2 Corinthians 9:8-11 Generously

2 Corinthians 9:8-11 (Evangelical Heritage Version)

8God is able to make all grace overflow to you, so that in all things, at all times, having all that you need, you will overflow in every good work. 9As it is written:

He scattered; he gave to the poor.

His righteousness remains forever.

10And he who provides seed to the sower and bread for food will provide and multiply your seed for sowing, and will increase the harvest of your righteousness. 11You will be made rich in every way so that you may be generous in every way, which produces thanksgiving to God through us.

Generously

I.

Confidently the old man hobbled along, leaning heavily on his cane. He led the two following him past one barn, then another, and finally entered a third. Piles of junk tower over his head on the meandering path that wanders through the barn. At last the old man stops. “About halfway down that pile you’ll find what you are looking for,” he assures the team. Sure enough, after a few minutes of digging, the guys from American Pickers find exactly what they had asked the old man if he had.

Every episode is some variation of this theme. The Pickers dig through a lifetime of accumulated junk looking for a few treasures people might be willing to spend money on in their shop.

How did these people get that way? What led them to collect—or hoard—all that stuff? Some of them grew up poor; anything that happened to come their way was kept, just in case it might be needed. Others started collecting items around one theme, but then got carried away and collected more and more until it became overwhelming.

Maybe you don’t have barns filled with random stuff—most of us probably don’t. But what about that shirt hanging in the back of the closet that you haven’t worn in years, or that pair of bell-bottom pants that has been out of style since the ‘80s? What kind of treasures fill your basement or garage, or the ubiquitous junk drawer? One day you finally start looking through things and wonder how you could possibly have kept that stuff for so long. So many useless things are just taking up space.

Why? Why do you keep some of those things?

For many there is at least a little bit of fear. What you get rid of might suddenly become something you need. Bell-bottom pants might just come back in style. Leisure suits with patches on the elbows might be all the rage again soon.

In the First Reading for today, the Israelites were looking back wistfully at their time in Egypt. When their supplies had run out in the wilderness, they quickly forgot the misery they suffered there in the land of their slavery and focused on a perceived abundance of food. They wished they had never left. They wished they had never given it up.

II.

A lack of trust. Perhaps that’s how you could describe it. It was impossible to get by on the dwindling supplies in the camp of Israel.

Maybe the overflowing junk drawer and the leisure suit in the back of the closet display a lack of trust, too. “I might ‘need’ that some day.”

“God is able to make all grace overflow to you, so that in all things, at all times, having all that you need, you will overflow in every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8, EHV). The “all”s pile up in Paul’s sentence like stacks of stuff in the hoarder’s barns. “All grace...all things...all times...all that you need...every good work.” The last one is the same word in the Greek as the other times Paul used “all.” God has no problem providing what you need.

Think of all the things God had done for his people Israel before that moment they complained about a lack of provisions. He sent 10 plagues—one after the other—demanding that Pharaoh let the people go, until his resolve broke and the people marched out of Egypt. Seemingly mere moments later, Pharaoh’s army chased after the people, but God protected them with a pillar of fire and a pillar of cloud. God parted the waters of the Red Sea to let Israel pass through on dry ground, but then collapsed the walls of water on Pharaoh’s following army.

The miracles God did for his people stacked up much higher than stuff in a hoarder’s barn. So focused were they on their perceived lack that the people quickly forgot about all he had done for them.

In his love for his people, God pulled out from the stacks of miracles the one item they were so desperately looking for. God promised to rain down bread from heaven for them every morning, and to send quail in the evening to give them meat to eat.

All they needed, God promised. But they were told to trust that it would be so. Collect only enough for one day’s food supply; the day before the Sabbath, they could collect two days’ worth so no work would be done on the Day of Rest. “Trust me,” God was telling them. “I will provide exactly what you need.”

But there was a lack of trust. Following the First Reading, Moses reports that some kept extra manna until the next morning. It spoiled. God wanted his people to learn to trust his goodness minute by minute, day after day.

God knew the tendencies we have to stack things high in our barns and storehouses “just in case.” God knew of our junk drawers overflowing with the detritus of years. Rather than just setting aside a rainy-day fund, or using good stewardship by contributing to retirement accounts, God knows that many of the things we stack up and squirrel away show a lack of trust in God to provide.

III.

That’s why Paul stacked up all those “all”s. “God is able to make all grace overflow to you, so that in all things, at all times, having all that you need, you will overflow in every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8, EHV).

First things first: “God is able.” He can do these things. There is no doubt about it. Though they had seen it again and again, Israel seemed to constantly forget that.

Now some of the “all”s. “In all things, at all times, having all that you need.” It didn’t matter whether Israel was held in slavery in Egypt or wandering around in the wilderness, or later in the Promised Land, help was not out of God’s power.

It doesn’t matter whether you have more than enough to survive, or you find yourself destitute, God is able to provide for your needs. Don’t be so focused on your perceived lacks that you forget to give thanks for all the blessings that have overflowed to you already.

But there’s a big “all” in the stack. “All grace.” Grace means God’s undeserved love. Grace is the way Paul talks about God giving salvation to the world by sending Jesus.

Sin is an enormous problem for each one of us. The debt for our sins that each one of us owes to God would dwarf all the stacks of stuff piled up in the hoarder’s barns. Like the parable of The Unmerciful Servant (Matthew 18:21-35), your sin-debt is so large it is overwhelming; there is no hope, really, of repayment. God knew the debts were too high for you to pay.

Ultimately, every time you sin you put someone or something ahead of God in your list of priorities. Every sin, then, can be traced back to a failure to trust God completely—to love him completely.

God, in his overflowing grace, sent Jesus to pay for every single one of those sins. Salvation isn’t just a small, seemingly insignificant item, buried in a stack in one meandering maze running through one barn on a hoarder’s property. Salvation is the biggest “all” of all. Salvation is huge. God’s salvation for you in Jesus is a pile of grace overflowing for you. Jesus’ stack of salvation engulfs the whole pile of your sins and eliminates them in God’s sight.

IV.

When you get right down to it, the grace of salvation God gave to each of us in Christ Jesus defines our whole lives. It overflows in you so that “you will overflow in every good work,” as Paul puts it.

Paul quotes the Psalmist: “As it is written: He scattered; he gave to the poor. His righteousness remains forever” (2 Corinthians 9:9, EHV). Read Psalm 112 in its entirety and you will see that the “He” in that verse is not God, but a person who trusts in God.

No doubt you have seen these shirts around Holy Trinity. You might have more than one, or even a pile of them yourself. “Live generously.” Thrivent loves you to wear them for advertising whenever they give us a few bucks to sponsor some service project or event in the congregation. “Live generously” is essentially the same message the Psalmist gave: believers know God is able to provide “all,” as Paul put it earlier, so in response they are generous as they live their lives of faith.

“And he who provides seed to the sower and bread for food will provide and multiply your seed for sowing, and will increase the harvest of your righteousness” (2 Corinthians 9:10, EHV). Even as you live generously, doing things that help your congregation and your fellow human being, God keeps on multiplying your seed for sowing. God is the One who gives you the good deeds you can do out of love for him.

“You will be made rich in every way so that you may be generous in every way, which produces thanksgiving to God through us” (2 Corinthians 9:11, EHV). I imagine the Prosperity Gospel preachers love this verse; they can convince people that God promises to make generous believers materially wealthy. Not so. “Rich” makes me think back to Paul’s “all”s. The overflowing of God’s grace has made you and me, as believers, spiritually rich. Every time you are generous with the time, talents, and treasures God has given to you in his grace, you will realize your riches even more and give thanks to God for all the great things he has done for you.

Live generously in thanksgiving to the God who has given generously to you. Amen.