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We are continuing our study of giving this morning.
So far, we have seen that God is ultimately the one who owns everything we have and everything we are.
We are simply stewarding it for him, so if he calls us to give some of his time, talents, or treasures away, he has the right to do so.
Last week, we were reminded that he is the one who gave first and most as we saw Jesus, the incredible creator and sustainer of the world, humbling himself and giving himself to us so we could become spiritually rich.
If he would give himself like that for us, then we need to be willing to give whatever he calls us to give.
With that backdrop, I want to turn back to the chapter we looked at last week.
Go ahead and turn over to .
That is on page 1027 if you are using one of the Bibles from the back of the pew.
Let me remind you what is going on in this chapter.
Paul is writing to the church in a city called Corinth.
When he last spoke with them, they agreed to take part in an offering he was collecting.
This was an offering that was going to support impoverished believers in Jersualem.
He had been taking this offering up for a while, and the Corinthians said they were interested in participating.
Now, he is sending this letter and asking them to make good on their previous pledge.
To encourage their obedience, Paul talks about the faithful giving of Christians in Macedonia.
For those interested, that would likely have been the churches in Philippi, Thessalonica, and Berea.
They were doing great spiritually, but they had been persecuted and pushed to the outskirts of society.
As we will see, they were impoverished themselves.
And yet, in the midst of their difficulty, they were unbelievably generous.
By the way, Paul isn’t trying to play the two churches off each other.
Instead, he is giving the Corinthians a great example to follow.
In fact, they are a great example for us to follow as well.
They demonstrate the incredible attitudes of a giving heart.
As we look at these 5 verses, we are going to see four different attitudes that should characterize our giving.
Let’s read it together...
The first attitude that jumps out is that our giving must be:
1) Joyful.
Look back at verse 2.
I love the paradox in this verse.
The Macedonian believers were in a tough spot, but that didn’t stop them from being joyful!
In fact, it wasn’t that they were just a little joyful; they were abundantly joyful!
I am always convicted by statements like this, because so often, I think things have to be going well for me to be joyful.
When life is good, I have joy, but when it gets hard, I lose it.
That isn’t the picture of the Christian life at all, is it?
Here’s how one commentator put it:
Poverty overflowing into wealth also may seem paradoxical, but it fits the crazy-quilt logic of the gospel: joy + severe affliction + poverty = wealth.
Here, wealth relates to a wealth of generosity and joy multiplied.
They didn’t need things to make them joyful because they had Jesus!
Isn’t that how the apostles modeled faith for us?
Back in the book of Acts, the apostles kept getting arrested for preaching and teaching about Jesus.
After one of these arrests, they were beaten and then released.
Here’s how they responded:
acts 5:51
Isn’t that incredible?
They were flogged, badly beaten, threatened, and released, and that was a source of joy for them!
It wasn’t because they loved pain.
Instead, they loved Jesus so much that they were able to rejoice in being mistreated like he was because they stood up for him.
Christian joy isn’t simply happiness.
Instead, the joy that motivates us to give out of our poverty is the certainty that our wealth isn’t in our money, but instead as we saw last week, it is in the fact that God was made poor to make us spiritually rich!
We just finished the offering.
How was that for you?
Did you give joyfully, entrusting these resources back to the God who allowed you to steward them, or was it just like paying your electric bill?
The God who calls us to give calls us to give with joy.
Because we are giving joyfully, that also means our hearts will be...
2) Generous.
2) Generous.
Look back at verse 2.
When these folks gave, it wasn’t that they just scrounged together what they could find between the couch cushions.
Isn’t that an awesome phrase, “in a wealth of generosity”?
The picture I get from that is that their giving was so overwhelming that it was almost ridiculous!
Have you ever been around a child with a generous heart?
They hear about a need, and they are ready to empty their piggy bank because there is a need and they have some money, so they are just going to give it all.
There have been times when we have had to tell the kids that they can’t give all of that so they can learn to save for the future.
We have said to them, “You are giving too much!”
Isn’t that what Paul felt with the Macedonian believers?
Look down at verse 4-5.
Their generosity was above and beyond what Paul and his associates could have asked.
Maybe they had more of a child-like faith than Paul!
Think back to telling kids that they can’t give that much.
You could argue that they have no real sense of the value of money, but maybe they do!
Perhaps their child-like faith is simple enough to believe that God will take care of them when they need it.
In fact, Paul points that out later in this chapter.
Go down to verses 13-15.
Here is how Life Action Ministries puts that:
“I need to learn to give today out of my abundance (or supply) to meet the needs of others, believing that tomorrow, if I have a need, God will use the abundance of others to meet my need.”
The Macedonian Christians had that understanding, so they gave out of their supply, trusting that God would meet their needs when the time was right.
Is your giving that generous, or is your heart stingy when it comes to sacrificing for others?
Remember, though, that generosity isn’t defined by the dollar amount of what you put in the plate or give online.
We see clearly that our giving is also to be...
3) Proportional.
Look at verse 3.
Their giving was proportional to their ability.
Let me ask you a straightforward question this morning: If a person put $100 in the plate, and another put in $1000, who gave more?
The math on that one is pretty easy, right?
$1000 is bigger than $100.
However, God’s math is different.
We have talked about this some already, but let’s go back to our first message in our giving series.
When we looked at the Parable of the Talents, we learned that God owns everything.
We even looked at , where God reminds us that every animal in the world belongs to him, so he doesn’t need our offerings.
In that story, we also saw that both of the faithful servants were given the same encouragement, even though the one earned twice what the other did.
Putting all that together, we see that God’s math is different than ours!
Yes, financially speaking, our church’s bank account increases more with the $1000 gift than the $100, but it may very well be that the $100 was a much greater sacrifice than the $1000, so it was the greater gift.
Jesus highlighted that exact scenario with his disciples one day:
Mark 12:
In God’s eyes, the greatest gift is the one that demonstrates the greatest sacrifice.
You may be here this morning on a limited income, but you faithfully gave today, knowing that you have 1,000 ways you could have used that.
Someone else may have put in 10x more than you did, but they may not miss it at all because of how God has provided.
Your gift matters, not because of the dollar amount, but because you gave it out of a heart of obedience to God’s leading, honoring him with a gift that matched your ability.
Paul addresses this principle again later in the chapter.
Look down at verse 12.
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