Offerings & Prayers

Thank you for reading this sermon from Christ Fellowship. I hope and pray that this sermon will be a blessing of grace and truth to you. With that said, let me encourage you not to use this sermon as a replacement for your local church. Christ Jesus did not establish his Church simply for us to consume content. Instead, He calls us to be part of a real, covenant family.

We’re in the middle of a short series on corporate worship – what we do together on Sunday mornings and why we do it. Today, we’re looking at the offering and the corporate prayer time.

The offering is something the elders brought back a few months ago. We stopped passing baskets during covid, but we decided to bring it back for two reasons:

1) We wanted to make our giving a visible act of worship again. It’s not just a financial transaction. It’s a moment of praise and submission to God. It’s something we do in gratitude, dependence, and trust in the Lord, who provides for all our needs.

2) We want to teach our children about stewardship, that generosity is part of loving and following Jesus.

We know that most people give online, but pausing to collect an offering during the service allows us to reflect on that giving as an act of worship.

Offerings have been part of worship since the beginning of human history. Immediately after the Garden of Eden, Cain and Abel attempted to worship God with offerings.

3 In the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground,

4 and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions.

This is the very first story after God puts Adam and Eve out of the garden.

Ten chapters later, Abraham gives the first tithe to Melchizedek. After that, you can find some sort of offering on almost every page in the Old Testament. It was a regular part of Israelite worship.

The underlying principle can be found in Proverbs 3:

9 Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the firstfruits of all your produce;

Firstfruits means our best – we worship God with our best, not whatever is left over.

And when we get to the New Testament, that command is never revoked. We are still commanded to honor God with our wealth. But there are some modifications.

First, we are no longer required to offer physical sacrifices. All of that pointed to Jesus, the Lamb of God.

Second, the New Testament emphasizes giving as a matter of the heart, not as a tax-like obligation on Christians. We see this in both the ministry of Jesus and the words of the Apostles.

Jesus commends the widow’s offering of a few small coins because it revealed her heart. He commends the woman’s gift of perfume in Luke 7 because it revealed her heart.

But look at what He said to the Pharisees in Matthew 23:

23 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.

What’s interesting about this verse is that Jesus had an opportunity to change the way we think about the tithe and He didn’t. Jesus actually commends the religious leaders for tithing, but at the same time He exposes their inconsistency and turns our attention to the heart.

I take this to mean that the tithe is still a meaningful principle, but that the New Testament calls Christians to something more personal and sacrificial than a legal minimum.

The Apostle Paul speaks at length about giving in 2 Corinthians. He praises the Macedonian Christians for giving beyond their means.

He then encourages generosity and sacrificial giving, but with this important qualification:

7 Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

Paul says this in 2 Corinthians 9, but he had already instructed the Corinthian church to collect regular offerings on the first day of every week, which is when they met for worship. That’s in 1 Corinthians 16.

So, the New Testament encourages regular, planned giving as an act of gratitude and dependence on God. It’s a matter of the heart.

Giving to the church is not like paying a bill. It’s more like setting food on the family table. It’s visible, intentional, and relational. You’re not just “losing money,” you’re participating in the life of the household.

But what is the money supposed to be used for? The offering was used for three primary purposes: 1) support for Gospel ministry, including missionaries and preachers; 2) aid for other churches; 3) and benevolence for needy church members.

They weren’t building mansions for the pastor. And I know that in today’s church culture, giving is sometimes overemphasized by preachers trying to get rich. Money is also mishandled by a lot of churches. Debt. Fraud. Shady accounting practices.

We’re trying to be good stewards here. We’re trying to be extremely transparent about what is given and what it is used for. Anyone can see our budget. Anyone can ask questions. We don’t have anything to hide.

And I don’t know who gives or how much. I don’t want to know, because I’m human and it might affect the way I treat people. That’s between you and the Lord. We have an outside accountant who handles giving statements.

But the key principle is that we want you to be able to give to support the worship and work of this church trusting that we are using it for Gospel ministry and to help people in need. Because we know you’re giving this money as an act of worship to the Lord.

Now, let’s talk about corporate prayer. I paired the offering and prayer together for two reasons. First, they happen close together during the service. And second, they both demonstrate our dependence on God.

When we give, we’re showing God that we trust Him with our physical needs. And when we pray, we’re showing God that we trust Him with our physical and spiritual needs.

But the way we do it is a bit different. This is the one thing we do as a church that most churches don’t do. Instead of one person leading the prayer, or everyone reading from a script, we open it up for anyone to pray spontaneously.

It’s a risky thing to do, because it has the potential to become disorderly or for people to misuse it. And if it ever becomes a problem, we would have to reconsider it. But so far, over the past 13 years, it has been a blessing for our church.

It’s like a group text. It’s a little messy at times, but it’s what sharing life looks like.

And I’m convinced this kind of prayer was an important part of life in the early church.

When the disciples gathered together in the upper room after the ascension, this is what Luke says they did first:

14 All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.

Luke makes a point to say that the women were included and that they prayed together.

At the end of Acts 2, Luke describes the early church gatherings and specifically mentions the prayers as a plural noun. We don’t know if these were structured, spontaneous, or both. But two chapter later, we see a clear example of the church praying together for a specific need and God immediately answering.

Peter and John return from the Jewish council. The disciples prayed together for boldness and watch what happens:

31 And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness.

They prayed together for boldness in the face of threats and persecution, and God answered in a powerful way.

In Acts 6, the whole church prays over the new deacons. In Acts 12, the church gathers to pray for Peter. In Acts 13, the church gathers to pray for Paul and Barnabas.

We are also repeatedly commanded to pray for one another and to pray for the mission of the church. Our prayer time on Sunday mornings gives us an opportunity to do that together as a church.

But I want to remind you of a few guidelines. First, keep it simple, brief, and clear. Long, complicated prayers are not better prayers. In fact, Jesus criticized the scribes for making long, showy prayers in public. It’s not a competition.

Second, our prayers should build up the church. Pray for someone else’s needs or pray for the ministry of the church. You can always ask us to pray for you, and we’ll add it to the list. But don’t use the public prayer time to pray for yourself.

Third, you don’t have to ask God for something in every prayer. It is always appropriate to simply thank or praise God for who He is or what He has done.

The goal is for our prayers to conform to the heart of God. We want what He wants. That’s what makes it part of worship.

And so, the same thing is true of both the offering time and the prayer time. They demonstrate our dependence on the Father. We’re trusting Him with our money. We’re trusting Him with the people we care about. We’re trusting Him with the ministry of the church.

Every week, when we come to this part of worship, we are doing something deeply countercultural. We are confessing that we are not self-sufficient.

Most of life trains us to be self-sufficient: earn more, manage it better, rely on yourself. But every Sunday, we practice the opposite—giving money away and admitting our needs out loud. That’s not natural; it’s a form of spiritual growth.

We need the Lord. We need Him to provide, and we need Him to act.

This dependence on God and the blessings that flow from it are rooted in the Gospel, as Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 8:

9 For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.

We have an inheritance in Christ that will not fade away. We’re not worshipping or praying or giving to get something more from God… we already have the Father’s love!

This is about gratitude and dependence. It’s about loving and serving our brothers and sisters in Christ. It’s about participating in the mission, for God’s kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven. Let’s give and pray together for those reasons. And to God be the glory.