Freely

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 2, 1880

FREELY.

The difference between covetousness and charity is this: In charity you give your money to God, as an act of worship; in covetousness you make your money into a god, and worship that. Have you noticed that we have the account of two very remarkable collections taken up among the Israelites while they were in the wilderness? One was a collection for building the tabernacle. "And they came," so the record runs, "both men and women, as many as were willing-hearted, and brought bracelets and ear-rings and rings and tablets, all jewels of gold, and every man made an offering unto the Lord." That was a charity contribution, and it had two great elements of acceptance in it: it was willing-hearted, and it was self-denying, since they took the jewelry off their persons for the Lord's treasury. But there was another collection. The people broke off the golden ear-rings which were in the ears of their wives, and in the ears of their sons and their daughters, and had them melted up and fashioned into a golden calf for them to worship—that was "covetousness which is idolatry." And that golden calf has a long line of descendants. Every great fortune held for admiration and pride and self-gratification and luxury, has a clear pedigree running back to that calf. Every pleasure on which we lavish time and money and affection, for purely selfish ends, is a lineal descendant of the golden calf. Every idol of dress or fashion or pride, which we set up in our lives, and make the almost exclusive object of our interest, however refined and well approved it may be by man, because it takes away what belongs to God, is of the same lineage with that golden calf. And a man with any jealousy for God's honor, will be pained to see the ravages of that golden calf, in a Christian congregation, as Moses was when it broke loose in the congregation of Israel. And because man has such an innate and almost ineradicable tendency to such idolatry, God has set up the great and holy claim of charity as a safeguard and protection against it.

"Freely give." This quality of free willingness is always required. In Old Testament and New, from Hebrew and Christian, the same condition is demanded. "Every one willingly offered a free-will offering unto the Lord," is the language of the Old Testament constantly repeated. "If first there be a willing mind, it is accepted according to that he hath not." This willingness is everywhere dwelt upon in the Scriptures. It constitutes the very fragrance and divine aroma of our sacrifices. It is the wing which bears our alms to Heaven, which our reluctance might make so heavy that it would fall only with a dull thud upon the bottom of the contribution box. Whatever you give, be it much or little, let it be willingly. Indeed, we are reminded that this is the unvarying condition of God's dealings with us. Whether we give or receive, our free will must come into activity. "Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely," says God; and whosoever has a willing mind let him give freely.

What is the difference between robbery and charity? It is simply the action of the will that constitutes the difference; that is all. If I ask you for a contribution to a good object, and you give it of your own free will, that is charity. If I take the same amount of money from you for the same object, but without the consent of your will, that is theft. That shows the heaven-wide difference in an act which the consent of the will makes. And God will have this voluntariness, or he will not have our gifts. "Will a man rob God?" asks the prophet, and we reverse the question, and ask, Will God rob a man? Nay! He says, "freely give." And not an ounce of violence will he use to force open the hand to get a contribution to his treasury.—Watchword.