The Way of Generosity

Luke 19:1–10 (NIV)

Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.

When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.

All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”

But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”

Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

Introduction - A Tale of Two Men

(Tell the Story!)

It is early in the morning and Jesus is about to embark on a journey. Jesus is leaving the region of Galilee, which is a town in what was once the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Galilee was a multi-cultural and multi-ethnic region of Palestine. The region was marked by Hellenistic influence that did not mark it’s Jewish neighbors to the South. This meant that it was more common for Jews to intermarry with people outside of their ethnicity. The diversity in Galilee was not embraced as it often times meant that the followers of Judaism were less devout. They compromised on their faith and often adopted the faith of the cultures around then, or worse yet, attempted to fuse the two distinctly different religions all together.

Jesus has just wrapped up a stay in Galilee where he sounded a call to reform their faith. To stop adopting the ways of the culture around them. To singularly put their faith in their God once again. And as was so common in the days of Jesus, he had made his point and he was on to the next town.

Jesus is setting off on a journey from Galilee to Judaea, where the people were less influenced by the culture that surrounded them. Judaea is the region of pure religion. The Jewish population of Judaea did not intermarry. Judaeans were pure. They were devoted. They were real ones as the young people say.

So Jesus is not just leaving one region for another, but he is leaving one way of life, and entering into a region with a completely different value system.

And Jesus on his journey encounters what the Bible simply calls a Rich Young Ruler.

A young man, though he was rich, and though he had a reputation that preceded him, ran to where Jesus was. This took courage. This took the young man forgetting what others around him would say about him. He was a rich man. He didn’t run to people, people ran to him.

Swept up in the commotion of it all, this young man decided that he would take things one step further. He would not only run to Jesus, but he would kneel before Jesus. Now, the passion of this young man is on display for everyone around him to see. Staring into the face of Jesus, beyond his beard and into his fierce brown eyes he implored him, “Good teacher! What do I need to do to inherit eternal life?”

You need to see that this young man knew that there was something that even his money could not buy. Though he had influence, and though he had resources, a nagging fear kept him awake at night. It was a fear of the unknown. It was a fear about tomorrow.

Had he done enough?

Had be given enough?

Had he confessed enough?

These are the questions of the rich who need nothing.

And here is this rich, young man, dressed in an opulent robe and the finest sandals and choice outwear. He wore the clothes that a person puts on in order to impress someone.

Surely, the fact that in spite of his robes he was at Jesus’ knees would move this man named Jesus.

Transition

But what follows next is a stark contrast to the earlier story we read about Zaccheus. You see the man named Zaccheus, though he was wealthy, he was not noble. As a matter of fact, Zaccheus was wealthy by injustice. Zaccheus would tax his own people and skim from the top. Tax collectors were so disliked that they were named among sinners and prostitutes.

This rich young ruler is described with reverence. He kept the law. He kept all of the law.

But when Jesus said to the rich young ruler to go and sell all that he had, it is then that the heart of this man was revealed.

Zaccheus was a traitor to his people. But when he saw Jesus, without being told to do so, gave away half of all that he had. He sought out to right all of the wrong that he had done.

This rich young ruler was embraced by his people. But when he saw Jesus, he was unwilling to give away his possessions in order to follow Jesus. And we never read about this young man.

I want you to see something… Zaccheus received what the rich young ruler was looking for.

And today, I want to present to you the way of generosity. You will have the choice to commit to following the way of generosity, like Zaccheus did. Or, you can commit to following the way of the world, which is not the way of generosity. And like the rich young ruler, miss out on the adventure to come and follow the way of Jesus.

Jesus on Money

It is easy to dismiss that money mattered to Jesus and to the church in the New Testament, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Let me share with you some insight from the life of Jesus and what he thought about money.

First off, Jesus taught in parables in order to teach deep truths at a level that people could connect with.

There are 40 parables quoted by Jesus in the New Testament. 11 of the 40 parables that Jesus taught involve money.

The Bible talks about money.

There are about 2,350 verses about money in the scriptures.

Jesus taught about money just as often as he taught about prayer, repentance, love, hell, and his second coming.

Why is that?

Our attitude about money is really a reflection of our heart. This is what separated Zacchaeus from the rich young ruler. They had two different attitudes toward money, and that attitude was an outflow of their heart. So why does Jesus and the scriptures speak so much about money? Because it’s ultimately your heart that He is after.

The Way of Generosity

So let me just give you a summary of what the Bible teaches about money, and how the way of generosity is better than the way of selfishness.

Everything belongs to God.

Psalm 24:1 (NIV)

The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it,

the world, and all who live in it;

Everything that I have been entrusted with belongs to God. This is a shift that some of you need to make. The way of Jesus is not that this is my bag, I secured the bag, and the bag belongs to me!

We live with the belief that everything belongs to God, and what I have is what he has entrusted to me.

My responsibility is to steward what belongs to God.

Luke 16:10 (NIV)

“Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.

We are to be stewards of God’s money. Stewards. We are managers of the money, not owners.

You see these are the foundational principles of a healthy relationship with money.

It all belongs to God.

My job is to steward it.

Listen, if you can get here, you’re already living with a much healthier relationship with finances than the majority of the world has.

Think about this for a second, America is the richest nation in the world, and also saddled with the highest amount of debt. Why is that? We have stopped honoring God. We have an unhealthy relationship with our money.

But if we are to follow the way of Jesus, we are going to begin here with these two things, so that we can then step into the life of generosity.

Say that back to me, can you say the life of generosity?

How do we get into a life of generosity.

The Life of Generosity

Building on the foundation of what we’ve just shared, then we start honoring God with our money.

We bring the first back to God

Proverbs 3:9–10 (NIV)

Honor the Lord with your wealth,

with the firstfruits of all your crops;

then your barns will be filled to overflowing,

and your vats will brim over with new wine.

Since it all belongs to God, we give back to him the first. This is the principle of the tithe. That we give back to God the first 10% of everything that he has given us. Listen, it all belongs to him, so we aren’t making a payment. He is saying, bring me back the first 10 percent and you’ll keep the 90 percent.

If I had more time to walk this out, I would tell you that he also says that he will bless the 90 percent so that you will be able to do supernaturally more with the 90 than you were able to do with the 100. Why? Because we have honored God with what is first.

We live an open handed life

Proverbs 11:24 MSG The world of the generous gets larger and larger; the world of the stingy gets smaller and smaller.

I want you to hold your hands out like this. When you’ve given God the first you are showing him that you are able to live open handed. When you live like that, you are postured to receive more, and give away more.

Conclusion - Law vs Life

I understand that when the church talks about generosity people can have strong feelings about that. There is an unstated feeling that the church should stick to the spiritual, and not focus on natural things like money.

But when we look at Zaccahaeus, it was after he said that he had given away half of what he had that Jesus said “salvation has come to our house…”

When we look at the rich young ruler, he was already following the all the commands of the Lord. But when pressed on the issue of money, he closed his heart and decided that he would not follow the way of Jesus.

So truly, we are not talking about money today, we are talking about the condition of your heart.

And what I need you to know is that we don’t talk about money from a perspective of law, but of life.

Do you have to tithe to be saved? No, the entirety of scripture does not teach that. We don’t teach generosity as law, but we do teach it as life. And God wants you to live. He wants you to experience the abundant life that radically touches every area of your life! Including your money...