Harvest Church is a gospel-driven, joyfully sacrificial, first fruits giving church. This means that our Elders and leadership exhort the people to obediently respond to God's saving grace with their whole lives, including the glad offering of their finances back to God.
In the Old Testament, the people of God were commanded to bring a literal tenth of all their increase into the house of the Lord, as well as additional freewill and first-fruits offerings in proportion to God's gracious blessing on their lives. This ongoing, joyfully generous and sacrificial giving happened in response to God's amazingly gracious gift of salvation when He rescued them from slavery in Egypt.
WHY?
Today, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we seek to follow the intent of this Old Testament command, fuelled by an even greater display of God's infinite grace and mercy. God has accomplished the ultimate rescue plan by giving up His one and only Son, Jesus Christ, on the cross to rescue us from our slavery to sin and give us eternal life.
Having been saved by His amazing grace, we have all the more reason today to respond with joyful, thankful, sacrificial giving as an act of worship! Just as God gladly and entirely gave up His first and best for us in His Son, so we too respond with thanksgiving and generosity in returning the first-fruits (the first and best) of our labour back to God. Such giving is not to be done "reluctantly or under compulsion" (2 Corinthians 9:7), but gladly, springing from a heart that has been transformed by God's love and saving grace. So, let the gospel of Jesus Christ fuel all of our worship, including our giving to the Lord.
