God's Intent

This is the sermon preached by Rev. Akiko Van Antwerpen to the congregations of Unfinished Community and Ashiya Christian Church on Sunday, March 9th, 2025, drawing from Deuteronomy 26:1-11

Today’s Scripture reading comes to us from the book of Deuteronomy, which tells us about one of the most challenging periods in the history of God’s people, the Israelites. More than 3200 years ago, God’s people found themselves wandering through the wilderness throughout a period of forty years. This wasn’t sudden, of course; this situation was the result of a long sequence of events that had brought them to this place. 

In the beginning, God’s people - well, everyone really - had a good place to live. God had created for them a perfect life of safety, security, and abundance in paradise. But when one person made the decision not to trust in God, their actions had a ripple effect, and everyone’s lives were changed as a result. Just like that, the whole tribe found themselves adrift, homeless, and seeking to find a new place for themselves in a broken, desperate world. After a while, God’s people found themselves slaves in a foreign land, the land of Egypt. They were treated terribly by the native Egyptians, as you might expect, given that they were enslaved. They had so very little, but so much more was demanded of them. 

Life was tough, to say the least.

But God did not ignore their suffering. God’s people cried out in their captivity, and God heard them. God chose a man named Moses, and worked through him so that God’s people could finally be free, able to escape from Egypt at last. Through Moses, God promised the people that they would be taken to a much better land, a land that they could claim for their own; a land flowing with milk and honey.

But this was not something that happened right away, and the journey to the promised land took so much more from them. Remember that this was at least more than three-thousand years ago; there was no public transportation, no airplanes or trains, no cars; and not only that, but because they were coming out of slavery they didn’t even have horses or donkeys. They only had what they could carry!

For forty years God’s people wandered through the wilderness, moving from campsite to campsite, fighting to stay together as a community; fighting to maintain hope in the promises that God had given them.

But, as time went on, the people started to feel like life in the wilderness wasn’t any better than their life as slaves in Egypt, or perhaps even worse. At least when they were slaves they had food, water, and shelter, but now they were hungry, thirsty, and had no idea when God, Moses, or both might actually get them to this promised land. Fights broke out among the leaders, and among the people; there were times when they gave up on God. There was even a time they tried to make their own god! But God never gave up on them, and as time went on the people started to grow close to their promised land at last, the land God had planned to give to them. 

Before that could happen though, there were preparations to make. God called Moses up a nearby mountain, and there he received the 10 commandments.

You might have heard of those! Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your mind. You shall have no other Gods before God. Please, please don’t kill people; all the greatest hits! But what you might not know is that God gave the people a lot more than just 10 commandments; he gave them entire books full of laws, rules, and regulations for how to live in a safe, just society. And one of those laws was what we read for our scripture today. 

This is what God says:“Once you arrive in the promised land and settle, give your first-fruits to God. Soon enough you will be shown to a fertile land, and this will be your home. You can grow crops there, and because this land flows with milk and honey, what you grow there will grow in abundance. And when you harvest, everything you grow, and even all that falls to the ground,, will be yours. All of it.”

But don’t forget to give. Remember to give the first, best of your harvest to God, so that God’s community can be built up; God’s “church”.

As you know, God’s people had been suffering scarcity and starvation for forty years by this point. For four decades they had led a life where they could only find just enough to make it through that day, just enough to survive, and now they were being shown to a world where they could grow and consume as much as they want. Their lives of desperation were going to change to lives of great abundance. 

You would think that because they were being given so much, that following God’s commandment to set aside the first-fruits of their harvest as an offering to God and God’s community would be a no-brainer for the Israelites, right? You would think that, after everything God had asked them to do, after God had saved them from slavery in Egypt and brought them into the land where all this was possible, that this small ask would be so very easy.

God wasn’t asking a lot here. God said to them, “give SOME of the first of all the fruit to God (Deuteronomy 26:2).” Some. Not even all the first-fruits, just some. 

But as easy as this seemed, the reality of their reaction was not exactly what God had hoped for. People worshiped other gods anyways, spent their resources, took advantages the good will of others shared in good faith and gathered from the people, to satisfy themselves instead. They took the offerings from the offer, and ate what was dedicated to God, satisfying themselves by taking this one small thing from God.

How horrible! How could they do that, you might ask? Did they forget what God had done for them? All the blessings they received, all the excess they now enjoyed, why wouldn’t they give this one small portion back to God when God has every right to demand so very much more! 

The thing is, we can see things so much more clearly, see the right and wrong of things so much more easily, when what we’re looking at concerns other people, and not ourselves, It’s easy for us to read today’s story and conclude that these people were ungrateful, greedy, cheap and not at all like us. 

But if we take a moment to reflect, to really look inward for a moment, it won’t take us that long to realize that we are basically the same. Let’s take a moment and ask ourselves, honestly, how do we use that which has been given to us? How do we use our time, energy, and the resources that have been given to us in this life?

I think that many of us - myself included - tend to use our time, energy, and resources first for ourselves, on our family, and on those things we think is most important. Let’s face it, giving to things that aren’t ourselves or things immediately connected to ourselves, doesn’t come naturally to humans at all. 

We LOVE to be the ones who are right at the front of the line, don’t we? We LOVE being the first to receive. If good things are being given out, we want to get them first, and we don’t immediately jump right to sharing, do we? And even when we do manage to get ourselves into a sharing mindset, we usually want to keep the best parts for ourselves, don’t we?

When I was a kid, I bought this can of cookies as a souvenir for my cousin from Disney Land. It was a Donald Duck can of cookies, as I remember, and I liked that can a LOT (even then, I had a thing for Donald, I guess!). I didn’t want to give that can to my cousin, so I took the bag of cookies out of the can, gave them the cookies, but kept the can to myself. Now, looking back, it is so obvious that I did not give everything I was supposed to; after all, what’s the point of getting someone a souvenir from Disney if you keep the “Disney” part for yourself!

It is a bit embarrassing to share this, I’ll admit, but it shows something fundamental about who I am as a person. Even when giving a gift, I still chose to be the one who receives something. Even when my goal was specifically to give a gift, I couldn’t get past thinking about me. 

And I believe that I am not the only one who struggles with that. We love to receive, especially when we’re receiving the first and best of all things. We don’t love giving, especially when giving asks us to do the hard thing and give up something on our end. Giving rather than receiving is hard because it requires us to change our priorities, to set aside our typical self-focused beliefs and routines. To do that, we have to choose to do something unfamiliar, something burdensome, something that makes us feel uncomfortable.

When we were in our twenties, Don and I lived in Tokyo, and even though we are pastors now there was a season in our life where we didn’t really go to church, and our reasons for doing so were probably similar to many of yours too. We were so busy during the week, so Sunday was the only day we could sleep in. Not only that, but we had a newborn baby at the time, so we were constantly sleep-deprived, so it really couldn’t be helped. We needed that time to make up for all the many, many, many hours of sleep we had lost during the week! 

Time went on, and as our cute little daughter started to grow up, we felt that it was getting harder and harder to manage life on our own. We were raising a child of mixed nationalities in the middle of the Tokyo metropolis; we didn’t make much money, and didn’t have much in terms of resources. We had no idea if we were raising our child well at all, and we felt so very lonely. We were craving for community, any community, but especially a church community, so we decided that we had to start going back to church. 

Even then, our motivations weren’t about God, they were about us; even then, we didn’t come back to God until we could receive something we needed. But God was kind, and didn’t forget us. God welcomed us back into the community through the love of so many good, kind hearted people. As I started getting used to going to church again, one of the children’s ministry directors at the time approached me and asked if I would be interested in serving as a camp counselor during VBS, the children’s summer Bible camp. 

I nearly screamed out loud in utter shock! Me?? No way!

I politely explained to them that I was just a baby Christian myself, I was no good with kids, and I had no experience with children’s ministry. I told her that I wasn’t the type to lead, to stand up and show people the way. I just couldn’t imagine myself serving in any kind of church leadership position.

So I thanked her, but told her I wasn’t a good pick for that.

“Really,” she replied, “are you sure? I think you would be great at that. I think you would be a great leader!” And her words really encouraged me, so I decided to try it out, and I served as a counselor that summer. 

But before you think this was some great experience that was so energizing and inspiring that it immediately revealed to me my whole future in church leadership, let me tell you; it was exhausting. I took a long nap every day after that Bible camp just to recover from how totally drained I was. But in the end, what I remember most from those days isn’t what it cost me, but the joy; a kind of joy I had never felt before. 

The joy of serving others, The joy of being used by God when I decided to offer my incomplete, imperfect, and unfinished self; the joy of God using my broken self to bring smiles to others.

The Word of God from the book of Acts echoed in my mind in those days, “It is more blessed to give than to receive (Acts 20:35)  .”

At that moment, the Word of God became true in my life. When I chose to put myself up on that altar, to serve others, that Word took root in my heart and never went away. I realized then that church isn’t just a place to come and be fed; it is also a place for others to be filled and fed too. Church is a place where my own broken, imperfect offerings really matter to God, and to the people of the community,  because here they are being used for more than just me. 

Here, God takes our first-fruits, and makes food for everyone. 

Remember, God doesn’t even ask for all of our first-fruits; just some. But we humans struggle with giving even that. But when we take that little bit from ourselves, and give it to God, great things can happen. 

And for what it’s worth, this doesn’t just apply to church life, but our everyday lives as well. Recently, I was struggling in my relationship with one of my kids. I could tell that I had not really been being kind, patient, or compassionate towards them - yes, I know we don’t like to admit it, but we can all tell when we’re not being nice to people, right? - so I told Don what I had been struggling with. 

Don listened to me patiently, and when I finished he told me, “Well, I know you’re going to hate hearing me say this, but if you want to connect with the kid, here’s what you do. Spend a little time at night playing Final Fantasy with them.”

I rolled my eyes so hard so hard it physically hurt. 

Video games? REALLY?!? My whole family loves playing games, but I don’t play them at all! Spending some of my precious evening time doing one of my least favorite things was very much NOT the suggestion I wanted to hear and, as Don can (but probably won’t) attest, I did not hide my frustration at all. But then I remembered today’s scripture, remember that God asks us to give first. 

So, that night, I did it. I logged in to Final Fantasy 14 and made a character. I was reluctant at first, but I was less hesitant in the end. I still don’t understand video games very well, but when I saw the joy on my kid’s face, when I saw that smile…that was all I needed to see. Their joy became my joy.

And I was happy. Playing video games. 

That still feels weird to say….

But that’s how it works. “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.”  This is what Jesus said when he was teaching the disciples in John 15. When we listen to God’s teachings, when we follow God’s teachings, when we give first instead of receiving first, we can experience the complete joy that Jesus is talking about here; a joy that is mutual between givers and receivers. 

Our God isn’t one who demands first-fruits because God is selfish, and wants the best just for God’s self; God is not like the Egyptian kings described in Exodus. God is not like a tyrannical politician, forcing people to give, and to give, and to give just to feed his own desires. No! 

God asks us to give so we can experience a very particular joy that can only come from giving, from sharing.

How are you making use of the bounty of blessings God has given you? How are you using not just your money - some of us really don’t have much of that - but your time, energy, and other resources? Do you use them all for you and your family? Do you give only when you feel you have enough left over, when you have extra? Do you give only when you feel like it, in your own time and in your own way? 

Then you might be missing out on what God intends for you, when you bring your blessings into God’s house. God meant for you to be part of the celebration, part of the act of blessing others as you too have been blessed. God wants you to see how other people are impacted when you step outside of yourself, and God wants you to share in that joy, to watch as your blessings, and your joy, multiply.

So let us share in that joy together; respond, together. Let us listen to God’s word together, and see what joys we can share as a community together, when we put our first fruits before God as one people.