Giving Generously
1 Corinthians - How Faith Informs Our Daily Lives • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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At our last Council meeting I was asked to consider preaching a sermon on stewardship....more specifically on giving. As you may remember hearing me share a few weeks ago, financially we are quite far behind in our budgetted giving for this year, and we have congregational meeting right after the service to approve next years budget!.....what better Sunday??
Perhaps some of us get a little uncomfortable when your minister starts to talk about money and giving. It reminds me of a story that I once heard… It’s a story about....
Two men who crash a plane on a deserted island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
They both survive the crash. Then just after their terrible ordeal one of the men walks all over the entire island and comes to the conclusion that there is no food or fresh water. He goes back to where his friend is to explain their predicament.
"I've searched this entire island and haven't found any food or water, we're going to die!"
The other man says, "don't worry, I make $100,000 a week, we'll be fine."
"Yes, but don't you see, there's nothing to eat and without water we're doomed!"
"Like I said, I make a hundred grand each week. Don't worry, we'll be home in a day or two"
"Why in God's name do you keep saying that! How the heck is your money going to help us way out here?
As the other guy sits there leaning back against the smashed plane he says with a smile "every Sunday at church I put my tithe of 10% from the $100,000 in the offering plate like the good book instructs. My minister will find me"
Please don’t think for a moment that this minister knows what any of you contribute to our church.....but it is true that the Bible has something to say about money and giving.
How’s this verse from the Bible to get our attention:
10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.
Or this one:
13 “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”
1 Now about the collection for the Lord’s people: Do what I told the Galatian churches to do. 2 On the first day of every week, each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with your income, saving it up, so that when I come no collections will have to be made. 3 Then, when I arrive, I will give letters of introduction to the men you approve and send them with your gift to Jerusalem. 4 If it seems advisable for me to go also, they will accompany me.
6 Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. 7 Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. 8 And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. 9 As it is written: “They have freely scattered their gifts to the poor; their righteousness endures forever.” 10 Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. 11 You will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God. 12 This service that you perform is not only supplying the needs of the Lord’s people but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God. 13 Because of the service by which you have proved yourselves, others will praise God for the obedience that accompanies your confession of the gospel of Christ, and for your generosity in sharing with them and with everyone else. 14 And in their prayers for you their hearts will go out to you, because of the surpassing grace God has given you. 15 Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!
What is it about money? In a certain sense money is nothing more than some metal stampings and ink on paper. Although today, more and more of our purchases are paperless....digital signals traveling back and forth in cyberspace.
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In one sense money is just expensive ink on high technology paper, but all of us know it’s really a so much more than that, isn’t it. Perhaps one way of describing money is that it is an officially produced object that a group of people agree has value for exchanging goods. But is that all it is? Just a medium for exchange? Is money just some neutral object that we hand back and forth to each other to exchange goods and services? I suppose in a certain sense it is.
Yet when we read Jesus’ words in Luke, it would appear that money is more than that. Robert Wuthnow in his book, God and Mammon in America, notes that when one studies money in the history of the world, almost all cultures recognized that money is loaded with religious power. He writes, “Mesoamerican religions taught that money had a soul and should be exchanged after prayer and fasting. When money consisted of precious metals, the mining of these metals was often surrounded by religious rites.” (Robert Wuthnow)
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In our culture we don’t like this kind of superstitious talk. We like treating things scientifically and objectively and so for the study of how money influences the lives of people and their societies we’ve come up with a scientific study called “economics.” When was the last time you saw a Bachelor of Commerce degree that required a course in religious devotion.
Yet all of us know that money oftentimes can fuel a kind of religious devotion in people. Money can grab people’s hearts and become the focus of their allegiance. Some even gamble their homes, their cars, yes, even their families away with a compulsive desire to win more money. I have a close friend who works as a financial planner. He once said to me, “Andrew I sometimes wonder if I get to know some people even more intimately than you do as a pastor.” “Why is that?” I asked him. “I get to see their checkbook.”
Maybe one reason money can fuel a kind of religious devotion is because it is too easy for us to connect money with life. It’s tempting for all us to think that to have little or no money is to have little or no life.
The Bible recognizes this tendency in the human heart and undoubtedly that is why the Bible talks about money so frequently. Someone has actually counted and discovered that the Bible deals with money in over 2000 different verses or passages. One-eighth of the content of the gospels deals with financial considerations. Nearly half the parables that Jesus tells relate in some way to money matters. Some seem to believe the myth that faith and finances don’t mix. Jesus spends so much time talking about the subject of wealth and money it’s obvious that for him faith and finances are intimately related.
Throughout Scripture we are taught that giving generously and giving cheerfully are expressions of thankfulness from people who find life not in possessions, not in money, or in any other god, but in Christ alone. Giving generously and cheerfully are ways that we express our love to God and combat the desire to find security and well-being in wealth.
This morning I want to briefly highlight three important truths about giving that come from the text that we read in 2 Corinthians 9 and then I will conclude by noting four Scriptural instructions that serve as guidelines for healthy giving. From our text we get three general principles that help us think rightly about why we give. From other parts of Scripture we highlight four practical guidelines for how we ought to give. Three and four—you may want to think about it as theory and practice.
The context for this chapter is what is often called the “Great Collection.” Paul has been organizing and encouraging the newly established congregations in Asia Minor, churches made up primarily of Gentiles, that is non-Jews, to generously support the primarily Jewish congregations in Jerusalem. Jews living in the region of Jerusalem who had converted to Christianity were running into financial hardship for a number of reasons and Paul was encouraging the Corinthian congregation to support their Jewish brothers and sisters in Christ in Jerusalem. And in chapter 9 we find at least three general principles.
Firstly, suggests Paul in our text, healthy giving is governed by a healthy attitude. Gifts must not be grudgingly given, he notes in v. 5. Finally, giving is a matter of the heart, notes Paul in v. 7, and God loves a cheerful giver.
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Cheerful giving arises out of the hearts of those who know that God will supply their every need. It’s true that giving does cost us. There is a sacrificial component to giving. Yet just as the Hebrew writer notes “for the joy set before Him, Jesus endured the cross” (Heb. 12:2), so too we must realize that with cheerful, sacrificial giving, we will experience great joy. Our giving is an act of worship that arises out of hearts that have found new life in Jesus Christ. To give grudgingly or with guilt-ridden hearts is not fitting with the new life that Christ has come to give us. In fact we give with an attitude of thankfulness and joy. And for Christians, this is entirely possible. The Holy Spirit plants this thankfulness and joy in our hearts when we genuinely surrender to Christ who we are and what we have Him alone. Healthy giving is governed by a healthy attitude.
The second principle that we can draw out of this text is to note the sign of our giving. It’s true that the attitude of our giving must be rooted in thankfulness, but a sign of our giving is that it becomes an expression of our thankfulness. In v.11 and 12 Paul notes that the giving of the Corinthian church is a concrete sign of our thanks to God.
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Another SIGN of our giving that we can observe in our text is that it demonstrates the unity of the church. In Paul’s day the giving of the Corinthians demonstrated in a very real way that they were one with the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem—a primarily Gentile church giving generously to a primarily Jewish church was a very significant demonstration of unity I might add, in the history of the church. So in our day, our gifts unite us as a community to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with people in our surrounding neighborhood and beyond. Our building is a gathering place for worship for four congregations, and throughout the week it’s a place for prayer, caring, and connection. Our giving supports our pastors, as well as our admin and custodial staff, each of whom in some way support and give leadership to the broader ministries of our congregation. It’s easy to see how our communal giving provides a concrete SIGN of our unity as the body of Jesus Christ in the world.
The third principle that we can draw out of our text is that God FORMS us through our giving. God not only works in the lives of other people through our gifts, but he also works in our life.
6 Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously.
And just a little later in v. 10
10 Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. 11 You will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.
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God promises to bless us when we give generously.
Now I want to be clear, I’m not preaching a “prosperity Gospel” as it is sometimes called. The Bible does not say that the more we give the richer we will be come. What it does promise is that when we give generously we will be blessed....now, I do think that some people God does bless with significant wealth.....[share story of Hank and Renie]
When we give cheerfully and generously we express our thankfulness, we demonstrate our unity and as a result, v.8,
8 And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.
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Simply put. As we give, we are blessed! Paul makes no distinction between material or spiritual blessings here. In a holistic sense believers will be blessed by God the Giver, even as they bless others with their generous gifts! [Calvin Seminary scholarship banquet story. Kunnen…don’t thank me, I get so much in return I almost feel selfish]. God FORMS us.
In summary then, three general principles about giving. Our ATTITUDE in giving makes all the difference. Give cheerfully and not grudgingly. The SIGN of our giving is that through it we expresses thankfulness to God and it is a visible demonstration of the unity of the church. And finally, God FORMS us through our giving, not only because our giving blesses others, but also by blessing our lives.
Well if that’s some of the theory about giving, now we move into the practice. And this comes to us from a various passages and texts throughout the Bible. The Bible teaches us at least four things about the practice of giving. And they come to us not so much as laws but as guidelines for thankful giving.
First, Scripture teaches us that our giving ought to be regular / systematic. If as we noted earlier, our giving is a tangible expression of our thanks to God then that expression should be a regular part of our rhythms. In 1 Cor. 16:2 Paul writes that the Corinthians should give weekly on the Lord’s Day.
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That’s when Christ rose from the dead, that’s when we worship Him and thank him for being a self-giving Savior, it’s fitting and appropriate to express our thanks by giving each Lord’s Day. That’s exactly why each Sunday we worship God by presenting him with our offerings. That way our giving becomes part of the rhythm of our Christian life. On the first day of the week, we come to worship and give our firstfruits to God.
[talk about the shortfall]
This year, consider making your giving a part of the regular rhythm of life.
Second, Scripture teaches us that our giving should be proportional. Again in 1 Corinthians 16 Paul writes that we should give in keeping with our income. In the Old Testament the people of Israel were commanded to tithe.
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They were commanded to give the 1st 10% of their crops, their livestock or their income to God. In the NT the concept of the tithe is not explicitly taught. But the principle is clearly stated. The principle of giving to God a percentage of what we have received is a clear guideline in Scripture. As was true in the Old Testament, those who have more should give more. Perhaps this kind of proportional, regular giving is a new concept for you. I invite you to prayerfully consider how the Lord might be encouraging you to give regularly and generously.
Remember what the prophet Malachi writes,
10 Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.
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Third, our giving should be without compulsion. The NT does not demand a predetermined percentage. We don’t give so much because we have to, we give in response to how we have been blessed by God in Christ.
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In 2 Cor. 8:8 Paul reminds us that his guidelines for giving are not commands. In our text, in v.7 he writes, “each person should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” Pray earnestly about it, wait on the Lord, and give cheerfully.
Finally, forth, we should give expectantly. We touched on this earlier. Those who sow generously will reap generously. As we bless others with what we give, we too will be blessed. Is this a health and wealth gospel. No, but we mustn’t move to the opposite extreme either. A holistic blessing, both spiritual and material, will be ours when we give generously.
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These are principles that all of us can put into practice, young and old.
[Mention some of the ministries of our church....and how they impact us, our children, and our community, and even our world!]
Story of Cat…(told by a UK pastor named David Stroud).... a new graduate at one of the biggest banks in the world....how can I make a difference here.....what is vulnerability especially for bankers.....deal with money all the time, can have your heart..... started a “generosity club” ....pool money chose a charity and give it away at end of year.....hopefully this practice will form the donors..... one of the partners at the bank heard about it match donation.....then the bank itself did same.....first year gave 150,000 pounds.....next year a colleague died unexpectedly.....and another colleague, in memory of the one who died said let’s do what Cat invited us to do.....same match funding....raised 250,000 pounds....
Our congregation is a generosity club.....
Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!!.....end with Christ!
…as Paul says, God loves a cheerful giver.