The God Who Gives Everything

What does God’s generosity look like? This week we’ll see how the gospel begins with a God who gave everything for us in Christ—and how that becomes the foundation for our own generosity.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Alright, 2 Corinthians chapter 8, verses 1 through 9. If you have a Bible or an app, open it up. We're going to be working through this verse by verse together. Here's where I want to start this whole series and even this morning. I want to start by telling you about one of the more peculiar and strange occurrences that takes place in one of Paul's letters, specifically to the church in Corinth. Now, Corinth is a pretty stable, uh, relatively resourced and wealthy congregation. Right? Paul had previously written to them about how the rich among them oppress the poor by the way that they lavishly dress and the jewelry that they wear, right? We see where this was a well-to-do body. And here's what he wants to encourage them in in this section of his letter to them. He wants to encourage them to finish something that they had already started. There was this generous financial gift that they were starting to work on contributing for the suffering saints in Jerusalem. And to make his case to them, Paul holds up an example. But the example that he reaches for isn't another wealthy church that they maybe have never heard of before. It's not a congregation with resources and margin in the budget, things to spare and part with. No, he points to the church specifically of Macedonia. Including in them is Philippi and Thessalonica and Berea. These are congregations that are living under Roman authority. They're experiencing economical destitute, enduring what Paul even calls himself in this letter. He names it as a severe test of affliction. These are people who fundamentally don't have enough. And here's what Paul says: look at what they did. Look at their example of what generosity looks like. They gave beyond what they could afford. They gave without anyone pressuring or guilting them. Nor was it made through some emotionally manipulative appeal. No, they gave out of something that they fundamentally treasured within their hearts. And their gift, the funny thing is, it was almost refused. It's almost as if Paul wasn't ready to take the gift that they wanted to give because he understood their physical circumstances. Paul actually says in this passage that they begged for the favor of taking part. You see, where we live in this world where giving is often a response to like external pressure, where we wait to be asked, where we need to be convinced, where we calculate what we can part with comfortably. These people were desperate for the joy of giving out of their poverty. Now, what explains that rationally? Right? What explains that? Paul tells us in one single sentence, and his answer is going to shape everything about what we're doing together over these next several weeks, everything we understand about our relationship with generosity and our stuff and our devotion to the Lord. So let's work through this passage together, verse by verse, starting with 2 Corinthians chapter 8, verse 1. We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia. Here's the first place Paul starts. Now that word Paul uses for grace, it's the same word that he uses all throughout his epistles. And it means this: it means the unmerited, unearned, lavish favor of God towards sinners. Where we deserved his judgment and his wrath, where we deserved his condemnation, the grace of God is poured out on us, and we receive unmerited favor and blessing, relationship, communion. And Paul uses this word grace not by accident, but with intense intentionality. He's making a theological statement and claim before he says anything else. And what you're about to see in these Macedonians, it's not self-generated virtue, right? Like look at them, look how hard they're trying, look how good they're being. No, what he's pointing to is a work of supernatural grace among them and in them and through them. He goes on to say, verse 2. For in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. Notice the paradox Paul sets up in that verse. Severe affliction plus extreme poverty somehow equals an abundance of joy and a wealth of generosity. That equation fundamentally does not work in our world at all. Right? In our world, suffering plus scarcity, what does that produce? Fear, anxiety, this desire to reach for control and white knuckle the things that we have in our possession. Right? When we face these circumstances in this world, it does not produce joy and generosity. We don't want to live open-handed. We want to lock our doors. We want to preserve what's in our pantries. We want to make sure that we're protected first. But what Paul's describing, it doesn't follow the ways of this world. It doesn't follow our natural understanding of economics. These people are experiencing something that is not being produced by their circumstances. It's being poured out into their hearts from a transcendent, eternal fount of the grace of God. Look at verses three through five with me. For they gave, according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means, of their own accord, begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints. And this, not as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God to us. Now, let's break this down a little bit. And I think verses three through four specifically have a few things that we need to point out. First is this he says that they gave beyond their means. Paul, he's not correcting or admonishing this. They gave beyond their means. No, he's actually propping it up as something to be admired, an example to the other churches. Look at the way of which they were generous. It was above and beyond what they were even able to produce. They gave past what financial caution would have counseled. They gave past what financial caution would have counseled. Second is this, they gave of their own accord. I love this. Nobody pressured them. Paul didn't have to come in with this emotional, manipulative appeal. What does Paul do? He's writing a letter asking for money, and he's bringing the gospel to bear as the means for which generosity should flow from the heart of God's people. This was freely of their own accord. This was internally produced of the grace poured out in them. This was joyfully chosen that they may participate in. Third, you see this, it says, begging us earnestly for the favor. Now that word translated there for favor. So we can actually read it this way. They were begging for the grace to give. Because before they ever gave any specific amount, it says that they gave themselves. It says they gave themselves first to the Lord. So here's where they didn't start. They didn't start with their stuff. They didn't look around at what they had and asked what they were willing or able to part with. No, they started with their whole self in total surrender, being given to Jesus. And this surrender, right, to him. It both preceded and it produced the generosity that followed. Giving themselves first to Jesus preceded and produced the generosity that followed. The Macedonians weren't trying harder to be generous. They weren't gritting their teeth or wringing their hands through the sacrifice. You see, they had given themselves to the God who had given them everything. And from that surrender, generosity flowed like water from a spring. Paul then connects all of this to its source. The gospel, verse 9. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich. The grace, the grace that produced joy and generosity in the destitute and afflicted church flows from the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is the source of joyful generosity. Now we'll come back to this because it's really the center of the whole passage, but first I want us to sit with an honest question. And I'm gonna make a claim before I ask you the question. And here's the claim being made in the text. Generosity is the overflow of a heart captured by grace. Generosity is the overflow of a heart captured by grace, not discipline, not duty, not planning, not margin. Generosity is an overflow of grace. And when grace has genuinely captured our hearts the way it captured the Macedonians, generosity is never something you have to work up to. It's what comes out naturally. So part of my question is this what comes out when you're pressed? When the circumstances of this world start to press you? When things start to become difficult and challenging, when you face trials and sufferings in this world, when the weight of life presses, what comes out? Is it fear? Is it anxiousness? Is it worry? Is it this trying harder and striving more deeply to be able to come through on the other side, preserved? What is it? What comes out? You see, when these people were hard pressed by their sufferings and their circumstances, what came out of them? Joy, eagerness, delight. And so the question we need to sit with is what comes out when we're pressed? And the honest answer for most of us, including myself in this room, is sadly something different than what we see from the church in this passage. Here's a fair description of how most of us actually relate to generosity. Our generosity flows from surplus or security, not surrender. Our generosity flows from surplus or security, not surrender. And I believe that this reality shows up in two very distinct ways. I'm gonna work to describe both of them. And I want you to be honest with yourself. Which one do you actually recognize in yourself? Right? For some of us, our generosity, it flows from our surplus. This is me. I've just, if I can be vulnerable and transparent with you, this is me. And hopefully some of y'all can relate, right? I'm not gonna be up here alone, just here, here. Most of us we don't think of ourselves as selfish people by any means, right? We're not hoarding anything, we're not trying to preserve, we're just living life. And some of us, man, we are living it well. We work hard, we provide, we're responsible, we're striving to build the kind of life that we've always imagined. Think about it, right? The vacations that create memories that our kids will carry for the rest of their lives, even when we are gone, the experiences, the moments, the meals that make life feel full and rich and worth living, the car we're genuinely proud to drive, or the clothes that make us feel put together, the newest device that keeps us connected and productive, or what about the youth sports that we desire to develop character and provide opportunity for our children? We are living life. And I want to say this clearly: none of this is fundamentally wrong or sinful. In fact, here's what I want to put before us: enjoying the good things of God for the glory of God is a beautiful and wonderful thing. Let us go back to the garden for a moment. When God showed his image bearers the work of his hand in the garden, there was something that stood out in the text. It actually says that the fruit of the garden was a delight to the eye. Think about that for a second. Not just food as fuel, food as beautiful, as satisfying, as delightful. And here's what God said. God said, feast. Feast. Every tree in the garden, but one is for you. Feast. Here's what went wrong. When we ate for the glory of self, sin entered the world and death with it. That's the problem of the garden. We took the good and beautiful and delightful things of God and we feasted upon them for our own glory. And in it came the death that you and I have to face on a daily basis. If we would have, right? And that's such a dangerous statement to even make, but if we would have feasted on the delight of the garden for the glory of God, think about what we have been enjoying in this life. And so feast. Delight yourself in the good things of God for the glory of God, not for the glory of self. That's where it becomes sinful, that's where it becomes wrong. God has given you a life full of delight. Feast on it. Feast on it for the glory of His name. But here's the thing: when you and I delight in this life for the glory of self, there's something operating, there's a sequence underneath all of it, and the sequence is, as I said, the problem. You and I, we fund the full life first. The life of delight and satisfaction. And then if there's something left, generosity gets whatever remains. We tell ourselves we'd give more if we had more. But there's something really funny about yours and mine's uh budgets. They're able to expand when they're funding our desires. Isn't that funny how your budget stretches to match exactly what you want? But when it comes to generosity, and I'm not even talking about giving to Sacred Mission Church. I'm talking about how is your house being used for generosity? How is your dinner table being used for generosity? How is your work being lived and worked through for generosity? How is your stuff being stewarded for the love of God and the love of neighbor before the love of yourself? That's the question on the table. We fund the full life first. And underneath this habit is ultimately a fear that we've either been unable or unwilling to put a name to. It's the fear of missing the life we believe we're supposed to have. Here's what C.S. Lewis says about this in his work, Mere Christianity. He says this aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth, and you get neither. You see, we work to live full out. And we give from the surplus, the margins, whatever's left over. Which means for all practical purposes, we give absent of cost. And here's what scripture does: it holds up a mirror for us to see ourselves, and it says this you haven't given yourself first to the Lord, you've given yourself first to your own picture of the full life. And so fundamentally, you and I, right, because remember, I raised my hand, I'm in this camp. We steward our stuff for our own flourishing. Rather than steward our stuff for the ultimate good and flourishing of others and the glory of God. And generosity will never be anything more than that, an afterthought, until that heart posture changes. But some of us we don't struggle with that, right? We're more responsible. So our generosity flows from our security. In every family, in every marriage, there's a spender and there's a savor, right? I'm the spender. If you haven't figured that out, my wife is the savior, uh savor, not savior, bad savior. She's she's a great woman, bad savior. Uh and and and so here's I'm gonna put her before you for a moment. You see, for some of us, it's really it's harder to recognize because from the outside. We might look like the most faithful giver in the room. We tithe. We have a giving line in our budget even before our utilities or our car insurance. We give consistently, reliably, honestly. But here's what's happening underneath. We are giving from security. And so for some of us, that looks like this. We're planners and we're really good at it. We run the numbers, we've invested wisely, we've budgeted carefully, we've modeled our financial future to know that we will be safe and secure. And what's inside that model is even space for generosity. A percentage that we've determined is responsible, that doesn't threaten the plan, that keeps everything safely on track. And so our giving also never actually costs us anything. It never requires faith because it's all been accounted for in ones and zeros. Now, for others of us though, we still give from the same sense of security, but it looks very different because instead of planning for a safe future, we treat generosity like an insurance policy. But it's a spiritual one. Our generosity is less about spreadsheets and more about something spiritual, a transaction that we believe and hope will take place between us and God. So we give from the sense that if we give faithfully, God will take care of us. If I just give him enough, he will give back to me. We give and we expect God to bless. We tithe and we expect the money to come back multiplied to us. And so the logic that's driving our generosity is not the truth and beauty of the gospel. It is this transaction that we were hoping we'll have an ROI from God's own hand. We're trying to purchase divine favor, not willing to surrender to a God who has already given us the fullness of Himself eternally beyond our comprehension and imagination in Jesus' Son. You see, both versions are driven by the exact same thing. It's this insatiable hunger and need to feel safe before we can open up our hand. The planner needs financial safety, and the prosperity-minded one needs spiritual safety. And both of us, both of us have found a way to be generous that is never requiring surrender from us. And Paul looks at both of these people, and who does he point to? Look at them, the Macedonians. Look at the destitute church who had no financial safety net, no transactional bargaining chip that they could present before the Lord. And he says this they gave themselves first to Jesus. And it was from that that generosity followed. Can we say that? Not answer the question, do you give? Not do you have a line in your budget or do you have it with margin in your spreadsheet? Have you given yourself to the Lord first? Now that may be a convicting pair of questions, right? And conviction without hope is just condemnation. The whole point of the text, the whole point of God's word for us, it's not to make us feel bad about ourselves. It's to show us what grace produces when it actually gets a hold of a person. And here, we can only do that if we hold up the mirror of the truth of God's word for us to look into and see how desperately destitute that we are before him, and then see where the hope of the gospel comes in and rescues us and redeems us and restores us to what he has intended for his image bears to be, right? This is what we need, the bad news first, before we can actually treasure the good news of the gospel. And so our hope arrives here this morning, church, not at the end of trying harder or at disciplining your finances, but at the fountainhead of his eternal grace for you. Because here's our hope. Jesus surrendered his riches to give us everything. Everything. If I treasured Christ rightly, if he was more glorious and majestic, if he was more beautiful, then the things of this world, no matter what it was trying to extend to me, would eternally pale in comparison to beholding him. Look at verse 9 with me. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich. Let's work through this together. First, it says that he was rich. And we got to try to wrap our minds around this. And it's it's actually something we're unable to do because of our finiteness and our fallenness. But Jesus was rich in the truest sense. He was most glorious, full of majesty. He was rich in the most eternal sense imaginable. Jesus possessed all the riches of divine glory. Every attribute of God in their fullest expression was his. All authority in heaven and in earth belonged to him. The unmediated love and fellowship of the eternal Trinity that had existed before time began was his to enjoy. He was surrounded by the worship of angels. He existed in perfect, unbroken communion with the Father. Whatever you love most in this life, whatever you treasure dearest, whatever that is, if you're honest, you'd have the hardest time releasing your grasp on. Take that. Take that and multiply it beyond your comprehension. Multiply it into eternal means, and you still don't even begin to approach what Jesus held in him. For your sake, he became poor. That Greek word for poor, he conveys to become utterly destitute. Man, I love how brilliant Paul is, inspired by the Spirit writing this epistle. He's pointing to the church in Macedonia who was destitute because of their circumstances, and he draws this line directly toward Jesus, who became utterly destitute for us. He didn't become slightly less comfortable. He didn't become temporarily inconvenienced. No, Jesus became utterly destitute. The creator, the very one who holds existence together in himself, entered his creation in radical vulnerability. Born to a teenage girl out of wedlock in an enemy-occupied territory, to a family that couldn't even afford the standard Jewish life. They couldn't even pay the temple tax after his birth. He was raised in a town that people mocked and ridiculed, lived as a vagabond rabbi with no place to lay his head, the scriptures show us. And then, if that was just the beginning, the full weight of his destitution, betrayed by his closest friends, falsely accused, stripped of his clothing, beaten beyond recognition, hung between two criminals, while the people that he came to save and give his life for humiliated him and mocked him, spit on him, pulled out his beard, and then in those final hours, his cry comes out from the cross. He became destitute. You can't comprehend his poverty for you. Paul says in Romans, he who knew no sin became sin, that you and I might become the righteousness of God. The one who had known unbroken communion with the Father from eternity, there in that moment experienced the utter isolation of our condemnation. For your sake. So that you by his poverty might become rich. I want us to look at this nature of the great exchange. His righteousness for our sin. His richness for our poverty. You see, his poverty purchased riches beyond imagination. And I don't mean money. I don't mean stuff. I mean the things your soul has been searching for and could never purchase, no matter how awesome you tried to be in this life. He purchased forgiveness. Real, complete, nothing held against you. Forgiveness. Forgiveness for everything that you have done, everything you are currently doing in hiding from others, everything that you will do in this life. Christ has purchased by his blood your forgiveness, your adoption. Not as some second-thought stepchild. I'm sorry if I'm a stepchild. You're with me in this. Not as a servant who's earned his place in the house. But as a beloved son and daughter, as an heir to his kingdom and his kingship. He's purchased your righteousness. So that when the Father looks at you, he sees the perfect obedience of his son standing in the place of your sinful rebellion. He's purchased the indwelling Holy Spirit, the very presence of God living in you, dwelling in you as both helper and a guarantee of everything that is coming in the fullness of his promises to us. He has purchased an inheritance for you that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, untouched from every form of loss that this world could throw at us. And he's purchased your resurrection, death itself undone, the grave emptied of his power, a life made new, now by the Spirit, born again, raised to new life, eternally in Christ, in one day, gloriously, physically from the dead, glorified flesh, dwelling with him and his people. He purchased that for you. You can't purchase that. You were bankrupt, under judgment, dead in your trespasses, and through the poverty of Jesus, you were made unimaginably, extravagantly, eternally rich. Church, our problem is we don't treasure him enough. That's why you live white-knuckled. Because you don't believe you have. When in Christ you have everything. This is the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Here's what the French reformer John Calvin says about this verse specifically in his commentary. He says, This Christ enriches us by his poverty. Let this thought then sink deep into our hearts that of his own accord he emptied himself of his glory for our sake, that we might not feel a reluctance to part with our abundance for his sake. So what does this mean for us right here, right now, as we step into this multiply joy thing together? Here's the vision we're holding before you in this season. And it's not primarily financial, it's this that you and I, we would live in surrender, secure in the riches of his grace. And that's the picture I want for sacred mission. Not the church who operates in fear, not the church who, when we're pressed, outcomes these ungodly things that we're ashamed of. Not a church that just gave enough to hit some number, a church that gave itself first to the Lord and then watched what overflowed from that. Joy and generosity, sacrifice, eagerness before anything else. We're gonna ask you over these next several weeks, before there's some pledge card, before there's a dollar amount, before there's this commitment to be made, I want to ask you for something more fundamental to our spiritual health than any of these things. I want you, I want to ask you to receive. Not to give, but to receive. Receive what's already yours in Christ. Man, if if I pondered the moments of my day about the riches of his grace, as I ponder the ways that I don't have enough or the ways that I want more, my God, my life would be so radically different. Sit with verse nine until it stops being some theological statement written with ink on paper, and it starts being something you actually feel grip your chest until the weight of what he gave up for you and the wonder of what you've been given break something open in you. You cannot discipline or guilt or budget yourself into the kind of generosity that Paul describes happening in the church in Macedonia. You can't do it. You can only receive and allow grace to do its work. Are you willing to be captured by it? So, what we're praying for through this is that exact work. That God would make Himself so real to us and the riches of Christ so weighty and wonderful, that surrender starts to feel less like loss and more like the most obvious, joyful, life-giving thing that we could possibly do. That's what the gospel produces. Surrender. Surrender because we know that we are eternally safe and secure in Him. So here's what I'm gonna ask you to do between today and next Sunday. It's not give, it's not pledge, it's not calculate, it's just to meditate on verse 9. This language for meditate in the scripture actually comes from the digestive process of a cow. And it said they would chew and chew and they'd swallow and they'd bring it up from their stomach, this cud, and they'd chew and chew and chew and swallow and bring it back up and chew and chew and chew. Can you meditate? Meditate on verse nine. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor so that you by his poverty might become rich. Read it, chew it over and over again. Pray for God to show you what you've actually been given in Jesus. Ask him to make you feel the weight of what Jesus released and the wonder of what you've received in exchange, and let grace begin its work. And together we're gonna see what overflows from it. Amen. Let's pray.