Cultivating Generosity

SERMON: 2016-08-07--cr09b16--cultivating-generosity-part-2 SOURCE DURATION: 00:35:52.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.95 APPROVED: false REASON: The opening segment [0] begins the sermon with a review of previous material (exposition). The closing segment [296] concludes the message with a theological summary and application. Both are integral parts of the main sermon recording. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: none ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: no ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: none Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- So let's begin this morning then with a quick review of where we left off two months ago. At the end of May and the beginning of June we were doing a little mini-series on what it is to be a steward of the resources that God has entrusted to us. And we saw at that particular time that there are four dominant viewpoints of how a human being relates to material possessions that have we have that we have been granted. Here is the chart that we've looked at before. The first point of view is that of the self-absorbed owner. He says a hundred percent of what I have is mine. This is every natural human being's reaction. Then there is the obligated owner. He says everything that I have is mine but I owe society and so I will be at least a little bit generous in sharing my goods with people around me. Then there is the obedient owner. This is the guy that's become a Christian. He's learned about tithing. He knows that God deserves the ten percent. Might not always reach it but tries. But ninety percent is still my own. Ten percent is God's. And then there is the love-inspired steward. And the love-inspired steward understands I don't own anything. I am a manager on behalf of God. God owns everything and because God owns everything my responsibility is to be accountable to him and to steward the resources that he has given me faithfully on his behalf. And we saw together then back then that what God wants to see happen is he wants to see his move from the self-absorbed owner to the obligated owner to the obedient owner to the love-inspired steward. That process of transformation does not happen easily. And I gave you last time three simple steps that I believe we need to understand and lay hold of if our lives truly are going to change. I'll walk you through them really quickly. Number one, that kind of love-inspired stewardship does not come naturally. I don't care how generous you are by nature, letting it all go and seeing yourself as a steward instead of an owner, that's not you and me. By nature we are graspers, we clench. Secondly, we saw that we must be born again in order to become love-inspired stewards. To be born again is to be born from above. The secret to the Christian life is not trying harder to be something that we are not, it is drawing the life of Jesus who is the perfect reflection of God the Father and having him live through us. Paul said for me to live is Christ and to die is gain. And then we saw that we need to learn to live that out by walking in the Spirit. To walk in the Spirit is to be propelled, it's to be changed from the inside out by the Spirit of Jesus. It's to have him point out to us the places where we don't have faith, it's to point out to us the places where we are greedy, it's to point out the places where it's all about me and not about God and not about other people and to allow him to change that. And as step by step I walk after the Spirit, I learn to trust the Father, I learn to put to death my own selfish inclinations and I become transformed, I become increasingly a love-inspired steward. And I may never attain it to a full hundred percent in this life, that's not the issue. The issue is God wants us by faith in Christ to move towards that. And so one good question to ask ourselves in terms of testing the validity of our faith is has my generosity, in terms of time talent and also treasures, has that changed, has it increased as I'm walking with Jesus. That's where we want to pick it up because what happens now when I start living this way, what starts happening when I learn to walk after the Spirit and I learn to put to death my selfish and my self-centered tendencies and I start learning to live by faith, seeing myself as a manager of God's goods instead of an owner. We'll see how far we get this morning but there's a number of things that flow out of that and the first is this, we will increasingly reflect the character of our Father who is in heaven. Notice that, we will increasingly reflect the character of our Heavenly Father. In Matthew chapter 5, the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gives us a very interesting teaching. Let me just read you a couple of verses here 43 to 48. You have heard that it was said love your neighbor and hate your enemy but I tell you love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his son to rise on the evil and the good and he sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that and if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that and then he ends with this, be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect. That's quite a statement isn't it? Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect. Now the word perfect there is the word telos in Greek, telios is another form of it. It means completion, it means maturity, it means perfection and what Jesus says there is that if you only love the people around you then you're no different from a Gentile because anybody can do that but he says the character of God is defined by indiscriminate generosity. He makes his rainfall on the just and on the unjust and the sun to shine on the good and on the bad. One of God's distinguishing characteristic is his incredible generosity. You see that generosity in the creation of the world, you see his generosity in how he provides for every living creature and of course most of all you see his generosity in what? The gift of his son. John 3 16 everybody knows the verse but really captures it. God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. God gave his son. That's the ultimate mark of his generosity and it's that generosity that God wants to see reproduced in your life and in my life it's not coincidental that here in 2nd Corinthians chapter 9 the passage that we read Paul ends with verse 15 thanks be to God for his indescribable gift. Our generosity whatever form that may be is rooted in the character of God and so what Jesus is saying in this particular passage is that as we grow as children of our Heavenly Father we increasingly begin to reflect his character of generosity. Paul echoes that same thought Ephesians chapter 5 the verses 1 & 2 he says be imitators, be imitators of God as dearly loved children and live a life of love just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. Love isn't just a feeling it is a giving of oneself as God the Father did and as Jesus did for your salvation and for my salvation. So one of the tests of growing in Christ is does my life increasingly reflect the character of my Father who is in heaven when people look at me when people look at you do they see a little glimmer a little glimmer of our Heavenly Father that's what God's after and that's what happens if by the Spirit we put to death the works of the flesh and by this Spirit we start putting on the new nature that we have in the Lord Jesus so that's one thing that happens the second thing that happens according to the passage before us is that our giving capacity grows our ability to give multiplies listen to the verses 8 10 and 11 as Paul develops this theme in the passage of our text he says God is able now notice particularly the letters in yellow here all grace abound to you so that in all things at all times having all that you need you will abound in every good work then he goes on to say in verse 10 now he will supply seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness you will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion and through us your generosity will result in Thanksgiving to go on this is the law of sowing and reaping that we've talked about earlier and that Paul mentions earlier in the passage whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly whoever sows generously will also reap generously and here the wisdom of God and the wisdom of the world are diametrically opposed to each other because wisdom in the world says first I must gather first I must make sure that all of my needs are met I must be very secure for my future and then maybe just maybe if I have something left over I will share it but only to the degree that it doesn't jeopardize my own sense of security we all think that way because that's how we operate naturally but in the kingdom of God you don't increase the store of your supply by sitting on it locking it down making sure that nobody can steal it you get it by investing it by sowing your seed and trusting that God will multiply it that is a teaching that runs throughout all of scripture Proverbs 11 24 puts it this way one man gives freely yet gains even more another withholds unduly but comes to poverty and then earlier on the Lord Jesus given it'll be given to you a good measure pressed down shaken together running over will be poured out into your lap for with a measure you use it will be measured to you as in faith and in obedience to the Holy Spirit not foolishly not with magical thinking not in order to try to manipulate God or use God to get rich you hear lots of those kind of schemes in Christian circles but as out of obedience to God he breaks the cycle of greed and selfishness in our hearts and an obedience to the Holy Spirit we step out then God promises to enlarge the harvest of our seed so that in every way we can be most generous as I said stands in opposition to worldly into intuitive thinking when we were on holidays Michelle and I had an opportunity to visit with an elderly cousin of hers who was celebrating her 80th birthday and this is a very godly woman and has been in health for quite a period of time and you know keeps asking the Lord to take her home and wondering why he doesn't seem to be in any hurry to do that but she is what's known as a prepper you heard of preppers I never heard of preppers until a couple of months ago somebody in the congregation here explained it to me a prepper is a person who expects the imminent collapse of our economic system and social structures and who therefore lays up treasures to make sure that they can be sustained during a time of economic collapse and so if you're part of the prepper movement and a number of of televangelists promoted strongly and sell products just coincidentally to help you get ready for those days then you you lay up a store of at least six months worth of food now there's nothing wrong with planning for the future you know even ants in the book of Proverbs lay up food in their storehouses and so on but whenever I hear a prepper talk then my next question is always what about your neighbors what's going to happen when your neighbors know you have food and they don't what's your Christian obligation and I had this conversation with somebody about another family that is preppers and I was told that that family had made up their minds that come hell or high water they weren't going to share their food with the other people around them makes good sense doesn't it if you're going to hold on to what you've got then you can't afford to share it but you know that's the kind of trouble war is made of isn't that true I mean if people know you have food and they don't have food they're gonna come after you and break into your house and they're gonna steal your food and probably kill you in that process now I'm not you know judging the preppers I'm not being light-hearted about it but when I heard that story it made me think of the let me get the name right the the Mully children's family in Kenya you know the children's choir they've been here and I remember when they were here not this last time but a couple years back Kenya where they are were in the midst of a terrible three-year drought some of you will remember the pictures the rivers were dried up the the crops were failing and the you know this organization at any given time has 3,000 kids in their care that they're trying to feed it's an incredible organization and they're totally dependent on a God's provision so they had to struggle with his question this drought is affecting not only us but it's also affecting our neighbors what does reflecting our Heavenly Father in this situation look like we've got barely enough food maybe not even enough food to feed our own children what about the community and I remember being so struck by their story that they made the declaration that they would choose to trust God to provide for them and not only for them but for the people of their community as I recall there were tens of thousands of people in the community that became dependent on them and they had to trust God for his provision not only for themselves but also for them now that is faith and that is believing that if I'm sowing my seed in obedience to the call of God on my life then God will bless it and he will give me what I need not only for myself but also for other people around me a lot of you've heard the story there's this traveler he's going through the desert he's run out of water he is absolutely parched with thirst when to his great amazement and surprise he comes along and meets up with one of these old pump wells in the middle of the desert you know y'all remember that one sitting next to the to the well to the pump was a little container with a note that says this container contains water and what you need to do if you want this pump to work is pour all the contents of this container into the well to prime it and then you will be able to supply your own needs and please make sure that you fill this container when you're done now I don't know about you what would you do when you are parched with thirst and here is what I know what I would do you know what I would do I would at least take a sip just in case it didn't work wouldn't you and isn't that how we think about the things of God you know like Ananias and Sapphire of old I'm gonna take a sip and hold it back just in case it doesn't work faith means stepping out in obedience to the call of God and learning to trust him that he will provide for us we're all familiar with that verse in Malachi chapter 3 verse 10 bring the whole tithe into the storehouse that there may be food in my house test me in this says the Lord Almighty and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it only place in scripture that I know of where we are invited to test the Lord and see if he will not be faithful to his promises so here's the challenge for you and for me if we want to increase our giving capacity and we're talking not just in the context of material goods but we often talk about time talent as well as treasure our capacity to give increases with giving you don't build muscles by not exercising them you don't learn to be an Olympic champion by lying in your bed and safeguarding your energy you grow by stepping into it and then learning in that process to become stronger in your faith and stronger in your resources so first thing that happens is that we will begin to reflect our Father who is in heaven second thing that happens is that our capacity to give our faith our ability our resources will multiply so that in all things and in all ways for every situation we will have more than abundance and then third thing to note in this particular passage then is that obviously other people are helped by our generosity notice how the text continues verse 12 this service that you perform is not only supplying the needs of God's people but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God let me talk just about that first part the service that you perform supplies the needs of God's people one of the biggest social issues in the world and you know this is the gap between the rich and the poor so that you're and generally speaking the world's economies are geared so that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer not always the case some rich people become poor some poor people become rich but generally speaking the poor become poorer and the rich become richer because that is a universal law of nature Jesus himself puts it this way whoever has will be given more and he will have an abundance whoever does not have even what he has will be taken from him whoever has will be given more whoever does not have even what he has will be taken from him doesn't sound very fair does it but it's the way the world works think of it in terms of debt why is debt something to be avoided because once you're in debt you're behind the eight ball and once you're behind the eight ball it's always costing you more compare that to if you have more than enough now when an emergency arises or a situation arises you can take advantage of that situation and you can make your investment because you have the resources to do it a good reason by the way to avoid debt like the plague the the borrower is always a slave to the lender and what happens in the world is that the gap between the rich and the poor creates huge social frictions because the rich are almost always a much smaller group than the poor I know you know in politics everybody's talking about the middle classes if everybody can be happy in between but the reality is the rich get richer and the poor get poorer when that gap becomes too big you get social unrest and you get social revolutions and so governments countries have a vested interest in trying to bridge the gap between the rich and the poor and without going into a lot of detail fundamentally there are two opposing approaches that governments use free enterprise government intervention you'll recognize the one as being the rallying cry of conservative party in Canada the Republicans in the US and the other to a considerable degree the Liberal Party of Canada and the Democratic Party of the US I know that simplifies things but for simplicity sake let's just say that is the free enterprise people say people should rise to the level of their competence or sink to the level of their incompetence and as people do better there will be a trickle-down effect and it will impact the people of the lower classes people who believe in government intervention say it doesn't really work because greed is to be found wherever you can find it and so we need government regulation to make sure that the poor are also looked after taxation is one of the ways in which we do it you see it with a recent decision on the part of the government to charge 15 percent tax on foreign homebuyers because the markets in Vancouver and in Toronto are going through the roof and our own people are being excluded from the market because of money coming in from places like Hong Kong and other places now it's not my purpose to you know talk extensively about an economic system other than to point out that neither of these two particular methods can ever totally solve the problem of the gap between the rich and the poor free enterprise left unchecked gives opportunity for the rich to become richer the fact that we have a lot of corporations in North America sitting on billions and billions of dollars that are not being invested into anything right now is a good example of that at the same time government intervention robs people of their initiative and creates a situation where people just get smarter about hiding their money and so you've heard you know all those discussions about the Panama Papers and all the offshore money that corporations are hiding from the tax man I have a nephew and I had quite the conversations with him over the holidays he is a judge for the CRA the Canada Revenue Agency and most of us don't love the Canada Revenue Agency so it was quite a conversation that he and I had because it's his job to judge whether taxpayers are being treated fairly or not by this particular organization and he you know he says you wouldn't believe how many stories you hear about the dog ate my paper or my house just burned down or my kids took off with my receipts and all of this kind of thing but here's the point that I'm trying to make the gap between the rich and the gap between the poor can only be addressed by a transformed change of the human heart isn't that true communism failed because communism tried to create equality in society by force free enterprise fails because human greed gets in the way government intervention fails because it robs people of the necessary initiative in order to get anywhere isn't I said it's not the time to talk about a biblical system of economics though I believe such a system exists in the Old Testament the year of Jubilee every 50 years your debts were canceled your slaves were set free God's provision for Israel that the rich would not infinitely get richer and the poor wouldn't infinitely get poorer everybody starts all over again so what I'm trying to say is this God wants to take you and me as his children he wants to have us rooted by faith in his generosity and he wants us to give generously from the heart not by force or by compulsion as Paul talks about in this passage but by our love motivation that freely gives from the heart and I believe that when the new creation comes and we're all deeply rooted in God's provision and God's love and both love and faith will have been perfected our hearts will overflow with generosity and the kingdom of God will come with great power and great glory now there's a lot more that I want to say about it we're gonna let it rest there but let's ask ourselves these questions then since coming to faith in Christ has there been growth in my understanding of stewardship have I learned to say no to my selfish desires to accumulate and to possess and own have I grown in my ability to see other people's needs or the needs of God's kingdom and when the Holy Spirit stirs within me do I find myself willing to step out by faith into those places where God challenges me so that I can grow in my understanding of stewardship and thus become increasingly a reflection of God the Father and if that's been difficult in your life then ask the Lord to show you what the place is in your life where you can take an incremental step by faith where you can pour the water into the pump to prime it to see if you can test God to see if he will not bless you to overflowing wouldn't it be neat in a church like this we're so blessed by God with our time talent and our treasures that we are so full of him that it flows out of us to bring life and light and healing and restoration to the whole community around us isn't that what it is to [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:35:46.880; remove through 00:35:52.000] belong to Jesus and to have God as our father [CUT] [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:35:52.000; resume after this marked segment]