Whenever we transition between series like we are now, I usually reserve one Sunday in between to preach on whatever I or the other Elders feel like is important in the life of the church at that time. So, today we are looking at giving. If you know me, you know that giving is not something I like to preach on mainly because I’ve seen it abused so much. So, I fully admit that the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction for me. I think I’ve only taught on giving as the main point of the sermon only one time in my six years here.
But, I chose this topic for a few reasons. First, we are $40,000 behind in our budget and even though it’s normal to dip in the summer, this is more of a dip than we are used to. But, this Sunday actually works really well because, secondly, we are starting a series next week on our vision statement and these are the things our money goes toward. So, it’s not just about a budget line, it’s about how and why we do the ministry that we do in this church.
But, thirdly, and most importantly, what we do with our money is directly connected to our hearts. Outside of the kingdom, Jesus talked about money more than anything else. It’s funny how many people want a God who speaks into their forgiveness, into their pain, and into their fears, but not a God who speaks into their money. Imagine, hypothetically, that you were recovering from a heart attack and you go to one of your follow ups with the cardiologist and he asks you how your stress and workload is and you said, “Doc, that’s not your area. Your area is the heart, don’t get all up into my head.” That would be crazy because it’s all intertwined. And the same thing is true with our hearts and our money. You can’t have a God who tells you your purpose and your salvation, but who says nothing about our money.
And that’s what is happening in our passage. What Paul is talking about is generosity. Giving cheerfully. So, I want to look at this passage and see 1) what generosity does, 2) why we are generous, and 3) how we can know we are generous.
- What generosity does
Generosity does three things. It helps those in need, it unifies the church, and it gives God praise. All three of those are in the passage. We see generosity helping those in need based on the context. There is a famine in Jerusalem and Paul is taking up offerings to help. Paul is funny in the way he raises this money. He is adamant that this gift should be given willingly by them and not under compulsion and it should be generous, but it also feels like Paul isn’t above a bit of healthy competition. It’s like Paul is saying to the Corinthians, ‘You know, the Macedonians who don’t have your per capita income, have given more to this than you have and I would hate for those in Macedonian to beat you guys. A pastor friend of mine in Mississippi said, “It’s like a pastor in New York City saying, “Guys, those Mississippians have out given you. What’s the deal here?” That’s the context in chapter 8. He’s letting the wealthier Corinthians know the poorer Macedonians have given more than they have.
So, the context is real physical needs being addressed in Jerusalem, but think about what this would do for the unity of the church. We are going to jump back into Acts this Fall and hopefully finally finish it, but remember the tension that existed between the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem and the gentile Christians around the empire. Not only did these people used to hate each other (the Jews called the gentiles dogs), but the epicenter of power in the early church has shifted from Jerusalem to Antioch and we have every reason to believe that that created additional tension. But the gentile Christian world is now giving generously to see the needs of the Jewish Christians met in a season of famine. Giving our resources to help others creates unity in the church. This is why Paul says in verse 11 cYou will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which dthrough us will produce thanksgiving to God. 2 Cor 9:11
But, thirdly, and bullseye to what Paul is saying, generous giving gives praise to God. That’s verse 13. Giving generously is declaring that we live for something, for someone, greater than ourselves. Our problem is that we naturally desire to aim praise toward ourselves. But, that only goes so deep. Our greatest accomplishments only satisfy us for so long. But think about the times we praise someone we care about and love. If your child, grandchild, or even parent has some really significant milestone in their lives and your praise is directed at them, this kind of selfless praise is going to go deeper and satisfy longer. Now, extend that praise to the God of the universe. Not only is he worthy of our praise, that praise will give us joy and satisfaction that no self-directed praise ever could.
Tim Keller, in a very old sermon of his on this passage talks about the Epistle to Diognetus. The Epistle to Diognetus was a letter written to a non-Christian trying to explain Christianity. It was written maybe 20 or 30 years after the death of the Apostle John. I want to read a paraphrase of that letter. “Let me tell you why Christianity is spreading so fast. Christians busy themselves on earth, but their citizenship is in heaven. They live in their own native lands, but they live as aliens. For every foreign country is to them as their native land, and every native land is as their foreign country. They marry and have children, but they do not kill unwanted babies. They share their table with everyone, but they don’t share their bed with everyone. They love everyone but are persecuted by all. They are poor and make many rich. They are short of everything and yet have plenty of everything. They are treated outrageously but behave respectfully. They are mocked and bless in return. When they do good they are attacked. When they are attacked they rejoice as if being given new life.”
Keller’s point in using this is to highlight the way Christians give praise to God instead of themselves and the way it was so attractive to the pagan Roman world. Four quick ways they praise God in very unusual ways. First, racism was absent. Every foreign country is to them as their native land. These Christians were made up of Romans, Africans, and Jews who should hate each other, but they love each other. They had a higher authority than their cultural traditions and they had a greater identity than their race.
Second, life was valued. They don’t kill unwanted babies. That was a normal practice especially if the baby was born female. Third, they restrict sex to marriage. They share their table with everyone, but they don’t share their bed with everyone. The Romans just viewed sex as an appetite that you quenched when you needed to. But here are these Christians who value sex so much that they restrict it to the person they are most intimately connected to: their spouse. It’s interesting how many people today who were raised with a Christian sexual ethic now say how stifling that is, but here is a whole empire who is feeling liberated by it.
And lastly, they were generous. They shared their tables with everyone. They are poor and make many rich. They are short of everything and yet have plenty of everything. They learned to live more simply and they gave their money away in ways that had never been seen before. We today tend to be stingy with our money and generous with our sex, but Christians were being stingy with their sex and generous with their money.
This is why Christianity was spreading. They were living for someone greater than themselves. They were setting their praise on God and finding such satisfaction, liberation, and purpose that people were attracted to it enmasse. The simple act of radical generosity was helping those in need, it was unifying the church, and it was setting praise on God which became contagious.
But, there was something going on inside these Christians that was even more significant. And that brings us to the question: why are we generous?
- Why we are generous
The why behind the what. These Christians turned heads by what they did, but now everyone wanted to know why they did it. Paul tells us two answers to the why. First, the Christians knew that every material blessing was from God. Verse 10 10 He who supplies aseed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and bincrease the harvest of your righteousness. - 2 Cor 9:10 Every material blessing we have is from God anyway. You might think you worked hard for it, but who gave you that work ethics? You might think your intelligence got it for you, but who gave you that intelligence. And all the hard work and intelligence is worthless in terms of material gain if you were born into a Jewish family in Nazi Germany or a black family in Mississippi in 1810. Whatever material blessing we have is because God gave it to us, so why would we balk at him asking us to give some of it away?
A few months ago one of my kids asked me to buy them a very specific food from a very specific restaurant…a high end restaurant called WaWa… and I did. And as this kid was eating it (and loving it), I asked for a bite and what do you think this kid said? “No, it’s mine.” Ok, first, it’s not yours. I bought it with my money and let you have it. Second, how ungrateful are you that you won’t share a bite with the one who gave it to you? And third, do you not know that I could get you more? I mean, I may not be made of money, but more Wawa in the future isn’t going to break the bank.
All three of those things are true of God and our money. Verse 8 8 And yGod is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency5 in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work. - 2 Cor 9:8 He gave us the opportunity, he gave us our talents, and he gave us all that we have. We should be grateful for whatever we have and we should know that God is always going to supply us with what we need…so we give generously. In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, he said, What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it? - 1 Cor 4:7
The second thing they knew was that not only was every material blessing from God, every spiritual blessing was from God too. Verse 12 12 For the ministry of this service is not only supplying ethe needs of the saints but is also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God. Many thanksgivings. Thanksgivings for the material blessings and thanksgivings for the spiritual blessings. Verse 1313 By their approval of this service, fthey6 will glorify God because of your submission that comes from your gconfession of the gospel of Christ - 2 Cor 9:13 Submission that comes from the gospel.
Do you notice that Paul doesn’t command their giving? He commends it. He says, “Let your generosity be the proof of the grace you’ve received.” There are times when things happen in your life and they fundamentally reshape the way you look at your possessions. When they put those paddles on my chest in December, I can tell you that my automotives stresses went away completely. And nothing reorients the way we look at our possessions like the gospel of Jesus Christ. But it’s not because he’s threatening us, it’s because he becomes so sweet and precious that the other things just don’t seem as important.
Charles Spurgeon, a baptist pastor in England in the late 1800’s once said “If you knew you were dying of something and I had a medicine that could cure you for sure? You said, “I want to buy that medicine.” And he said, “Well, if you go to the distributor, it’s extremely expensive and you might have to lose your home. You might have to lose your record collection. You might have to lose everything in order to buy it.” What would you say? You would say, “What good is my home if I don’t have that? What good is my record collection if I don’t have that? This thing is so precious, this medicine is so precious, that all these other things that always were important to me, that seemed very expensive to me, look cheap. The preciousness of that medicine has made everything else in my life expendable. The Bible says, “To you who believe, Jesus Christ is precious. To you who know what he’s done for you, your attitude toward everything else is you say, ‘Look at what I have. Everything else is expendable. Everything else in my life is eternally and utterly expendable.’ ”
Our hearts tell us that money is where we will find our true satisfaction. We think that we are just one purchase away, one pay increase away from happier-than-you-were-ness. Do you know what that makes money? An idol. Jesus, though, brings us a satisfaction that is so far superior to anything money can ever do that it frees us from the burden of greed.
I remember as a very young Christian hearing a guy say how painful it was each month to write that check to his church. I remember thinking that something felt very off with that statement. Now, give the guy credit for doing something he didn’t want to do, but Paul is calling us to something more. To cheerful giving and that will only happen if Jesus is precious in our hearts.
So, a question we need to ask ourselves is this. Does our generosity communicate something to the world around us that perplexes them? That causes them to ask why in the world we would ever do that. Some years ago, there was a ministry…and it is a good ministry so I’m not trying to be too harsh here…but they had a cruise which you could pay to attend and you would hear great teaching on that cruise. And the theme of the week was A Christian View of Suffering. And as you can imagine, the irony of a cruise about suffering raised a few eyebrows and critiques. I say this because if we hear what Paul is saying about the intersection of our hearts and our money and we remain stingy with our money, then we are living out the same kind of irony.
God cares about our money because he cares about our hearts. Paul doesn’t say that money is the root of all evils, he says the love of money is. Money is not the problem, our hearts are the problem. Where our treasure is, there also are our hearts. Our possessions follow our hearts. So, the last question then, briefly, is simple. How do we know if we are being generous?
- How we know if we are generous
Simple question with a simple answer. I know some of you want me to give you a percentage. Some even might want me to clarify if that’s before or after taxes. I actually don’t think the new testament demands a specific percentage and you can find that in my other sermon on giving. If you want to use 10% as a starting point, fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. But if we just look at the percentage, we are missing the heart. We can even be guilty of living just like the Pharisees who sought to make the law manageable and feel better about our status before God because we have checked that box. The reality is that for some of you, 10% is too low and it becomes a justification for you to not give sacrificially.
We will know we are being generous when we give in quantities and with such joy that makes no sense to those around you. That’s how we’ll know. So, there is the giving and there is the joy.
So, what does this practically look like? I don’t see who gives what. I don’t think that would be good for my heart on many levels and it wouldn’t help me to pastor everyone as equally as I can. If you’re new, I hope you’d prayerfully consider giving to this church at some amount you and the Holy Spirit agree on.
For all of us, I think it would be a good exercise for us all to look at what we spend in a month. Are we strapped because we are spending more than we have? That in itself can be a declaration of the stronghold materialism has. How much goes to things we could live without. How much do we eat out? How much do our media subscriptions add up to? Uber eats, Amazon deliveries?
But, again, giving should be sacrificial. Whatever we give should be life changing in some way. It should mean not having a newer car or not taking a more expensive vacation. It might mean having a more modest house. If our giving doesn’t change the way we live, we are not praising God with our money.
Now, I do want to give three caveats so I don’t pile guilt on the wrong people. First, there is a right and wrong kind of sacrificial giving. The right kind is passing on unnecessary things. The wrong kind is putting your family through hardships for the sake of religious giving. Go read Matthew 15 if you disagree with me. Providing for our families is important, but provision doesn’t necessarily mean that every kid gets a MacBook Pro. But it also doesn’t mean you make your family eat Ramen every night so you can tithe 10%.
Second caveat, there are income levels, especially if you have kids, where even though you’re in the top 10% of the world’s wealth (and everyone here is), it is incredibly hard just to find housing and food in a city like Orlando. The reality is that you can only afford to live in this country if you are in the top 4% (which 99% of us likely are).
Third caveat, there are seasonal issues like health costs or going back to school that can legitimately affect your giving for a time. And there is grace for that. Where you give is up to you. My sincere hope is that much of it would be to the local church to help fuel our mission here and all the missionaries we support around the globe. But in addition to that, support your own missionaries. Give to the truly needy. Support widows where they need it. Use your money to be hospitable. Be wise and generous stewards of what is God’s, not ours.
Jesus never asks anything of us that A) he hasn’t done more and B) isn’t for our ultimate good and worshiping him through sacrificial giving is no different. Jesus didn’t sacrifice Netflix and avocado toast for us, he sacrificed everything. He sacrificed the very throne room of glory to take on flesh, come down here, and not even have a place to lay his head. Foxes had better accommodations than he did. But he did this so that we would never know God’s wrath. That our spiritually bankrupt lives would overflow with riches. That we would be lavished with his grace. 9 For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that sthough he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich. - 2 Cor 8:9
Only when we see the way he sacrificed that we might be blessed will we worship him and worship him in our giving as we seek to sacrifice that others might also be blessed both materially and spiritually. And as with every type of worship, when we worship with our giving, that discomfort, that sacrifice, that pinch we will feel…there God will meet us…there he will loosen the grips of our idols…there he will show us that he is our good, true, and ultimate portion. There he will provide for us as Paul promises in verse 6. Then, we will know the blessing of cheerful giving.