The Greatest Giver | 2 Corinthians 8:1-9:15

Remember this, whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously

will also reap generously. Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give,

not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver, and God is able to bless

you abundantly so that in all things, at all times, having all that you need, you will abound

in every good work. As it is written, they have freely scattered their gifts to the poor,

their righteousness endures forever. Now he who supplies 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 enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion

and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.

This service that you perform is not only supplying the needs of the Lord s people,

but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God. Because of the service by which

you have proved yourselves, others will praise God for the obedience that accompanies your confession

of the gospel of Christ and for your generosity in sharing with them and with everyone else. And in

their prayers for you, their hearts will go out to you because of the surpassing grace God has

given you. Thanks be to God for this indescribable gift. Thanks, Tom. Thanks, Matt.

You might know that myself and my family lived in Vanuatu for some time and we did that

for about a decade while I was teaching in Bible colleges there. But you might not know that about

10 years before that I worked in Vanuatu doing community development work. And what I did

in that time, one of the things that I did was to take groups of volunteers who came from

Australia and Canada and from Vanuatu as well and we'll take groups and go and do community

development projects in remote villages. And we got all kinds of people like we had people from

Canada coming to us who had never swum in salt water before. So it's a first. We had people

who had come away and never done their own washing before, let alone visited remote villages and

lived in a different culture. So there were all kinds of new experiences for the people,

these young people. They were young people that we had with us and it was great. It's sort of like

short-term mission for not Christian people. Like if you can imagine that, that's what we're doing.

And this one time we, as a young woman who was out in a village, one of our volunteers and the

women of the village, they took her up to what they call the gardens which is like your family

farm or your personal plot of land where you grow stuff. And so they're taking her out to do their

work and show her and so they've dug all these holes and then the women start cutting up sweet

potatoes and throwing them into these holes. And this woman, this young woman, this volunteer is like

don't do that. She's crying and getting them to stop doing that because to her they're taking good

food and throwing it into the ground. She couldn't figure out why that was going on. Obviously she

never understood much about farming and she didn't understand that you can grow sweet potatoes from

chunks of sweet potato and putting it in the ground. And we grow potatoes like that, right? If you're

growing potatoes in the backyard and yams grow like that. You can grow them from runners and other

things but she was looking at it thinking that these were kind of, she's from Canada, these are

kind of starving natives and for some weird ritual they're throwing their food in the ground and

was trying to stop them. Paul who wrote our passage didn't live in the jungles of the South

Pacific. He lived in the Mediterranean. The people there didn't farm sweet potatoes or yams. They

farmed grains like wheat or barley. But the principle's the same. You have to, in order to farm, you

have to outlay some of the good things. You have to outlay some of your food and plant it in order

to get a harvest back. And I think we can identify with that young woman in a way who didn't want

to see good yams or good sweet potatoes being thrown away. It is a strange way of farming.

And perhaps sometimes our giving feels a bit like that. It's certainly hard. We find it hard to give

our possessions or our money away. And I think it is hard because in our lives and in our culture,

our security comes from our finances. Like as opposed in other cultures where our security comes

from our family or our village connections. And so it's hard for us to face the topic that we have

this morning which is giving. It's also hard because it's awkward. It's something that we don't

talk about. It's like the topic that's kind of taboo in our culture, our personal finances.

So before I get going too much, I want to address just a little bit of that awkwardness by

telling you where I'm coming from in speaking to you on the topic.

Kind of the assumptions behind what I'm going to say. And so then if the assumptions that I'm

making are kind of different to where you are, then you can kind of adjust a little bit. At least

you know where I'm coming from. So the first thing I want to say is that I'm assuming that we all

understand that there is a need to give. That that's part of the Christian life.

That as Michael talked about on the first sermon in this series about the Great Commission,

there is a Great Commission that the greatest commission ever has been given to us as a church.

And in order to do that, we're going to need money to do that. So I take it that that's kind of a

given. This is not kind of, you know, I take it that that's what we know already. This is not trying

to raise any money. You know, I don't take any money out of what the the church has not at this

stage anyway. And this is not here to try and do it. You know what I'm saying? Michael gave it to

me and that's a good thing, you know, to get somebody else to preach on this. It's not Michael,

your pastor standing up saying give me more money or something. And it's kind of worked out nice that

he's not even here. So we can talk about it without him. The second thing that I want to kind of say

that I'm assuming about us this morning is that giving is actually something that you want to do.

So I'm not here trying to tell you to do something that you don't want to do. I feel that my job is

here talking about something that we all want to do, but we actually find really hard and we kind of

need to know about why we need encouragement. And that's kind of made, you know, it's appropriate

to be reading this passage because that's how Paul felt about the Corinthians. And that's kind of in

that background that we read. He's not sort of saying, you know, you guys are tight and you need

to give more. He's saying you are generous and he's thanking them for their generosity and wants to

kind of just shore up that gift that they've already committed to. If you look back in

verses one and two of chapter nine, he says, there's no need for me to write to you about this

service to the Lord's people. This service is the giving for I know you're eagerness to help

and I have been boasting about it to the Macedonians telling them that since last year you in Achaia

were ready to give. So he's not telling them, he's not telling them off, he's encouraging them.

So the passage is a bit kind of difficult because we find it hard, it's difficult because it's a

bit awkward. But I also want to recognize at the outset that it's not an easy passage. Like

there are parts of the Bible that are harder than others and we're going to look specifically at

verses chapter nine verses six to fifteen and a lot of what's said there is actually quite hard

to understand. But I kind of want to introduce that by saying, look the key to getting it and

unpacking all of that passage, it becomes a lot easier when we realize that almost everything

that Paul says there is somehow based on his picture that he introduces at the start about

sowing and harvesting. So if we kind of use that sowing and harvesting as a way to kind of come to

it, it makes each of the little parts of it become a lot easier. And when we see that, we see that

the big takeaway, the big idea that Paul wants us to get or wants the Corinthians to get is that

where to give like we're sowing seed, right? So we give like we're sowing seed and that means that

we give abundantly because that's the best way to sow, all right? And that's the key principle that

that Paul gives it and he gives it in the first verse and that kind of guides everything after

that. So it's given in verse six, remember this. So remember this is like take note of this, listen

to this. He says whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly and whoever sows generously will

also reap generously, right? So that comes back to the sweet potatoes in the whole. If you plant

lots, then you get a lot back, right? The more you put out, the more you get back. Now that picture

that Paul uses there can easily be abused and frequently is. And so we need to get that off

our chest right away. We need to be clear that nowhere, anywhere in the passage or anywhere

else does Paul say that if you give more money, you get more money back, right? It's not working

like that. That's not his picture. And certainly at grace, we're not suggesting that there's anything

particularly special about giving to grace, that there will be any particular financial blessing

that will come back in return. So we need to get into the passage then and see what Paul means by

this principle. How does he apply it? What's this principle of sowing and harvesting? And what does

it say about our giving? And as a way of doing this, I'm going to note three things about sowing,

the way that Paul discusses the idea of sowing in the passage, and then three things about harvesting.

And the first thing to note about sowing is that you can sow as much as you like, right?

So you see that in verse six, just in our first verse, whoever sows sparingly, whoever sows generously,

it's not you must do this. It's just this is what happens to the one who does so generously, right?

And then he kind of spells that out in verse seven. He says, each of you should give what you've

decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion. So God invites you to decide

what you're going to give, right? We're not under the law, we're under grace, and under grace we

are free to respond to the gospel. God has given to us richly, right? He is established in the

gospel, he's established an eternal kingdom, and now we are free to buy into that kingdom as much

or as little as we want. So give freely as God has given to you, don't be bullied into giving,

right? God is inviting you into his joy of giving, and the reason for that in part is

spelled out in the next verse, or in the next part of the same verse, so we're still in verse

seven. It says, for God loves a cheerful giver, right? God loves it when we take joy in our giving.

Now my grandma, grandma on my father's side, passed away recently. She was well into her

90s at the time, and quite recently before she passed away, I had a chat to her about her

upbringing and her experiences of church throughout her life, and so she told me about when she was

a little girl, which was really when she had to go to church, and so on that side, our family,

or her family really, has Scottish heritage from the Scots, and so when she was a little girl,

her and her sister got sent along to the Presbyterian church, right? Because that's what you did.

They sent along the kids to Sunday school, not sure the parents went to church, but that's what

you did in those days, so you get your kids a bit of that good morality, or maybe you just get an hour

at home. But anyway, she got sent off, and she was telling me that when she got sent to

Sunday school, she had a penny, right? So this is back in the, would have been in the 1920s, I think,

and got to do a bit of maths there, but that would be about right, and so she's got a penny,

and when she went to Sunday school, she had to put the penny in the box, right? They sent

her like a box around, and everyone had to put their penny in, and she didn't want to put her penny

in, right? That's, like, she did not want to put her penny in, and, you know, talk about holding a

grudge. Nearly 90 years later, she's still bitter about being forced to put her penny in the box

at Sunday school in the Presbyterian church in Melbourne when she was a kid, right? My grandma

was clearly not a cheerful giver. Now, I tell you that because it's worth understanding how we

shouldn't use that verse, right? So you can't then say to grandma, you have to put your penny in the

box, and you better enjoy it, right? That's like saying that you've got to do a punishment, and

you have to enjoy it, right? Which is what some of my teachers kind of implied to me when I was

a kid, and you're kind of like, well, you can give me a punishment or I can have fun, but I can't

do both of those things together, right? And that's not how we want to use it in our own thinking,

in our own church. It's not like, you know, you in row two, they're seat five, you did not smile as

the bag came around. So it's not telling us that we have to feel happy when we don't want to, so

what does it mean? And Paul spells it out for us, and he spells it out in the next verse, and this

is the second point about sowing. God enables us to give so that we will join in his joy, right?

That's, he is giving to us, he's enabling us, he's blessing us, so that we can join in him. He likes

to give, he's the generous giving God, he's the gracious and merciful God, and he wants us to

enjoy what he enjoys. It's like saying, I have an ice cream, right? Here's some money so that you

can buy an ice cream too, right? So that we can enjoy ice cream together because ice cream's awesome,

and to God giving is awesome. He loves it. Look at verse eight, it says, and God is able to bless

you abundantly so that in all things, at all times, having all you need, you will abound in every good

work, and the good work he's talking about there is the work of giving, right? So God blesses us,

we have all that we need so that we can do good with what we have, and if we didn't get it there,

it's more clear in verse 11. He says, now he who supplies the seed to the sower, right? So who,

like if you're sowing, like if the image of sowing is the image of you giving, you're giving, right?

You're sowing, but who gave you the seed to sow? Who gave that? Well, God gave that to you. So he

who supplies the seed to the sower, that's God and the bread of the food, it's God who provides for us,

will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge your harvest of righteousness.

So God is able to do that. He is able to give to you and supply to you so that you're able to be

generous. He gives us extra so that we have extra to give, that's the purpose of blessing us richly.

So if you're blessed in material ways, that was God being generous with you, it wasn't you, it was

God being generous with you, and he did that so that you can be generous with others. We have a

thing as Christians, right? So maybe this is not you, but maybe it's a Christian thing,

and you know, you've just had like a big spend, okay? So you know, you bought your big, you know,

you bought your house or your car or you put the extension in or whatever you did, and then you're

kind of showing another Christian your thing, or that you know, they're in your house or whatever,

and then you get that, you get kind of a bit of a feeling, a bit of a guilty feeling, like

maybe the house was a bit over the top or you didn't need to do that extension or whatever or,

you know, and then you want to sort of cover it a little bit, you want to sort of, you know,

you damp it down a bit, and so you say, God has blessed me with this house, right? Oh, God has

blessed me richly with this, you know, as if you haven't really been involved in the decision-making

that led to that, as if you sort of just woke up one morning and it's like, well, there's a yacht

in the driveway, what do you know, God has blessed me with a yacht, you know, it's just great, isn't

it? You know, that's the way that it is, you know, as if God is giving us stuff for our own

private pleasure. It's like, you know, mum and dad gave us money to go down to the shop to get

bread and milk, and we come back with bubblegum, right? But look again at verse 8, it says, God

is able to bless you abundantly so that in all things at all times, having all that you need,

right, so you've got what you need, you will abound in every good work, right? He gave it to you

so that you can be generous, that was the point, okay? So your abundance isn't so that you can get

good stuff, it's so that you can do good stuff with it, right? It's really nice to,

to give someone an ice cream, isn't it? Like, it's pleasurable to give someone that.

Grandparents just love it, right? Grandparents just, who's a grandparent, right? It just,

yeah, you love it, you know you do, right? It seems to me that you can't take a grandparent

anywhere without them wanting to buy some little kid an ice cream. Like, if they didn't have any

little kids, they would just buy ice cream for random kids, and that's kind of what God's doing.

He's not just, not just giving you an ice cream, what he's doing is he says,

I'm gonna give you enough for two ice creams, right? So that you can enjoy buying an ice cream for

somebody else. Okay, so we talked about sewing in Paul's picture of sewing and harvesting.

We saw firstly that God leaves it to us to give what we like and secondly that he enables us

to give so that we will enjoy it, so that we will join in his joy of giving. And the third thing

that we see in the sewing is that this giving is a good work that arises from the gospel,

right? It in itself is a good work, we've said that, but this good work comes from the gospel,

and this is spelled out in verse 13. It says, because of the service by which you have proved

yourselves, others will praise God for the obedience that accompanies your confession

of the gospel of Christ, right? So he describes our giving there. There's a way that he describes

our giving and he describes it as the obedience that accompanies your confession of the gospel of

Christ, right? So as we said before, we're not under law, we're under grace. God has acted

in an incredibly generous way towards us in the gospel. He has sent his only son to die that we

can have everlasting life, that we can be part of this glorious eternal kingdom. And so in obedience

to that kingdom that we've become a part of, we can act generously towards others just as

God has acted generously towards us. And in that way, we confess the gospel by reflecting it in

our own lives. Like that shows the gospel, it demonstrates something in the gospel by being

generous to others. It shows who God is to the world. So first we saw that God leaves it to us,

secondly we saw that God enables us so that we can join in His joy, and thirdly we saw that

it is a good work that arises out of and reflects the gospel. So it's God's will that we give freely

and we give freely because God enabled us to and we give because God has given freely to us.

Okay, look at the last verse, thanks be to God for His indescribable gift. So the series that

we're going through is the greatest, the greatest is the greatest that and it's the greatest giver.

The greatest giver is God, He's the great giver. We just join in His joy in doing that.

But what about the harvest? What about the crop that is produced by all this kind of gracious

giving or this gracious sowing? Well firstly notice that the harvest is described in verse 10

as a harvest of righteousness. Okay, so just as it's a good work as we've just said, it's an

act of obedience. So just as we're kind of sowing in goodness, then it's a harvest in goodness,

in righteousness. It doesn't mean that our righteous, sometimes we might get a little bit

caught up there because we know that we're saved because of having righteousness. So it's not talking

about the righteousness, we don't win our righteousness in front of God in judgment. That is not one

through our giving. That's not our righteousness at all. The righteousness that we have in judgment

is Christ's righteousness. What it means is that it is a right act of proving and that proves and

demonstrates that we are saved members of God's family and that we're acting accordingly. We're

acting like right members. And that's what Paul says in verse 13 when he says, because of the service

by which you have proved yourselves, right? In this act it proves, it demonstrates our

righteousness. It comes out of the good work that we do because of the gospel. Our giving confesses

Christ and proves, it shows that Christ is Lord of our lives. We're not Lord, our own wants and

desires aren't Lord. Christ is our Lord, His kingdom is what's important. And as a right follower of

Christ, we produce a harvest of righteous deeds. But what are these deeds? And this is our kind of

our second point in the harvest. So firstly, there's a harvest of righteousness. Secondly, in verses

12 and 13, our giving results in prayers of praise to God. So through giving, actually we fulfill

our entire purpose in life. Our purpose in life is to glorify God and in giving it results in that

praise being given up to God. So verse 12 says that it's overflowing in many expressions of

thanks to God. And then in verse 13 it says, others will praise God for the obedience that

accompanies your confession of the gospel. So others are praising God because of our giving.

All right, so our giving is like a prayer machine that is just cranking out praise for God.

All right, and that happens as we give. We don't know always the people that our money goes to.

We might be giving in a number of different contexts. But the work that gets done through that,

that somebody receives something, whether it's receiving some money through that or receiving

food or something that they need through that, or whether it's receiving the ministry. You know,

when we give towards ministries that go and teach the gospel or preach it to people on the streets

of Armadale or overseas, we might never see those people. But those people, when they receive it,

when that gospel is believed, then they're praising God. And that's through our giving. So

it creates this wonderful righteous act through what we've done. So it is an act of righteousness.

Secondly, it results in praises. And then thirdly, it's an act of fellowship that brings God's people

together. So you'll notice in verse 12 that it is supplying the needs of the Lord's people.

So we might have gathered from reading chapter eight and perhaps from other places that

Paul is at the moment when he's writing this part to the church in Corinth. He's organizing

a collection. It's actually, it takes this collection that he's going about from places

and preparing places to give. In this case, he's writing a letter to kind of shore that up. And

later people are going to be coming through to collect this money. And then this occupies three

years of Paul's life and his ministry, not that he's not doing other things at the same time,

but this is a big deal. And what he's doing is he's collecting money for Christians in Judea.

So they're in kind of Greek areas in Corinth, Macedonia, and the Jewish Christians in Judea

are facing drought. And so he's collecting money, which acts as this incredible sense of solidarity

between the Gentile Christians in places further north and the Jewish Christians in Judea.

And he says in verse 13 that, in their prayers to you, their hearts will go out to you because of

the surpassing grace God has given to you. So their hearts will go out to these other churches,

just as the people in Corinth, their hearts will be going out to these other believers. And as I

said before, in our situations, we may never know the people that this is, that our money is going

out to. And they would, the people in Corinth, very few of them, maybe one of them would have

accompanied that money on this trip. The rest of them won't get to meet that. And yet they are

brought into fellowship by this incredible act of giving as they, the hearts go out to each other,

they're bonded together in this, this kind of universal church, but also that through their

prayers going to God, they're kind of really spiritually joined together in their act of giving.

And so in terms of our harvest, Paul has talked about it in different ways. Our giving results,

or is a demonstration of our righteousness. And it is a real and practical confession of

Christ as we do that. It results in God being glorified as we pray and give thanks for what

God has done through those people. And thirdly, it results in God's people being brought together

across geographical and political and cultural barriers. So do not let any shysters tell you

that giving to them and their private jet will somehow get you 10 times your money back.

Right? It is not about you. It's not about your pocket. It is about God's glory. Where's the harvest?

The harvest is in glory going to God. That's what our giving gives. That's what it produces.

That's the big idea that we've been talking about throughout. That's the idea of sowing and reaping.

We sow abundantly in a generous and sacrificial way because of the great harvest that it produces.

And this harvest is in righteousness. So in closing, I want to give some really,

kind of bring this together in some practical comments or suggestions about giving, about

how we can actually do that in our own lives. So the first thing is to be thoughtful about your

giving. So we've read that we should give what we have decided in our hearts to give. So just that

line, that makes us think, that implies that the person has thought about it. They've decided in

their heart. Like it's a pre-decided thing that they're going to be doing that leads to this

giving. It's not kind of chucking in the plate whatever happens to be in the wallet

at the end of the week. And that's kind of like the way that you might give on the street sometimes

if somebody asked you for money or if they're passing a bucket round for surf lifesavers or

whatever and you sort of pull out your thing and you're kind of hoping there's not a 50 in it because

that's going to be awkward. But that's not what's kind of going on here. If you're giving

what's decided in your heart, you've made a decision. And if giving is as good as what Paul says it

is, if it's a harvest of righteousness bringing praise to God, then we want to be strategic about

it across the whole of our lives. So that means that your giving needs to be a part of your major

life decisions. It's not the afterthought that fits into your life. It's actually got to be

embedded in the way that we decide to live our lives. It's got to be a part of decisions like

what house to buy. I think you can say that's radical. But really, I mean, is it? Should that

be that radical? Like you need to think about it. So maybe you're like buying a house and

you're thinking about like I could live in this house here and I need such and such a mortgage

to do that or I could live in this house here and I need such and such a mortgage to do that.

And maybe those two places aren't the same. And maybe one, I'm not saying this is the only

factor, but maybe one of the factors in that that you need to think through is which of these

allows me to be generous in the way that I give. Right? So that I'm not looking after me first and

then whatever's left over kind of comes away. But it's actually embedded into those decisions,

embedded into all, I mean, it's not talked about picked on houses, but you know, in all kinds of

ways in life, we have to make conscious decisions about what we do, what work we do, how we spend

our time and our money and our resources. And we need to build giving into that right from the

base, right from the start. So we need to be really thoughtful about the way that we give. Secondly,

give your best to God. Okay, give your best to God. So this is an Old Testament principle.

You'll see it throughout the Old Testament that the first one is the one that goes to God. So you

sacrifice the firstborn of your flock, right? So you've got your cow, it's finally it's given birth

and that you want to build your herd, right? So the first one, like that's the one you want it to

grow up and breed again so that the herd grows. You don't know if there's a second one coming,

the first one's the one that goes to God, not the second, not the third, not the fourth, not the

last one that you don't care about because you've already got a big herd. The first one goes to God,

that's the principle, all right? And if you think about like, you know, when they made a sacrifice

of that, it was it always, you know, you read it throughout, throughout, it's over and over again

without blemish. You don't give the dodgy one away and keep the good one for breeding.

Give the good one away. So I was explaining this to in a Bible study to, I had a farmer,

an old guy, a retired farmer from the wheat belt and I was looked in the Old Testament

and talking about that and he said, he said, oh, well that really makes sense of what we used to

do in like whatever town it was that he was farming. And he said that, that when they, he was a

wheat farmer and he said that when they, they took the harvest and then you take it in and it got

something, something happened to it when, so I don't know, farming stuff. But anyway, it ends up in

bags of wheat, right? And he said though, the first bags that came through, they were for the church,

right? You didn't get all your wheat and then you sort of said later what you're going to do. The

first one, and the farmer never took them and never got the money for that and then gave the

money to the church. The first bags were just marked in the mill, they were going to the church

getting sold for that. And that's right, like those wheat farmers, like we've got a lot to learn

from those guys, that they're getting it right. That's the principle in action. Okay? So we need

to be thoughtful. We need to be careful and give the best to God and that's going to require us

being thoughtful and strategic. Thirdly, I want to say don't be too hard on yourself. You know,

especially if you feel that your giving is inadequate and that you don't have the amount

that you would like to be giving to all the wonderful things that are out there. Don't feel

that you've somehow missed out or that you've been passed by. So remember the widow, right?

Remember the widow and Paul, sorry, Jesus sees the widow put, you know, just this one little coin

in the offering, right? It gives the penny, right? Back to the penny, yeah. And Jesus says that she

has given more than all the others. So your small gift is an enormous gift eternally. So don't feel

like you're missing out and don't compare yourself to others, you know? What you give is your business.

Jesus says give so that your left hand doesn't know what your right hand is doing. You worry

about you, not about other people. Don't be too hard on yourself. Fourthly, don't be too easy on

yourself, right? So don't give yourself a free pass, which is easy to do. You know, we say, well,

my circumstances are difficult, you know? And so I don't need to give, you know? There's other people

that can do that, but you know, that's not me. And you sort of say to yourself, well, one day, you

know, when everything kind of gets in order, then I'll start to give. That's the time that I'll do it.

Well, it seems to me that when those people get money, they still find it hard to give. So if you

don't start now, you're never going to. So don't worry about the amount. Worry about being strategic

with what you do have. And lastly, please just remember that giving is eternal and things are

temporary. All right? Let's be people who seek our treasure in heaven. Let me pray. Heavenly Father,

it is amazing what you give us. It's amazing that you've given us your son that we might have life.

And it's amazing that you give us the incredible privilege and joy of joining in being like you,

that you include us in what you're doing in the world and one way is that we can share in your

joy of giving. And you've made it. You've made the whole thing. You've set it all up in the way that

you treat us and deal with us and enable this, that you've made it so that we can join you in

being generous. And we pray that you soften our hearts and that you make it, that we might truly

experience that joy now and forever. Amen.