Gospel Motivated Generosity

Prayer ministry highlight. Introduce topic.

We’re going to spend a couple minutes talking about why giving to your church is important, and then after that, we won’t talk about it for the rest of the sermon.

0. Mini-sermon – Why Giving to Your Church is Important

0a. God uses the church as a vehicle of His grace

There’s two ways that God uses the church as the vehicle of His grace. First of all, it is a place where the gospel is proclaimed. The church, when functioning healthily, is a place where we are first and foremost devoted to the apostles’ teaching. This is the picture that we see at the end of Acts 2 when it describes the early church. As we gather week after week, we’re able to keep the lights on and have a sound system and have KidsMin classrooms and Student Ministry gatherings where the gospel of Jesus Christ is proclaimed, those lost in their sin are able to hear that they need a Savior and that a Savior has been graciously provided. When you give to your church, you aren’t enabling that – the church certainly can do those things without financial support – but you are helping the gospel be proclaimed more efficiently and effectively. We could do it with no lights, we could do it with no sound, we could even do it with no air conditioning, but giving to your church helps them to proclaim the gospel efficiently and effectively. More than that, God uses the church as a vehicle of His grace by blessing others through the church. I unfortunately can’t speak for every church, but at GMC, we are convicted that a large chunk of our budget should go to supporting missions, both locally and globally, and so each year, we intentionally set aside a very large portion of the money we receive for that purpose. And I tell you that not to say, “look at how generous we are,” neither in the case of your church leadership or you as the church body, but that this is what giving to your church should enable – a greater ability to financially support the mission of God in your community and in the world. Miguel ($4,515).

0b. It’s your church

I was very careful to title this section of the sermon as why giving to your church is important, not why giving to the church is important. You see, there’s this really dangerous commodification of the church in the west that tries to detach us from any ownership of the church. A word that gets thrown around a lot, especially here, is we tend to consume church. Church is a product that we receive. Just as you would go to McDonalds to get a burger, you go to church to get a sermon. McDonalds doesn’t ask you to buy in and the temptation is there to treat church the same way because that’s the way that our culture is. The church is not a business that gives you a product, it is a faith community. A lot of churches like to use the word “church family” because that’s what it’s supposed to be. When you become a Christian, you aren’t just changed from someone going to hell to someone going to heaven, you’re put into a family. Your life changes now. The New Testament over and over uses brothers and sisters to refer to the church for this exact reason. Your eternal location changes, but so does your present location. And so, looking again at Acts 2, it says that those in the early church had all things in common. The people of God are wholly and completely committed to one another. If you belong to Granger Missionary Church, this is your church. If you’re visiting from another church today, the church you attend is your church. This is why we believe in church membership at GMC. We believe that the blood of Jesus unites us into one family, and so we believe in committing yourself to a faith community, whether that’s here, down the road, wherever. It’s a beautiful thing to be placed into a church family, but it’s also a weighty responsibility. This isn’t Pastor Jason’s church, or the ministry staff’s church – it’s all of our church. We as ministry staff oversee it and prayerfully set the direction, but all of us participate in it. With our time, with our energy, and yes, with our finances.

Why open this way? Why open with a lighthearted commentary on giving to your church? I think we’re all afraid of the bad giving sermon. And it’s a shame, because I think that in America especially, we need to hear what the Bible says about money, but on top of our culture being very prosperity-focused, bad giving sermons have dulled our ears and hardened our hearts towards what God has to say about money. I think that a lot of giving sermons fall into one of two errors – they are focused either on righteousness or reward. The righteousness-focused one tends to sound like this: “God says to be generous, so you had better give money. Malachi 3:8 says will man rob God?” Mancelona prayer. And then there’s the reward-focused one. The dreaded prosperity gospel – that if you sow a seed, you will reap a hundredfold, reducing your relationship to God to a binary outcome. If x, then y. If you give generously, God is going to bless you materially. Money in, money out. And you may not realize it, but both of these fall into the same trap – to say nothing about the blatant lie of the prosperity gospel. They both focus on you. Obviously the reward-based one does, but so does the righteousness-based one. You’re roused to be generous because it’s the right thing to do, and it’s often motivated by guilt, and so you respond with generosity because you feel bad and you know it’s right – you’re justifying yourself. Maybe you repent with your hands, but rarely do you repent with your heart as a result of that. Doing generous things doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re a generous person, whether you’re shamed into it or not. So we have two wrong ways to approach generosity, how should we approach generosity? Just like everything else in the Christian life, it has to be motivated by the gospel. Because the truth of the matter is that I could tell you to go and give 10, 20, 50% of your income to the homeless and you all do that and you still live a life of bondage to your money. To be quite honest, I am infinitely less interested in telling you to drop x amount of money into the giving boxes or donate x amount of money to charity as I am in showing you how the gospel of Jesus Christ releases you from slavery to your possessions. When the gospel really settles into your heart, that is when you see lasting change. That is what allows Christians to be unwaveringly generous. So, we’re going to look at three ways that the gospel allows us to be generous, and they all flow out of each other: the gospel allows us to be generous because it changes our perspective, which changes our priorities, and changes our people.

1. Our Perspective (v. 1-5)

Now, we need to give a little bit of context for what this collection is in the first place before we jump in. The collection that is being taken up is for the churches in Jerusalem. In Acts 11, we see a prophecy that there would be great famine throughout the world during the reign of the Roman emperor Claudius, which came to pass in the late 40s AD. And so, Acts 11:29 tells us “the disciples determined, every one according to his ability, to send relief to the brothers living in Judea. And they did so, sending it to the elders by the hand of Barnabas and Saul.” So that is what’s in view in this passage, and Paul had actually already talked to the Corinthians about this. At the end of 1 Corinthians, we see this in chapter 16: “Now concerning the collection for the saints: as I directed the churches of Galatia, so you also are to do. On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up, as he may prosper, so that there will be no collecting when I come. And when I arrive, I will send those whom you accredit by letter to carry your gift to Jerusalem.” So now, Paul is circling back on this. Take a look at verses 1 and 2. Notice in verse 2 the contrasts that are going on. The Macedonians are suffering severe affliction, yet are experiencing abundant joy. They are suffering extreme poverty – the Greek word here is actually translated everywhere else as deep or depth – but display abundant generosity. How is this possible? It’s possible because they are rooted in Jesus. Being rooted in Jesus gives us two very important perspective shifts when it comes to our things and we can find both of them in the Sermon on the Mount.

In Matthew 6:19-34, Jesus gives us two things: don’t cling to your treasures, and don’t worry about your provision. He says in verses 19-21… What is Jesus saying? Don’t be so caught up with the things of this earth, because they don’t last. Everything you can treasure on earth will either be taken from you or rot after you’re gone. Focus on the treasure you have in Christ which cannot be taken and cannot rot. If you are in Christ, you already have this. No treasure you could gain on earth could be better than what you already have if you are in Christ. Jesus gets more direct, and goes on to say, “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.” Jesus is telling us that if money is not rightly viewed, it will become an idol that will pull you away from God. If money is not rightly viewed, you will be tempted to think that your money is giving you security instead of the one who gave you the money. When your security comes from the gift instead of the giver, you’ll be afraid to part with it and you won’t use the gift for the purposes of the giver. Don’t cling to your treasures. Second, don’t worry about your provision. He goes on to say in a very famous passage, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” And I’m not going to read the rest of the passage right now, but Jesus asks the rhetorical question in verse 26, are you not of more value than they? And the answer, of course, is yes. How do we know that we are more valuable to God than the birds of the air? Because Jesus died for us. God has already given the most costly thing available to save you from your sin because of His great love for you. If you are in Christ, that is true of you. You are more sinful than you could ever imagine, and at the exact same time, more loved than you could ever dream. Paul gets at this idea as well in Romans 8:31–32: “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” If God would go to such an extreme as the death of His Son, you should never dare believe He will not provide for you.

This is what the Macedonians have tapped into. The teachings of Jesus have shifted their focus from this life to eternity. When eternity comes into view, you will care less about what you have. You will have joy in affliction, and you will be generous even if you are poor. Why should I care about how many digits are in my bank account? One day, I’m going to see Jesus, and I’m going to be satisfied forever. One day, I will see Him and laugh at the thought that I ever cared about retiring with such and such amount of money, in fact, when Jesus wipes away every tear as it says in Revelation, some of those tears are going to be mourning the fact that I didn’t give every last cent to be used for His service. When you realize what the gospel entails, your perspective switches to eternity and it frees you to live for Him.

2. Our Priorities

Look at verses 3-5. The first thing I want you to see is verse 5. Notice that the first priority shift is not that they were really driven to be humanitarians because they were really concerned with doing good deeds. They weren’t really impressed with Paul’s kind heart or moved by his pleas for them to give to the cause. It says that they gave themselves first to the Lord, and then by the will of God to us. This is why I say that true generosity only comes through the gospel. Think about the difference between doing a task for your boss versus doing a task for your spouse. In the first case, you’re doing it primarily because of the reward or the repercussions. If I don’t do this, I might get fired. Or, I’m doing this because I’m being paid to be here. But in the second case, you’re doing it primarily because of the relationship. Sure, there are rewards and repercussions still involved, but the primary motivation is the relationship. This person has totally and completely committed themselves to you, and promised to love you in sickness and in health, for better or for worse. And even the strongest of love relationships are never perfect. God loves you perfectly. If the imperfect love of an imperfect person can generate a lifelong commitment, how much more will the perfect love of a perfect God draw you into a desire to give yourself completely to Him? If you feel like you can’t give yourself or don’t want to give yourself completely to God, it’s because you haven’t meditated on His love for you. Any time that you sin against God, it’s because you’ve stopped considering His love for you and given into the lie that God is holding things back from you that are good for you. You’ll never rouse yourself to live for Christ, financially or anywhere else, if you haven’t internalized deep into your heart how much He loves you. This is the kind of love that gives the Macedonians an abundance of joy, and if you were to ask them why they gave themselves fully to the Lord, I think they would ask, why wouldn’t you? What could possibly be better than living for God? If God loved me enough that He gave His Son for me and adopted me as His child though I deserved to be cast out of His presence eternally, why would I think that there is greater joy to be found in anything else but giving myself totally to Him?

Second, look back up at verses 3 and 4. It says that the Macedonians gave beyond their means of their own accord, and that they were begging Paul and his companions to get to take part in relieving the saints. The Greek word translated there as begging is used by Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:20 when he says, “We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” This word can just mean plainly to ask, but every main translation communicates this idea here in verse 4 that the Macedonians are insistent that Paul not pass over them because they are impoverished, but that they too would get the joy of being used by God for the sake of the relief of their brothers and sisters in Jerusalem. Can you imagine this? If anything, you would think that a church experiencing depths of poverty and extreme affliction would be begging that Paul takes up a collection for them as well, but instead, they beg Paul to take a collection from them. Because they’ve had their perspective changed by the gospel, their priority is that they would use that which God has given them – though it isn’t much – to be a blessing. And here’s what I want you to know – God’s purpose in blessing you is always for you to use that to be a blessing. We see this from essentially the beginning of redemptive history. When God calls Abram, one of the first things that He says is this in Genesis 12:2: “And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.” This is God’s design. This is why Paul says in verses 13 and 14 that the abundance of the Corinthians should supply the need of the saints in Jerusalem. And we need to hear that as a church in a wealthier part of our city. Not all of us are wealthy, sure, but as our church sits in one of the more affluent parts of northern Indiana, I’m assuming that there are some of you that have abundance. Paul is not shaming anyone for being wealthy, that’s not his aim, but the underlying idea is that God gave you that money on purpose, and the purpose is for you to be a blessing.

And this should cause some reflection in us. What has God given me that I can use to bless others? And I’m not just talking about money anymore. That’s obviously the main thrust of this passage is to be generous with your possessions, but we can apply this principle more broadly than just financially. I lead our worship ministry, and so I oversee a team of volunteers who have musical gifts or the ability to help with audio/visual things and are using that blessing to bless their church. We have people who are blessed with the gift of hospitality, and so they bless their church by greeting you at the door when you walk in, or pouring you a cup of coffee so that you can stay awake during the sermon, or even opening their homes and leading Life Groups. We have people who are blessed with being able to relate to younger generations and give themselves to be mentors in our student ministry, or teach in our kids ministry. What has God blessed you with that you can use to be a blessing to your church? Here is the call to give to your church, and to give beyond your means. The Macedonians were not blessed financially, and they still used what little they had to help fill a need. When there’s a need in your church – and remember, the church you attend is your church – that’s outside of your comfort zone, maybe even outside of your skillset, what is your attitude? Do you say, “that’s not for me,” and stop paying attention? “That’s not my cup of tea,” “I don’t have time,” “I don’t have the bandwidth,” or is your heart moved by a need in your church to the point that you would say like the Macedonians, “please don’t deprive me of the joy of taking part in the relief of the saints.”? The example of the Macedonians in verse 1-5 paints for us the picture of what someone truly changed from the inside out by the gospel looks like in the faith community. It’s not about making yourself do what you know is right. I don’t want you to just do the right things, to just be a good, dependable person. The goal of this sermon is not to create an army of people who the next time there’s something we need that we can say, “hey, remember this? Now it’s time.” I want you to see Jesus for who He is, and I want you to encounter His love in such a rich and genuine way that you can’t help but give yourself completely to Him, and then to others as a result.

You probably thought you were going to get off easy when I said that I was more interested in telling you how the gospel changes you than I was to drop a certain amount of money in the offering box. It would be way easier to tell you to tithe 10% of your net income every week when you come to church, but the Bible’s prescription for what to do with your money is not tithe 10%. The Bible’s prescription for what to do with your time is not volunteer at church once a month. You can do those things, you can do more than those things, and still miss the point. The Bible’s prescription for what to do with what you have is this: if anyone would come after me, let him take up his cross, deny himself, and follow me. When you come to Christ, there is no corner of your life that you are entitled to hold back from Him because you are supposed to love Him with all your heart, soul, mind and strength – how are you going to love Him that way and hold back from Him? How are you going to love Him that way if you’re holding back from His people? He gets everything. We commit ourselves first to the Lord out of an experience of His great love, and then to using the things He gives us to bless those around us. Because the gospel changes our perspective, which changes our priorities, and it changes our priorities by changing our people.

3. Our People

We’re going to take the rest of chapter 8 as a chunk here, because the main idea permeates really from verse 8 to the end of the chapter, which is that our love for Jesus should cause us to love His church. In this, I think it’s really helpful to think of love this way – that love for someone is finding joy in their joy. You love the things that they love. This is why Jesus says that the one who will enter the kingdom of Heaven is the one who does the will of the Father, because when you love someone, you find joy in their joy. And God loves His church. God’s delight is in His church, that’s why John’s vision in Revelation 21 shows that at the end of time in the New Jerusalem, God will be with His people, and they will be with Him. God delights in His church. And so, if we love God, and our joy is tied to His joy and our delight is in the things that delight Him, then we should find ourselves motivated to express love to the church. And so Paul says in verse 8…

Notice too that Paul says that he does not say this as a command, because if love is commanded, then it isn’t love. And Paul gives the Corinthians two examples of things being done not by coercion, but out of love. First, we already looked at, the Macedonians giving beyond their means, and second, Titus’ return to the church. Notice what Paul highlights down in verse 16: that Titus has the same earnest care for the Corinthians that Paul has. The Greek word that gets translated as earnest, interestingly enough, not in verse 4, but everywhere else in the chapter, is spoudē. And this word translated in the ESV as earnest carries a connotation of eagerness with an implication of readiness to expend energy and effort. It’s translated elsewhere as zeal or haste. This is the heart of Titus, this is the heart of the Macedonians, and this is the heart that Paul is reminding the Corinthians to have as an outflow of their love for Christ. When we delight in the things God delights in, we should expect to have an earnest care for our brothers and sisters in Christ, such that we are ready to expend our energy and effort to demonstrate it. This is the beautiful picture that we see of the church in Acts 4. Listen to what verse 32 says: “Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common.” That’s a powerful image. They were of one heart and soul. The fellowship of the believers was so intense that they considered themselves bound to one another to the point that no one cared to call anything his or her own. Their delight was in God, and so they delighted in loving and caring for His people. This is what John is getting at when he writes in 1 John 3:16–18, “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.”

As we wrap up, I want to land on verse 9 of chapter 8. Because I realize that I am calling you to something deep today, and I want to make abundantly clear that my intention is not to shame you or to manipulate you into being more generous, because shaming and manipulating doesn’t help further the kingdom of God. You’re never going to grit your teeth and really sweat out being a more generous person. Like I said at the beginning, you can maybe get yourself to do good deeds that way, but it’s only when you’re met by the love of Jesus Christ in the gospel that you change. I don’t want you to do good things, I want you to be changed by the gospel so that you give yourself to Christ. Which is why Paul writes at the center of this passage these amazing words that we ended our Scripture reading on: verse 9. And here’s the thing. If what I leave you with today is an example to follow then I’ve failed you, because you’ll never make it. Sorry to all you perfectionists, hard-workers, humanitarians – you’ll never achieve this. Any sermon that just presents to you Jesus as a great moral example to follow is the most crushing sermon you can imagine because there has never been a greater love than His. There has never been greater generosity than this than for a perfect being worthy of all blessing, honor and glory to step down from heaven, to empty Himself, and to be obedient to death on a cross. If you think you’re ever getting to that level, you’re out of your mind. And yet, this display of love that condemns us when it is set before us as our benchmark is the very same love that changes us when we realize that it was for us. When Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5 that the love of Christ controls us, it’s not that the Christian is controlled by the love of Christ because we’re so moved that someone would be that sacrificial and I should really be more like that – the Christian is controlled by the love of Christ because that love was displayed for you! When you meditate on the love of God – that you, a sinner, were sought by God to spend eternity in His presence where there is fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore – you will find yourself unable to do anything but give yourself completely to Him. You will find yourself unable to hold anything back from Him. So, whether you serve every week and give half your income, you don’t give any of anything to anyone, or anywhere in between, my charge is the same: look to Jesus. See Him emptying Himself of His glory, dying on the cross for your sin so that you could have peace with God and joy everlasting. Let His love root itself in your heart such that you would be formed into the image of Christ, and that out of love for Him, you will fully devote yourself to Him.