Leave Your Gift - Matthew 5:23,24
Therefore if you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.
As I read this familiar passage this morning, I noticed for the first time that the man who had approached the altar of God was specifically told to leave his gift there while tending to the business of reconciliation. How strange. What if someone came along and took it before he got back to make the offering? Why not just carry it with him on his errand?
As I pondered this in my spirit, however, it began to make sense. The giving of gifts to our Lord is not about the gift. It’s about ourselves. On one hand, this is an act that costs us something—it costs the gift itself, it costs our time and effort. But these are not the most important thing. “If you bring your gift to the altar...” The real offering is that we have chosen in those moments to focus our full attention on God.
Most of us go through life avoiding God. We fill our minds with so many other things. To be sure, most of these things may seem harmless. Some of the things are in fact good and helpful. At times we may turn our thoughts specifically to matters of God—to scripture or to prayer. Yet even there it is possible to avoid giving our actual attention to God. We can easily limit our Bible reading agenda to increasing our portfolio of insights we will use to teach others, and our prayers to a litany of worries and wishes.
When a person truly quiets his mind and heart before God, there is always a risk. The Spirit of God may very well use the opportunity to do some personal housecleaning, as the above verses indicate. However, this doesn’t always happen. “IF when you bring your gift, you remember. . .” Often our times with God are seasons of joy and refreshing, especially if we meet with God on a regular basis. But there are those times (and we learn to be grateful for them) when something has arisen that is a blemish on our souls, and thereby diminishes our communion with God.
The gifts we would bring to God are interesting things. They may be tangible treasures, or they may be the gift of our talents and abilities. They may be acts of service. They are necessarily costly, sometimes quite significantly so. But always they are simply “currency.” They are the carriers of something more precious than themselves—or they will ultimately be of no worth at all. Paul spells this out clearly in I Corinthians 13:1-3.
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.
Everything we would bring to God shows up in this list. Our talents. Our words. Our supernatural giftings. Our wisdom. Our faith. Our possessions. Even our very lives. Paul says that the viability of any of these gifts is tied to one single thing: a heart inhabited by the very love of God.
In a real sense, none of our gifts come from ourselves. God has given us our life and our abilities and our resources to steward. We are accountable to Him for how we use them. Sometimes we can use them for our benefit. Often they are entrusted to us for the benefit of others. A certain portion, a “tithe,” we are required to return directly to God.
But underneath it all is the requirement that we be motivated and directed by God’s holy love. Just as oxygen is the invisible sustainer of all earthly life, so divine agape love must infuse every aspect of authentic kingdom life. And the only way this can happen is by our regular, consistent inhalation of the very presence of God.
So yes. Bring your gift—many gifts—to the altar of God. Bring them gladly, willingly, grateful that He has given you something to bring. But understand that the deeper gift and the deeper joy will be in your choice to bring yourself to His altar, into His presence, where He will impart to you the gift of Himself. And as that divine nature enters your heart, you will be inspired and empowered to do those things which most please our Lord.
He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you—but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God? Micah 6:8
Therefore if you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.
As I read this familiar passage this morning, I noticed for the first time that the man who had approached the altar of God was specifically told to leave his gift there while tending to the business of reconciliation. How strange. What if someone came along and took it before he got back to make the offering? Why not just carry it with him on his errand?
As I pondered this in my spirit, however, it began to make sense. The giving of gifts to our Lord is not about the gift. It’s about ourselves. On one hand, this is an act that costs us something—it costs the gift itself, it costs our time and effort. But these are not the most important thing. “If you bring your gift to the altar...” The real offering is that we have chosen in those moments to focus our full attention on God.
Most of us go through life avoiding God. We fill our minds with so many other things. To be sure, most of these things may seem harmless. Some of the things are in fact good and helpful. At times we may turn our thoughts specifically to matters of God—to scripture or to prayer. Yet even there it is possible to avoid giving our actual attention to God. We can easily limit our Bible reading agenda to increasing our portfolio of insights we will use to teach others, and our prayers to a litany of worries and wishes.
When a person truly quiets his mind and heart before God, there is always a risk. The Spirit of God may very well use the opportunity to do some personal housecleaning, as the above verses indicate. However, this doesn’t always happen. “IF when you bring your gift, you remember. . .” Often our times with God are seasons of joy and refreshing, especially if we meet with God on a regular basis. But there are those times (and we learn to be grateful for them) when something has arisen that is a blemish on our souls, and thereby diminishes our communion with God.
The gifts we would bring to God are interesting things. They may be tangible treasures, or they may be the gift of our talents and abilities. They may be acts of service. They are necessarily costly, sometimes quite significantly so. But always they are simply “currency.” They are the carriers of something more precious than themselves—or they will ultimately be of no worth at all. Paul spells this out clearly in I Corinthians 13:1-3.
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.
Everything we would bring to God shows up in this list. Our talents. Our words. Our supernatural giftings. Our wisdom. Our faith. Our possessions. Even our very lives. Paul says that the viability of any of these gifts is tied to one single thing: a heart inhabited by the very love of God.
In a real sense, none of our gifts come from ourselves. God has given us our life and our abilities and our resources to steward. We are accountable to Him for how we use them. Sometimes we can use them for our benefit. Often they are entrusted to us for the benefit of others. A certain portion, a “tithe,” we are required to return directly to God.
But underneath it all is the requirement that we be motivated and directed by God’s holy love. Just as oxygen is the invisible sustainer of all earthly life, so divine agape love must infuse every aspect of authentic kingdom life. And the only way this can happen is by our regular, consistent inhalation of the very presence of God.
So yes. Bring your gift—many gifts—to the altar of God. Bring them gladly, willingly, grateful that He has given you something to bring. But understand that the deeper gift and the deeper joy will be in your choice to bring yourself to His altar, into His presence, where He will impart to you the gift of Himself. And as that divine nature enters your heart, you will be inspired and empowered to do those things which most please our Lord.
He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you—but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God? Micah 6:8
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