The Christian and His Money

"You shall keep the Feast of Booths seven days, when you have gathered in the produce from your threshing floor and your winepress. You shall rejoice in your feast, you and your son and your daughter, your male servant and your female servant, the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow who are within your towns.” ( Deuteronomy 16:13-14, ESV)
“When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just." ( Luke 14:12-14, ESV)
Many years ago my father-in-law told me of a family in the congregation where he was preaching who took the injunction set out above by Jesus and literally applied it to their lives. For some time it was their custom on Friday nights to make a dinner and invite people they knew would not be able to return the favor and invite this couple to dinner.
The Christian is called by Christ Jesus to live a life that reflects the very nature of God Himself in the day-to-day business of serving others. Too often we see people who readily give of their means to erect buildings or to pay for programs that will give them a return, usually in words of praise or plaques on the sides of buildings. When we do that, we have already received our reward and should expect nothing further for that particular effort when we enter Paradise.
When God gave Moses the commands and laws, there were specific laws in regards to worship other than the weekly Sabbath. Three times a year all of the males were to present themselves before the Lord at the places God designated for worship. The Feast of Booths was a celebration of harvest, but more than that. In pagan religions, various gods were honored for sending the harvest. In the Israelite community, God was to be honored for giving the people the bounty of the land, but it was also a celebration of the reward for the labor of their hands. The striking thing about this festival was that it was to be celebrated by sharing with those who had little or nothing, the Levites (they did not receive an area of land for their tribe), the widows and orphans and even the sojourners, those who did not own any of that area or who were perhaps, non-Israelite believers in the One God.
We may readily put money into the collection plate on Sunday, we may back the programs of the church, but are we willing to actually share our abundance with those who have less? And here, let’s not just think of the many tear jerking commercials on TV that promote this charity or that, but how about actually inviting the poor in our communities to sit with us at our tables, to eat our food and to use our fine China and crystal. Are we willing to part with our hard-earned money to help the truly desperate, the downtrodden, those whose lives are far less fortunate than ours?
Some believe that Christianity is on the way down, perhaps on the way out. But if we really lived our lives incarnadine, the blood color of Jesus, the Jesus who willing gave everything for us, then true Christianity would be so visible to others that the message of Christ would scream across the land.