Generosity and Growth
99 Balloons from Igniter Media on Vimeo.
Generosity and Growth 2 Corinthians 9:6-11
(giving is an open door to spiritual growth)
Recap of Series:
PRINCIPLE: There Can Be No Significant Spiritual Growth Unless We Put Our Money and Our Attitude About Money Into God’s Hands.
1) God is Generous.
2) When Our Generosity is Corked Up, we don’t have a problem with our “giving” we have a problem with our WORSHIP.
3) (Today) Our Act of Giving is an open door for spiritual growth.
Introduction
ü Video – 99 Balloons
- Love and help given generously to a little life that would only last 99 days
- How was that love given …
- Compulsion?
- Cheerful?
Mostly, charitable giving in America isn’t seen in similar terms
ü Giving Today vs. Great Depression
- In fact, fewer than 5 percent of churchgoers actually tithe 10 percent of their income; the average, according to numbers from Empty Tomb, a Christian research group that puts out annual reports on church giving, is now 3.4 percent, or 21 percent less than what dust-bowler counterparts gave during the worst of the Great Depression. Figures show that churchgoer contributions have been cascading downward since the 1960s. Religious conservatives do give more. Problem is, they only give nominally more and other groups give next to nothing. (Read the whole thing.)
1. Principle: You Reap What You Sow (v.6)
The point of Paul’s imagery is: those who contribute generously to the Jerusalem collection will give as a farmer gives away his seed in expectation of a rich harvest of produce. (Word Commentary)
It is an agricultural truism that, other things being equal, the size of the harvest is always directly proportional to the amount of seed sown. (Tyndale)
- 99 Balloons Video
They didn’t reap a sick child because they sowed sin.
They didn’t reap financial result because they sowed faithfulness.
They received love because they gave with love.
They received joy because they gave with joy.
They received faith because they gave with faith.
2. Compulsive vs. Cheerful (v.7)
A. Compulsive giving is like what we saw over the past two weeks for Haiti
- Many responded to outside influences
- Onslaught of News Coverage
- Pictures
- Peer Pressure
- Guilt
- Giving that is “reluctant or under compulsion” is using will power to meet outside expectations
? Do you know what compulsive means?
Compulsive giving means that inside you believe that your giving will make you clean (or at least look clean) to yourself, your peers or your God.
- Your church expects you to give, so you jump through a religious hoop
- A religious “performance” to satisfy your family, your church … or maybe yourself
- “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. “Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. ” (Matthew 6:1–4)
- Sometimes our heart really doesn’t care, but we give to make it look like we do.
- Pretending
B. Cheerful Giving
Literally “hilarious”
“give as he had decided in his heart” = (literally) prompting of your heart
Example: Buying Seahawks Tickets
- If you buy one set of tickets a year b/c you don’t really care but have to take your best friend
- $75/ticket
- Plus parking and food
- You’ll grit your teeth at every penny
- If you love the Haws, consider yourself the 12th Man
- Then you won’t mind the cost
- You’ll have to be careful you don’t spend too much!
C. How is Giving (Which is Difficult) Hilarious, Cheering and Liberating?
C.f., Dallas Willard
Question he was asked, “If God knows everything, including what we need before we can ask it, why should we pray at all?”
- For our purposes we could also ask “if God owns the cattle on a thousand hills and has streets paved with gold, He doesn’t need our money … so why give at all?”
Answer:
ü Because God wants to interact with us.
ü He doesn’t want to care for His people the way you would feed someone in an incubator, or water a plant
- A child doesn’t just want their needs met
- They want to know “WHY!?!”
- Interaction
- Relationship
- Two-Way investment of love
ü Prayer & Giving are strange arrangements
- They are the primary ways we interact with God
- They, unlike any other means of grace, open the door to real spiritual growth
? Why do we pray for someone?
ü Because we love them
- And our love pushes us beyond our human abilities
- Finding ourselves at the end of our own abilities, we have to cry out to God to do what we cannot
- Healing
- Teaching
- Comfort
- “What I want for my dear ones is beyond my power to give.”
- A new couple that just took their vows stands wanting with all their hearts to stay committed and faithful to each other
- But the odds are against them
- With our own strength, we can’t force them to love each other, stick with each other and forgive each other
- So we pray to God
- You have a child who doesn’t know the Lord and you desperately want them to be saved
- You can’t change their heart
- So you cry out to God and beg for their salvation
- A new couple that just took their vows stands wanting with all their hearts to stay committed and faithful to each other
ü Prayer is an Open Door for working with a power that is beyond you.
- Dallas Willard’s Analogy of Power Steering
- You have to do something
- If you don’t turn the wheel, nothing happens (or something bad happens)
- But when you do turn the wheel, the power that comes into play is not yours.
ü Giving works that way too.
- In giving we open a door to God’s power.
- We see needs material needs that we can help meet
- The real goal isn’t to just meet material needs
- The one goal is to use those surface level needs to trigger a heart-level change in the one we are giving to
- Haiti
- Not just wanting to rebuild
- We want to see lives changed by the Gospel
- Right now, the people of Haiti are roughly 80 percent Catholic and 16 percent Protestant, while roughly 50 percent also practice voodoo.
- Even greater, in giving we use surface level needs to trigger a heart-level change in ourselves.
ü We can “steer the wheel” a little through our generosity
ü In faith we are working with God who alone can save lives, hearts and souls.
"Giving is, among other things, an exercise in turning loose of what we have in our little "kingdom" to enter into the amazing reciprocity that God has built into the human heart. “…give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.” (Luke 6:38) Not that it "will be given" to you - others around you will give to you. Generosity is what people are made for. They would love to be generous - if only they thought they could. Of course, they will rarely know they actually can unless they are experiencing life in the kingdom of God. Generosity is one essential dimension of love, and there is ample provision for it. Start being generous with what you have and it will grow. Prayer and giving are the first two concrete ways of venturing on the kingdom of God and finding it a reality." – Dallas Willard Knowing Christ Today
3. By Giving we Open the Door to the Unlimited Resources of a Generous God (v.8-10)
Cross Chart
ü Giving Reluctantly, Giving Compulsively, or Not Giving At All = Shrinking the Cross
ü Pretending & Performing
ü Generosity expands the power of the Cross in our hearts because it opens the door to God’s grace.
This is why the Widow’s Mite was worth more than the giant offering of the rich man.
“Jesus looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the offering box, and he saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. And he said, “Truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.” ” (Luke 21:1–4, ESV)
ü The rich people gave in a manner that was pretending & performing
ü The widow gave in a way that love for God had to consume and fill her heart … because there was nothing else to fill that gap.
- Sometimes the only way to allow the cross to grow is to clear the clutter that keeps it retracted
- Repeated use of the words “ALL” & “EVERY” in this passage – (v.8 & v.11)
- “And God is able to make all grace abound to you,
- so that having all sufficiency
- in all things
- at all times,
- you may abound in every good work.”
- “… You will be enriched in every way
- to be generous in every way.”
#1 Giving Opens the Door to Abounding Grace (v.8a)
Paul’s appeal for generosity here falls into the Grace / Gratitude theme.
Paul loves to point out how grace is continually extending
2 Cor 4:15 - “For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God. ” (2 Corinthians 4:15, ESV)
“God’s promises were never meant to be thrown aside as waste paper; he intended that they should be used. God’s gold is not miser’s money, but is minted to be traded with. Nothing pleases our Lord better than to see his promises put in circulation; he loves to see his children bring them up to him, and say, Lord, do as thou hast said. We glorify God when we plead his promises.” - Charles Spurgeon, Morning & Evening, January 15
#2 Giving Opens the Door to “all sufficiency in all things at all times” (v.8b)
“Sufficiency” was a loaded term.
Stoic philosophers of the day.
Seneca, a Stoic and contemporary of Paul, understood autarkeia (sufficiency) as that proud independence of outward circumstances and of other people which constituted true happiness. (Tyndale)
Our Options:
1) Self Sufficiency
2) Grace Sufficiently
“Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me. ” (Philippians 4:11–13, ESV)
- The Macedonians were “sufficient” / content in their poverty, therefore they gave generously.
- The Corinthians seemed to be lacking in their contentment, which was closing the door to their generosity.
#3 Giving Opens the Door to “good works” (v.8c)
Isa 60:5, 11 – Foretelling of Gentiles bringing gifts to Jerusalem
“Then you shall see and be radiant; your heart shall thrill and exult, because the abundance of the sea shall be turned to you, the wealth of the nations shall come to you. ” (Isaiah 60:5, ESV)
“Your gates shall be open continually; day and night they shall not be shut, that people may bring to you the wealth of the nations, with their kings led in procession. ” (Isaiah 60:11, ESV)
“Good Works” are different from religious works, our works or morally good works.
They continue our participation with God.
Eph 2, esp v.10
“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. ” (Ephesians 2:10)
#4 Giving Opens the Door to a Harvest of Righteousness (v.9-11)
There are unblushing promises of provision when we are members of the Kingdom of God.
Luke 12:22-31
“And he said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest? Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith! And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried. For all the nations of the world seek after these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you. ” (Luke 12:22–31)
Deut 15:10
“You shall give to him freely, and your heart shall not be grudging when you give to him, because for this the LORD your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake. ” (Deuteronomy 15:10)
Malachi 3
“Will man rob God? Yet you are robbing me. But you say, ‘How have we robbed you?’ In your tithes and contributions. You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me, the whole nation of you. Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the LORD of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need. I will rebuke the devourer for you, so that it will not destroy the fruits of your soil, and your vine in the field shall not fail to bear, says the LORD of hosts. Then all nations will call you blessed, for you will be a land of delight, says the LORD of hosts. ” (Malachi 3:8–12)
ü We are robbing God when we don’t tithe
- Not robbing Him of money
- Robbing Him of influence over our lives and interaction in our lives
- Robbing God of the WORSHIP He deserves
- Robbing the King of Heaven and Earth the respect He deserves
ü When we give, God promises to “open the floodgates”
- This, along with 2 Cor 9, sound a little like the prosperity gospel
- “Therefore giving blesses the recipient in that his or her needs are met and faith and thanksgiving for God’s provision are increased; it blesses the giver because “God loves a cheerful giver” and will grant an abundant spiritual harvest, and bring blessing to all who know about it since it produces a harvest of “many thanksgivings to God.” – Wayne Grudem Systematic Theology
ü The Biggest “Harvest of Righteousness” is not in returned cash … its is in the Expansion of the Kingdom.
Conclusion
Remember the generosity the young couple showed to Elliot, their young son who only lived 99 days?
In those 99 days, they grew.
- The power of God working in their lives
- Love being the main goal of every feeding, every picture, every video journal
You reap what you sow … a harvest of righteousness
- They didn’t get rich because they gave faithfully
- They received love because they gave with love.
- They received joy because they gave with joy.
- They received faith because they gave with faith.