Video Transcript: Tim Keller - Generosity in Scarcity

Announcer – Tonight's scripture reading comes from the book of Habakkuk 3:17- 19. And Deuteronomy 26:1-11. Though the fig tree does not bud and there are  no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails, and the fields produce no  food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, Yet I will  rejoice in the Lord, and I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign Lord is  my strength. He makes my feet like the feet of a deer, He enables me to go on  the heights. When you have entered the land, the Lord your God is giving you  as an inheritance and have taken possession of it and settled in it. Take some of the first fruits of all that you produce from the soil of the land, the Lord your God  is giving you and put them in a basket, then go to the place the Lord your God  will choose as a dwelling for his name, and say to the priest in office at the time,  I declare today the Lord your God, that I have come to the land the Lord swore  to our forefathers to give us the priests shall take the basket from your hands  and set it down in front of the altar of the Lord your God. Then you shall declare  before the Lord your God. My father was a wandering era man. And he went  down into Egypt with a few people and lived there and became a great nation  powerful and numerous. But the Egyptians mistreated us and made us suffer,  putting us to hard labor. Then we cried out to the Lord, the God of our fathers,  and the Lord heard our voice and saw our misery, toil and oppression. So the  Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with  great tear and with miraculous signs and wonders, he brought us to this place  and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. And now, I bring the  first fruits of the soil that you oh Lord have given me place the basket before the  Lord your God and bow down before Him. And you and the Levites. And the  aliens among you shall rejoice in all the good things the Lord your God has  given to you and your household. This is God's word.  

Tim Keller - We're looking at the book of Habakkuk, because it's a this little book in the Old Testament talks about how to handle evil times, evil times are not  times in which things are getting better and better for each generation. But times in which there's wars and pestilence and disease and economic disaster, you  know, the first half of 20th century were evil times, second half of the 20th  century were good times. And it's certainly too early to say we're going back into evil times, but it's certainly naive to think that we couldn't, or that we're not. And  so it doesn't matter, because Habakkuk tells you how to deal with evil times  whether there's society wide, or just your own personal evil times, and  everybody goes through those. Now, we've been looking at this each week. And  now we get to the end of the book, because in verses 17 to 19, which we just  had read, you get to a beautiful, lyrical, ending, and in which Habakkuk says,  essentially this, it's possible to have a life of sustained joy even when everything is going wrong in your life. And all of your prayers, your main prayers are going  unanswered. See, though the fig tree is not budding no grapes, no olives, fields 

produce no food, no sheep in the pen, no cattle in the stalls, Yet I will rejoice in  the Lord. I will be joyful in God my savior. And we're going to look at that. Two  weeks in a row. We're gonna look at this section because there's a general and  a specific application generally, which we'll look at next week. Habakkuk is  laying down here how you can rejoice in tribulation, how you can be joyful in the  face of very bad, bad, very bad circumstances. But in particular, he is describing an economic disaster because see figs, grapes, olives and grain were the fourth ways in which the land produced fruit so you could eat and it was also the way  in which you produced wealth, sheep and cattle see this these were this is a  portfolio here. You did they had currency back in those days, but that's not  where you had your main investments, your investments were in your your  livestock, your investments were in your land, and therefore what is being  described here with these six things. See, no figs, no grapes, no olives, no  fields, no grain, no sheep, no cattle is a complete economic disaster means your portfolio is wiped out. Means you have, there's nothing, your investments are  gone, it's all gone. And what Habakkuk is saying is, how do you face that? And  you know, we're in the middle of a big recession. So that's a pretty germane  question. How do you face economic scarcity? Now his answer is more full than  you might think. Because by talking about a time in which there's no harvest, he  is alluding to the principle of the first fruits, because in the Old Testament, you  were supposed to give the first fruits to God of your harvest. That's where your  charitable giving came from. And he's bringing up the possibility of no harvest at  all. So if we're gonna understand what Habakkuk is saying about facing  economic scarcity, I want to take a look at what he says, with a background of  genesis of Deuteronomy 26, which is one of the places where the principles of  the first fruit is put down. And we will have a comprehensive strategy for dealing  with economic times of economic scarcity. And when we look at Deuteronomy  26, and then come back to Habakkuk 3:17-19, we're going to learn three things  about giving three things about financial giving, giving your money away to  ministry, your charity, the three things are, you should give sacrificially, you  should give joyfully and you should give graciously, you should give sacrificially,  not just out of the surplus, you should give joyfully, not just out of duty, and you  should give graciously. Now, let's start in Deuteronomy 26. And see, first of all,  the first principle about how you should look at your income, you look at your  money, is you should give graciously pardon me sacrificially running to the third  point too quickly. sacrificially. In Deuteronomy 26:2, we see the principle of first  fruit. So it says, take some of the first fruits of all you produce from the soil of the land that your Lord your God has given you, and put them in a basket. If you  were a farmer, all of your income basically came during the harvest season, you  planted, you watered, you sowed, you did everything. But then the harvest came in, it was a couple of weeks or several weeks, and you brought all of your  harvest in. And when all the harvest was in, then you knew how much you'd 

made for the year. Now, though, probably from the looks of you, most of you are  not farmers. Nevertheless, an awful lot of us actually also get our income this  way. Many of us look out, and we don't know how much we're going to make in  the next year. Because there's there's investments we don't have, they're going  to do. There's bonuses, we don't know how they're going to be. There's  contracts you're hoping to get, there's a business you're hoping to get. There's  gigs, if you're, you know, if you're a musician, you don't know how many you're  going to get. And therefore you don't know how much you're actually going to  make. Like the farmer, the farmer at the end of his harvest, finally knew what he  was gonna make. Now, how does that affect charitable giving, if you're not sure  what you're gonna make, it's very simple. You wait till all of the harvest is in,  right, so you know exactly how much you've made. And if you've made this  much this year, then you say, Well, I can afford to give this much away to the  ministry and to the poor. Or if you made this much, well, you feel like then I can  afford to give this much away. But that's not what God says to do. That's not the  principle. That's how that's the natural way we would think, right? You wait until  you have it all in, then you decide what to give no, not according to God. And  here's what God says, I want you to give your first fruits. Now what that means  is, you'd go out if you go out the first couple of days, and you bring in the first  part of your harvest, and you didn't know how big the harvest was going to be.  You really weren't sure of what the yield would be. It didn't matter you gave the  first part you gave before you knew how much you were actually going to be  making. You went and you laid that at the altar. Now what's that principle?  Here's the principle. If you wait until everything is in, then what you end up  giving God is the surplus and you know what the surplus is? The surplus is that  part of what you can afford to give without it actually cutting into the way in  which you live. The surplus is what you can afford to give and still do all the  things you want to do. Buy all the things you want to buy. Wear all the kind of  clothes you want to wear. Go to all the places you want to go. The surplus is the  part of your income you can afford to get without a change in the way in which  you live. God says no. I don't want you to give your leftovers. I want you to give  your first overs. New word I don't want you to give your leftovers I don't want you to give the surplus I want you to give out of the heart of your income. I want you  to give past the place that you can afford to give and still not change the way in  which you live. I want you to give until it hurts. I want you to give sacrificially, I  want you to give to the place where it changes the way in which you live.  Otherwise, you're not giving the way you ought to give Now do you see why this  is relevant to evil times. See, in good times, there's a surplus in good times  you're making enough money. So you can give money away to the church, the  poor, you can give your money away and still live the way you want to live. But  in bad times, and evil times, you can't. But you see, if you have to learn to give  like this all the time, then evil times don't change that. See, if you learn to give 

out of the surplus that when evil times come you don't give anything because  there ain't no surplus. But that's not the way in which God calls you to give God  says you should always be cutting into how you live, you should always be  giving more than you could afford to give and live just the way you want to live.  You got to get past the way, the place where you can live just as you want.  You've got it. You're giving these to affect the way in which you eat effect the  way they affect where you live affect the kind of clothes you wear. You gotta give so much that it changed the way in which you live. That's the first principle. And  how do you like the sermon so far? What do you think of the first point, you say,  Well, this is a grim sermon. You know, I better read the fine print about what the  subjects are before I decide to go to church on a Sunday. It's not grim because  this point to the first point is you should give sacrificially not out of the surplus  should give to the place where it changes your life. But the second point is you  should give joyfully not just out of duty. And that also comes out of this middle  part of Deuteronomy 26, which I love. Because you notice, in fact, I'm gonna  have to make all of you do this. You notice you're not allowed in the Old  Testament to come and bring your gift and just stick it in the plate? Oh, no. See,  in verse 4, it says, you go to the place the Lord your God will choose verse 4 the priest and shall take the basket, that's your offering your first fruits from your  hands, and set it down the front of the altar of the Lord your God. And then you  shall declare before the Lord your God. And then what comes after that? You  know, what comes after that? A testimony about the grace of God and the  gospel. Because this little testimony is talking about this. This testimony is  saying, Yes, I have worked very hard. And this is my first fruits. But the only  reason I was able to get anything from my labor is because this land that I'm in  is a gift. We were in Egypt, we were slaves. And we could never have gotten out of slavery, in our own strength. But God came in and he intervened with  miraculous deeds, and he saved us. And we were saved not by our works, not  because of what we have done, but because of what God has done. And  therefore we're saved not by our works, but by God and God's works. We are  saved by grace, and therefore the land that I've got is all just a gift of grace. Now you see what's happening, you're never allowed to just give you must give and  connect that giving to the gospel. before the Lord, you got to drill into your heart, everything you've got as a gift and maybe somebody out there saying, Well, I'm  not an Israelite and I work very hard. And and I'm not a farmer, how does that  relate to me? Of course, it relates to you. The things that you have are not really  yours, you say but I've worked hard to earn them. Okay with what my talents but who gave you your talents? My health? Well, who gave you your health? Well  I've just worked very hard, okay, yeah, but you know what, let me just suggest  something to you. If instead of born being born, wherever you were born, you  were born on a mountain and Outer Mongolia, I don't care how hard you would  have worked, you'd still be poor. You know, it's very easy to say I pulled myself 

up, nobody pulls themselves up by their bootstraps. There's all kinds of ways in  which God opens doors for you by by where you were. I mean, you, you know, if you're born on a mountain in Tibet, in the 13th century, you'd be poor. I don't  care how hard you work. You never would have gotten into the schools you  wanted to get into. They don't take people from Tibet, they didn't have schools.  They didn't have schools. I mean, look, everything you've got is a gift. And if you drill that into your heart, if you drill it into your heart, which is what the Israelite  was supposed to do, to the place where you say, Ah, I only have what I have,  because of the unstinting generosity of God, the grace of God and therefore I  give radically this gift to him. So you're supposed to connect the grace of God to  the gift so that you want to give, and do you not see that. Even though when I  said you must give until it hurts. We're talking about hurts your budget hurts your lifestyle, but it shouldn't be hurting on the inside. It shouldn't be a teeth gritting.  Okay, I've got to do this. Jesus puts it like this, Matthew 6. He says, Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where  thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven,  where moth and rust do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal For where your treasure is. there your heart will be also. Now why does Jesus  say in the midst of talking about giving where your treasure is, there will your  heart be also. He's saying whatever your heart most treasures will be where  your money goes most effortlessly. You will always most joyfully spend money  on the thing, which your heart most treasures, for example. Let's just say you  don't like baseball at all. You don't like it at all. But maybe you're a parent, and  your children love baseball. So every so often, you've got to take him to a  Yankees game. And when you see what the Yankees tickets are, like this year,  it's like a stab in the heart. Because you say I gotta take my kids to the Yankees  game. So you go and you can't believe it and you go and then you call your I  can't believe how much money I'm spending. Your heart's not in it. So it's, it's it,  you know, you grit your teeth and you do it. But what if you are a great Yankees  fan? What if you're passionate for the Yankees? What if you follow their every  move? What if you're so excited? They're finally in first place after that terrible  start? Who cares? How much it costs? Who cares here pass the hotdogs  Because. Because what where your treasure is your it doesn't even feel like  spending does it wherever whatever you most love, whatever your heart most  rests in, you actually have to be careful as to not spend too much. Right? And  therefore here's how it isn't. This is the second point, but maybe come to think of it. It isn't all that comforting. It's just as bad as the first point. Okay, I admit it.  Here's how you know where your heart really rests. This is where you This is  how you know whether your relationship with God is just a kind of impersonal  abstract. Yes, I believe in God, I've got to give my money to the ministry in the  poor. Okay, where do I write the check, or whether you've actually experienced  His grace, whether you actually know that without him, you'd be lost. If you've 

actually experienced His grace, if you know his love, if you if you dote on him. If  your heart rests in His grace, you will love to give, you have no problem with it.  giving sacrificially will be a joy, giving past where you can afford to give and still  

live the way you would ordinarily live will be a joy, give to the place where it  changes the way in which you live will be a joy, it won't be a problem. And that's  how you know whether you've actually know God personally, or whether God's a relationship with God, it's very impersonal. So you must give sacrificially and you must give joyfully and if you're not able to give joyfully and sacrificially that tells  you that there's something wrong with your heart and your relationship with God. Now, as challenging as all this is, and I know it has been challenging when you  get to Habakkuk. When you get now to chapter 3:17, and 19. He's actually  moving everything up to a whole nother level. You know why? Because he is  saying, What if there are no first fruits? Because there's no harvest? What if  there was a situation in which God was not providing any food at all? And we're  about to starve? What if there was a situation in which God is not providing any  protection? Because the invaders and marauders have come and we're being  about to be trampled underfoot of armies? He said, Well, how would God allow  that to happen? Well, we've been talking about that for several weeks in  Habakkuk, it does happen. There's a lot of evil in this world, and God sometimes lets it happen and it does happen. He works through disaster. That's, that's  those are. That's another sermon or sermons we've already dealt with. But the  point is, that there are millions of people, good people, believers in the Lord,  who have faced a situation, not just economic scarcity, not even just bankruptcy, but starvation and persecution. And Habakkuk says, I want you to know that it's  possible that even in those situations, to make God your treasure to Rest your  heart in God and rejoice in him. How? Look carefully, you rejoice, not in the  circumstances because there's no circumstances to rejoice in and be rejoicing in God my savior. Look, in the past my salvation is my sins have been forgiven,  there's no condemnation for me. And in the future, my salvation is I'm going to  get a new body, I'm going to be resurrected, and I'm going to live in a new  heavens and new earth. And that's enough, says Habakkuk, it is possible to say, Look, everything else is going wrong. But if I have that, and that if I have my  salvation, that's all I need. I can maintain poise, I can maintain peace and joy,  even when everything else is going wrong, I can still give God my heart, even in  the worst situations. Now, at this point. I think most people, I think most rational  people would say Habakkuk, what you're saying is right. But I don't see how I  can do it. Habakkuk was right, but I don't see how I can do it. Yes, I know, I  should rejoice in my salvation, even when everything is going wrong. But But I  try, and I can't. And here's the reason why you can't. And here's the reason why  you actually can. You can't, because we have a tendency to not be able to look  past this passage. See Habakkuk in chapter 3:17. 18, 19, has been a really  good example. What you have is a great prophet Habakkuk, who says, I can 

rejoice, even when even when God has taken everything away from me, I can  still rejoice, I can still trust him, and rejoice in him when God has taken  everything away. And we look at that. And are you inspired by that example? Let me speak for probably a lot of you. I'm not inspired by that example, I'm crushed by it. It's too high, I can't attain to it. And when I just see Habakkuk you know,  living this life, trusting and rejoicing and God, even when everything has been  taken away from it, that example, crushes me. It discourages me. I can never be like that. And I can't and you can't either, if you just try to be like Habakkuk. But if you look to the one to whom Habakkuk points that just that one that will change  your heart. Now who's the one to whom Habakkuk points. Remember, Jesus  said in Luke chapter 24, to His disciples on the road to Emmaus, and to His  disciples after he was raised from the dead, He says, you know, one of your big  problems, and they had a lot of problems. But one of your big problems is you  don't know how to read the Old Testament. It's all about me. And so when I see  Habakkuk, standing there, rejoicing, and trusting in God, when everything's  been taken away from him, as an example, it crushes me, but when I look to the one to whom he points, the one who had everything taken away from him. When he got to the end of his life, Jesus Christ had only one possession, his robe, and that was taken away. And on the cross, he was stripped naked, and he was put  on the cross, and even his father's love was taken away. Do you know what we  have when Jesus Christ, here's somebody who had no bank account. It was  wiped out, who had no nothing in his pocket, he didn't even have pockets.  Everything was taken away from him. And yet on the cross, He says, Oh, my  God, my God. That's the language of the covenant. That's the language. You  know, the covenant is you shall be my people, and I will be your God. That's  intimate language on the cross. Jesus is not saying, I'm not getting anything out  of this relationship. I'm out of here. On the cross, He is rejoicing, and trusting in  God, though, everything is being taken away from him. And why did he do it? He did it for you and me. And this is the secret. This is why we can live like  Habakkuk is suggesting we live. And this is a reason why we can move to a new level, even a greater level than what we have in Deuteronomy 26. Because in  the Old Testament, the Old Testament saints were supposed to remind  themselves that God had saved them from Egypt. And it was free grace. They  didn't deserve it. They couldn't have attained it themselves. It was free  unmerited grace. But what they didn't know is that it was costly. Grace, what you and I know, but what they didn't know it was costly. Why costly? Do you  remember the Passover? The night before the children of Israel, were taken out  of Egypt. The angel of death had been sent into the Egypt and every single  family in Egypt was going to pay for their sins. That's what the angel of death  meant God sent out his justice into Egypt? And everyone is going to pay for their sins, every family is going to pay for their sins through the death of their  firstborn? Remember that that was the last and the final plague. Well, what 

about Israel? They're sinners. How would they escape? And God says, here's  how you escape. You kill a lamb in every family in every home, you kill a lamb,  and you take shelter under the blood of that lamb. Well, the Israelites did that  and they escaped and out they came. But surely, on the way out, they were  saying, how did that save us? How did the blood of those sweet little wooly  quadrupeds save us? How did that have it? And the answer is it was pretty  mysterious. But John the Baptist knew, because centuries later, he said, looking  at Jesus Christ, he said, Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of  the world. Those little lambs are pointing to Jesus. On the cross, Jesus Christ  had everything taken away from him, to pay for our sins, to save us. And here's  the thing that the Israelites didn't understand. When they were taken out. God's  grace to them was unmerited, but they didn't know it was costly. In other words,  they didn't know that the only reason they could be saved was because God  gave, because God gave His Only Son because Jesus Christ gave His blood.  Now remember what we said about sacrificial giving. We said, God says, I want  you to give, not just a surplus. I don't want you to give just what you can afford  without changing your life. I want you to give past the place where it changes  your life, that God give that Jesus Christ give past the place where changed his  life, Jesus Christ did not just give to the point where he changed his life, Jesus  Christ gave to the point where he lost his life. And he lost his life for you. And  when you see that, when you see his grace was costly, when you see that he  died for you, he did all that for you, that will take your heart, and that will make  him your treasure. And when he becomes your treasure, it won't be a problem to give, you know why? You're going to say, if you gave to the place where you lost your life, and I can certainly give to the place where it costs me, it changes my  life. If you gave to the place where you lost your life for me, I can give to the  place where I change my life for you. And that's the reason why. Whenever I see somebody who grasped the grace of God, the costly grace of God in Jesus  Christ, it changes your heart so that you can give sacrificially and joyfully and  you can give under any circumstances, any circumstances at all. There's always something to give, there's always the widow's mite. Remember, there's always  something you can give and you'll want to give Christians who understand the  grace of God, go to the mat, even in tough times. And you know, if you went on  past in Deuteronomy 26, you go on a little bit further, it tells you about tithing,  Deuteronomy 26:12, and following says that that was the guideline that God  said, I want you to give 10% of your income away to the Levite. And to the alien, the Levite were the ministers, the people who ministered in the altar, the aliens  were the poor, the immigrants and the refugees and the, the widows and the  orphans, I want you to give to the ministry and I want you to give to the poor  10% But you know, when you experience the grace of God, you always want to  push past that 10%. You know, in, in Luke 19, when Zacchaeus grasp that Jesus Christ is saved, and by grace, He says, Look, Lord, I'm gonna give 50% of my 

money away. Did Jesus say, oh, no, no, no, no, no. Zacchaeus you only need  10% No, you don't. You don't need to give 50 No, he said, Great. Why? Because listen, if because you understand the grace of God, Jesus becomes your  treasure. You're gonna always want to go past. See anything that you really,  really love, you always have to stop yourself from spending. You don't say how  much do I have to spend on it? You say, How much can I spend? And therefore,  anybody who really grasped the grace of God, give sacrificially joyfully tries to  push past that 10% And, as a result, the Levites and the aliens rejoice. I love  verse 11. Where it says, and you and the Levites and the aliens among you will  rejoice. You know what that means. If you are shaped by the grace of Christ, so  much that you give radically and joyfully then your money becomes a form of  grace because your money keeps ministries going which liberates people  spiritually, and your money helps the poor and the aliens and the widows, which  liberates people physically. So weirdly enough, when God's grace liberates you,  so that you're able to give, then your money becomes a form of God's grace.  Your money starts to become a vehicle through which God is liberating people  spiritually and physically. Hmm. And when you realize the grace of God to the  place that you start to give, sacrificially and joyfully, that will then turn your  money into something way more than money. It'll become a vehicle for God's  grace, the Levites and the aliens will rejoice in all that God has given you. Look  at what Jesus Christ did, by giving himself away. Look at the lives he changed  through his radical giving. Now you go and do the same. Let's pray. Thank you,  Father for giving us a costly salvation, which changes our lives in our hearts, but in particular, it changes the way in which we look at our money. Father, make us  a generous congregation, make us generous people make us people who know  how to give in love it who are able to give in times of economic scarcity as well  as economic prosperity. And we ask Lord that you would then take us and make  us vehicles of Your grace because we've given our hearts to you. Thank you for  this time. Thank you for this word. Thank you for speaking to us. Make it true  through Your Holy Spirit. We ask it in Jesus name. Amen.