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What Do We Give to God? · Pastor John Piper's answers

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  Welcome back to the podcast on this Monday last time when we work together,
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  you told us, Pastor John, that God enlists us in his service,
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  which means he calls us to have a part in accomplishing his purposes, not
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  in meeting his needs. Yeah, that's really key. He uses us,
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  and in using us we meet no need in God. If that's true,
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  then comes the question what do we do with all the texts that talk about
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  what we give to God. That's the dilemma in the mind of a listener
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  named Jeff thinking about Sunday mornings. Pastor John, thank you for this podcast.
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  Jeff writes, you have taught that we are to come to corporate worship
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  gatherings hungry to receive, not to give it to God as if he needed
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  anything. That's Acts of seventeen twenty five. Yet there are other passages related
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  to corporate worship that clearly use the language of giving. Let us continually offer
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  a sacrifice of praise the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name, that's Hebrews
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  thirteen fifteen. Or bring an offering to him that Psalm ninety six eight.
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  Or give thanks to him, bless his name, that's Psalm one hundred verse
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  four. How do you harmonize these two seemingly opposite perspectives on our role in
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  corporate worship? What do we give to God? It's true that I have
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  said very often that I think pastors make a mistake if they scold their people
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  for coming to worship to get rather than to give. As a mistake,
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  they shouldn't do that. If I hear a pastor say, if you people
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  would just come to give to God rather than get from God, we would
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  have meaningful worship services, I think that's a serious mistake. Yeah. In
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  fact, I don't hear that so much anymore. It makes me happy now
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  I do suspect that such a pastoral rebuke he's really onto something. True.
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  People can come to worship to get the wrong thing. They can come to
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  get seen for their new outfit they used to happen on Easter at the church
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  I grew up in. They can come to appear moral in the community as
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  an upstanding church go or they can come to merely see their friends. They
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  can come to merely take their children to get some moral instruction. They can
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  come in the hopes that their marriage will get better. And pastors sense this
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  wrong coming to get, and they know it's not healthy. My people are
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  coming to get all the wrong things. But when the pastor or diagnoses this
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  problem as a disease of wanting to receive instead of wanting to give, that's
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  the mistake. It's not. It's not a disease to want to receive.
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  In worship. I have argued that the very essence of worship, not just
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  the outward acts of worship, but the inward essence of worship, is being
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  satisfied in all that God is for us in Jesus. Therefore, the way
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  people should come to worship, if I'm right, is to come hungry,
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  to be satisfied in God, to see God more clearly, to taste God
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  more sweetly, to be amazed at the way God is, and to feel
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  the admiration and the wonder of His greatness, and to feel the hopefulness and
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  thankfulness and confidence of heart welling up because of the bounty of His grace.
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  All that is a way of getting, not giving, And the right posture
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  of that kind of getting is a sense of hunger and neediness and desperation and
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  longing and praying for more of God, more of Christ, more of Grace,
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  more power. That's the kind of getting I'm talking about. And my
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  point is that when we assume that kind of needy, expectant godward posture,
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  God gets glory, not us, and that's the essence of worship, and
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  worship services and preaching should aim to awaken and satisfy that kind of God hunger,
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  that kind of God getting. But Jeff is right to ask if I
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  am contradicting the biblical language of giving to God in worship. Of course I
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  don't want to do that. I don't want to contradict the Bible. I
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  love the Bible. I believe the Bible. Getting all this from the Bible.
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  If we read our English Bibles, we will see give praise to God
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  Joshua seven nineteen, Give thanks to God, Psalm seventy five one bless God,
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  someone, oh three, give glory to God, Romans four twenty.
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  Give power to God, Psalm sixty eight thirty four, Offer sacrifices to God,
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  Hebrews thirteen fifteen. I know these texts are in the Bible. I
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  love them, I aim to obey them, and I don't think they contradict
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  what I just said about the essence of worship being said stisfied and all that
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  God is for us, and coming to worship services hungry to get more of
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  God. So here are five quick observations to support this claim that that's not
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  a contradiction. Number one, Now, this is just a pointer's it's not
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  a kind of absolute statement about the use of giving language in worship. If
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  you look up all the uses of the word give, which I did to
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  get ready for this. The Hebrew word natan super common word for give in
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  a hundred contexts. If you look up all the uses for the word naton
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  or give in the Psalms, there are ninety five uses of the word give.
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  Only three refer to giving to God. Two deny that we should do.
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  Of those three, no one can give the price of his life some
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  forty nine eight. You will not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I'd give it
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  some fifty one eighteen. The single one other text says give power to God
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  whose majesty is over Israel. Virtually all other places in the Psalms where we
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  read in English that we should give to God praise or give to God thanks,
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  the Hebrew has no word for give. It's just the word praise and
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  the word thank. And we use the word give and so create the problem
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  for ourselves. None of that says we should not use the language of giving
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  to God. I don't want to go that far at all, but it
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  should be a caution that maybe the psalmwriters were jealous not to put God in
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  the position of being the main receiver in worship rather than the main giver in
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  worship, since the giver gets the glory. That's number one. Number two.
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  That text, by the way back in Psalm sixty eight thirty four that
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  says give God power, give power to God is translated into esv ascribe power
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  to God. And surely that is right. So I think what we ought
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  to mean when we speak of giving God glory or giving honor, or giving
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  strength, or giving wisdom or giving power, is that we are ascribing those
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  things to God, not adding anything to God. We are, in essence,
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  receiving those things as gifts for us to enjoy, and echoing back to
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  God our admiration and enjoyment that we call give God glory. Number three.
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  The Bible teaches that all our gifts to God, whether ourselves or our resources,
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  our praises, or our thanks, are already gods, and He himself
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  is giving us the willingness and the ability to give him what is his first
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  Chronicles twenty nine fourteen, when the people of Israel gave generously, David says,
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  I remember I used to use this over and over when I was a
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  pastor to encourage the right kind of giving to the church. Here's what he
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  says. But who am I and what is my people? That we should
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  be able thus to offer willingly? In other words, the willingness was a
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  gift, for all things come from you, and of your own we have
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  given you. Now that means that both the thing given the act of giving
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  our gifts to us. Number four, Paul says in Romans eleven thirty five,
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  who has given a gift to God that he should be repaid? Of
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  course, the answer is nobody. And then he gives the reason verse thirty
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  six. For from him, and through him and to him are all things.
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  To Him be glory forever and ever. In other words, the Bible
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  really wants to discourage us from thinking of ourselves as originating any gift to God.
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  We are always receivers, even in our giving, and we should love
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  to have it so. Finally, Nor five C. S. Lewis expresses
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  why it is that our giving in worship is really a getting Giving praise to
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  God is really getting joy in God. Here's this famous quote that I've quoted,
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  if you knows so many times. I love it. The Psalmists,
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  Lewis says, in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do
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  when they speak of what they care about. My whole more general difficulty about
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  the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us as regards the supremely
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  valuable what we delight to do, what indeed we can't help doing about everything
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  else we value. I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the
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  praise not merely expresses, but completes the enjoyment. That's the key, right
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  there, John Piper talking. That's the key. Here's Lewis again. It
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  is it's appointed. So the praise is the joy's appointed consummation. It is
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  not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are.
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  The delight is incomplete till it is expressed. So by end where we
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  started. Yes, we come to worship to give praise to God, but
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  the essence of that praise is being satisfied in all that God is for us
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  in worship, and the overflow in outward acts is the completion of the joy
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  joy in God, which is a gift from God to us. Yeah,
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  our giving praise to God is really getting joy in God. That's a remarkably
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  profound point about praising Him and how his glory and our joy are bound together,
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  profound bound together, which is what we're all about as Christian headniss,
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  thank you, pastor John. And speaking of praise, how do we authentically
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  praise others? That's up next time. I'm your host, Tony Rankie.
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  We'll see you back here on Thursday. See then,