Now, with these thoughts in mind, if you will, take your Bible and turn with me to Luke, the 6^th chapter, and verse 38. Those of you who are taking notes, if you will—if you want to write down these words, I wish you would, because what I say today will be centered around these words: ONE CANNOT LIVE OBEDIENTLY BEFORE GOD…ONE CANNOT LIVE OBEDIENTLY BEFORE GOD AND WALK IN THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST…AND WALK IN THE SPIRIT OF CHIRST…WITHOUT DEALING WITH MONEY…WITHOUT DEALING WITH MONEY…AS A SPIRITUAL ISSUE IN HIS LIFE. [Brother Black is repeating the phrases for the benefit of those who are taking notes.]

So, I’ll repeat those words: ONE CANNOT LIVE OBEDIENTLY BEFORE GOD AND WALK IN THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST WITHOUT DEALING WITH MONEY AS A SPIRITUAL ISSUE IN HIS LIFE.

So today, we’re talking about spiritual things. And so, with those thoughts in mind, let us read Luke 6 and 38. Notice carefully what it says: “Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.”

Now, let us notice the first word in this verse: GIVE. Well, I think a person has a right to ask, “Why should I give?” Well, if you were going to talk to an individual about conversion, and you’d mentioned the word, “baptism,” I think that person has a right to ask, “Why should I be baptized?” He doesn’t know what the Bible says, so he wants to know, “Why?” And so, it’s our responsibility to tell him WHY one should be baptized in order to become a child of God. And so, when we, as children of God, read the Bible, we come to the word, “give,” naturally we want to ask the question, “Why should we give? What’s the purpose of giving? Is it just some tradition we have in the church? Why should we give?” So I want to mention some reasons—Scriptural reasons—why we give.

NUMBER ONE: A person may give to correct a wrong in his life. Now, this would not be true of everybody, but it was true of me. When I first started preaching over sixty years ago, I did not give of my means. “Oh,” someone said, “Brother Black, you mean that you preached and didn’t even contribute?” No. I didn’t say that. I said, “I did not give of my means”—that is, as God had prospered me. Naturally, I made that token donation, but I didn’t give as the Bible teaches.

Well, someone says, “How in the world could you go over the country preaching on faith, repentance, confession and baptism, and here you were not saying a thing about giving, and the Bible talks about it from Genesis through Revelation over fifteen hundred times!?!? And you were not giving.” My reason for that was this: I was reared in the church of Christ. My parents were members of the church of Christ, and I was reared like that. And the place where I went to church, they didn’t have preaching on this subject. And Brother Gus Nichols was our preacher when I was just a child in Millport, Alabama, and I can remember very well if he said something about “giving,” the people would accuse him of preaching for money. And naturally, that would scare the preacher to death, and he wouldn’t say anything else about it.

But brethren, don’t [anyone] intimidate me anymore along those lines. After learning the Truth, I not only believe I give today as God has prospered me, but I believe I’ve made up for those days that I did not give because of my ignorance—I didn’t know any better back then. But I know better now. That’s based upon Luke, the 19^th chapter, verses 8 and 9, where Jesus Christ was visiting the home of Zacchaeus, and Zacchaeus says, “…if I have taken any thing from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold!” That is, he’s going to make up for those things he’d done in the past.

Now, there are some things that we’d want to undo from the past that we could not correct. For instance, if somebody should kill a man, he couldn’t restore his life. He could repent of what he did, but it couldn’t restore his life! But there’s some mistakes we make back there that we can correct, and we should correct those that we can. But as I stated, this would not apply to everybody, but it did in my case.

NUMBER TWO: We give to evangelize the world. Now, I’m aware of the fact that you have some collection plates here. And I’m also aware of the fact that it’s not very impressive to take a cold collection plate and pass it under the noses of the people. But let me tell you this, when you pass that collection plate with this thought in mind, that this money is to feed the hungry, is to clothe the naked, is to evangelize the world, is to preach the Gospel to some poor soul who’s never heard it so he can live eternally with God, it becomes a different picture altogether when that collection plate is passed. In other words, my giving depends on what my attitude is. When I think about what I stated, the hungry people of the world, the naked people of the world, the people who’ve never heard the Gospel, and God has called upon me to give….

And how has God called upon me to give? Let me state this, and I may say it a dozen times today—I hope that I do—that God wants us to give as HE HAS PROSPERED US, but let us be sure that we don’t twist that word and pervert that word and take that word out of its context in order to justify our refusal to be liberal givers! But the Bible teaches [that] we’re to give. Under the Old Testament Law, they were to give the tithe. Of course, you know for years we couldn’t say that word in the church, but we can mention it now—the word “tithe.” The Jews observed the “tithe,” that is, the tithing system.