackle is really similar to those questions. Here it is. Does claiming your giving on your taxes negate spiritual blessings? You get the logic here, right? If I give to Christian ministries or to my church, then I can claim that on my taxes as charitable giving. That allows me to pay less taxes and keep more money in my pocket. So does that negate the spiritual blessings that I hope to receive? from God? I really like this question because it acknowledges that motives are important.

It's not just what you do, but it's also why you do it. We can do the right thing for the wrong reason and ruin the very thing we did. Imagine I bring home flowers for my wife, and because I don't do that very often, she's really thrilled with them. Well, at least she's thrilled until she asks why I got them for. And I tell her that, well, I heard another woman in your office got flowers, and I didn't want to look bad compared with that other husband. Or I tell her, well, I kind of felt obligated to get your flowers since you got me a gift last week. Receiving a gift that was given out of love or appreciation feels a lot different than receiving a gift given out of duty or obligation or to impress other people. Years ago, I knew a guy who was married and he had gotten his wife flowers every month for the last number of years.

And I asked him, well, how do you remember to always do that? And he goes, well, it's pretty easy. I just got it set up on auto order. Like, what? Yeah. He had this set up with a local florist that every month he would get his wife flowers. They would be sent to her. He didn't have to do a thing. The florist picked out all the flowers and just built it to his credit card. Kind of like you would make an auto payment on your electric bill or something. I thought it was a genius idea to tell you the truth. I mean, I'm the kind of person that wants to get my wife flowers, but I forget, I don't think about it, I get busy. And this guy had figured out a system that didn't make him think about getting his wife flowers. It just happened without him having to do a thing. But I was like, how do you keep your wife from figuring that out? Doesn't she realize she gets flowers on the same day every month? And his answer surprised me. He said, well, of course she knows. Well, I thought that was kind of weird. I mean, if you're the wife, doesn't it take some of the pleasure of receiving flower stream or husband away if you know that it's just on auto order? He hasn't thought about you or done anything special.

It just comes right off your joint credit card. But I figured it worked for them until I heard they got divorced later on and then I thought, well, gosh, who knows? Jesus is concerned with our motivations. He's not only concerned with what we do, but also why we do it. Listen to what he says to the Pharisees in Matthew 15. He says, you hypocrites, Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you, these people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Here are people singing praises to God from their mouth, but not their heart.

Now, if God didn't care about their motives, he would commend them because they are singing worship songs to him. They are praising him and speaking well of him. but because God does care about motives, not just what we do but why we do it, they aren't commended, they're condemned. Wrong motives can even hinder our prayers. James 4.3. And when you ask, you do not receive it because your motives are bad.

You ask for things to use for your own pleasures. When the Apostle Paul is talking about his ministry and talking to people about Jesus and starting leading churches, He says in 1 Thessalonians 2, we do not try to please people, but to please God who tests our motives. So first, God tests our motives. God sees into our heart. And if we are doing things to please people, not only does that not please God, but it also oftentimes distorts our actions. But let's get back to the issue at hand. Let's get back to the question we started with, and that is, if we claim our giving on our taxes, does that negate

the spiritual blessings from God. Well, let's see what Jesus has to say about motives when it comes to giving. Matthew chapter 6. Jesus is talking here and he says, watch out. Don't do your good deeds publicly to be admired by others, for you will lose the reward from your father in heaven. So here, it's very clear that we can lose our reward from our father in heaven if we have the wrong motive. But what's the wrong motive here? It is giving to be admired by others. Jesus goes on in verse two. When you give to someone in need, don't do as the hypocrites do, blowing trumpets in the synagogues and streets to call attention to their acts of charity. I tell you the truth. They have received all the reward they will ever get. So here Jesus is saying, look, some people give in a way that's very ostentatious that

draws attention to themselves. And if that's how you give, if you give, if you give, if you're If you're giving in order to be seen by others, admired by others, esteemed by others, then their esteem, their admiration, that will be your reward. You won't get a reward from God. So again, motive is very important. But now let me ask you a question. If you claim your giving to the church on your taxes, is that the reason you're giving? Are you giving so that you'll get a tax advantage?

I mean, only you can answer that question, but I think the answer is probably no. Probably I'm giving for other reasons and I'm getting a tax break as a consequence, not as my primary motivation. In fact, probably not my motivation at all. Listen to how Paul talks about giving in 2 Corinthians 9. He says, you must each decide in your heart how much to give, and don't give reluctantly or in response to pressure, for God loves a person who gives cheerfully. So God loves. God is pleased by a person who gives cheerfully, not out of duty or obligation, not out of guilt, but one who gives with a heart that says, I love God and I want to give to

his kingdom. So how do we give cheerfully? What are some right motives to give financially to God's work? Well, a good place to start is that our giving acknowledges that everything we have comes from God. Psalm 241 says, The earth is the Lord's and everything in it. The world and all its people belong to Him. So when I give, I am saying, God, I wouldn't have any of this apart from you. All I'm doing is giving back to you the very things that you gave me. So my giving acknowledges that God is owner, not just of what I give him,

but of my whole life and all my possessions. Another really direct motivation Jesus gives us in Matthew 6 in the Sermon of the Mount is he says, look, think about your future in heaven and give generously so that you can lay up treasures in heaven. So it is good for us to think about our eternity. It is good for us to make sacrifices now so that we might enjoy the reward in heaven with God. In Matthew 5, 14, Jesus says, says, let your light shine before men, so they will see your good deeds and glorify your father in heaven. So one reason that we give is to bring God honor or glory. We give from a heart that

says God will provide for me. Philippians 419 says that God will meet all of our needs according to His riches in Christ Jesus. So when we give, we glorify God, we honor God, we show that God is trustworthy. He is the one who provides for us. So we didn't have to hoard or cling to things. We can be open-handed with all God's good gifts to us because we know that he meets our needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus. Here's one you might be surprised by. One of the right motives to give is so that we learn to fear the Lord.

In Deuteronomy 14, 22, and 23, God is telling them that they must set aside their tithe, one-tenth of all their crops for the harvest each year. year and that they are supposed to be generous with their giving out of their grain, their new wine, their olive oil, the firstborn male of their flocks and herds. And then here's how it ends. This is again, this is a Deuteronomy 1423. Doing this will teach you always to fear the Lord your God. So when I give generously to God's work, then one of the consequences of that is to fear the Lord. I grow in my worship of God. So I think a right motive then is that I If I want to grow in my relationship with God, I should be a giver.

I think that's what Jesus means when he's calling us to lay up treasures in heaven back in the sermon of the Mount. And then he says, wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be. So I think what Jesus is saying, that if you want your heart to move toward Jesus, if you want your heart to soften to the things that God cares about, if you want to care about the things that God cares about, then be a person. person who gives because where your treasure is, where your money goes, where your time goes, well, that's where your heart will go. So motives are important. God cares, not just about what we do,

but why we do it, and that includes our giving. And there are a lot of good reasons to give, a lot of good motives. Now, I just want to make sure, before we close here, that we've answered the question, do I think that claiming your giving on your taxes negates the spiritual blessings? I would say, No, unless the motive for your giving is to claim it on your taxes. And I just don't think that makes much sense. I don't think that's probably where most people's heart is going. And I don't think it makes much financial sense. It doesn't make sense to give a lot so that you can get a tax break, at least not for most of us. But of course, you'll have to be the one who takes that before God and assesses your own motives in his presence. But before we finish, I want to try to

answer one more quick question about motives. What do you do when you know the right thing to do, but your motives are bad? Like, what do you do when you know what the right thing to do is, but you don't want to do it? So, for example, if I know I should read my Bible in the morning, but I don't want to, what do I do? I know my motives aren't good. So do I read my Bible or not? maybe it's at home and I know that I should be a servant but I don't feel like being a servant so I know my motives aren't good what do I do with that well if I waited until my motives were perfect before I did anything I would be sitting around and waiting a long long time because my motives are always mixed so I think here's the right approach if you know what the right

thing to do is but your heart isn't in it you do the right thing and you ask God to change your heart. You acknowledge where your heart is wrong. You ask God to forgive you, and then you ask him to change your heart, to give you right motives so that you'll not only do the right thing, but you'll do it for the right reasons. But I don't think it's smart to wait to do the right thing until your heart is pure, until your motives are exactly right. So again, go ahead and do the right thing, acknowledging where your motives are wrong, and asking God to change you and give you the right desires. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps others find this podcast more easily. Also ask yourself who you could share this

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