Made to Worship // Worship Looks Like Generosity

Get a break.

But we'll be in uh second Corinthians chapter eight.

And has somebody ever approached you?

And the sole reason they approached you is because they want something from you.

All right.

It's like uh maybe you're at a coffee shop.

You're at Pete's coffee, not Starbucks, you're Pete's.

And somebody just walks up to you and they like give you their business card.

Like, why you why you give me your business card, man?

Like, you know, or or maybe somebody they they walk up and they small talk with you for a second at work or something, and then immediately they're like, What are you doing this Saturday?

And you're like, You're gonna ask me to help you move, aren't you?

Like, actually, I have plans right now.

And when somebody just approaches you for the sole reason of wanting something from you, it just kind of what do the kids say?

It gives you the ick.

And here's why I bring this up because in 2 Corinthians chapter 8, the Apostle Paul he encourages people to give financially.

2 Corinthians 8 · chapter mention

But then he says, even though I'm encouraging you to give, in 2 Corinthians chapter 8, he says, I'm not saying this as a command, which probably made everybody breathe a sigh of relief.

2 Corinthians 8 · chapter mention

Because nothing makes people more nervous than talking about money or giving in a church service, right?

That makes everybody nervous.

So the fact that Paul's like, hey, I'm having a conversation about this, but you don't have to give, which brings up the question to me if I don't have to give, then why should I give financially?

Let's think about it.

If I were to give, then there's a lot of stuff that I can't do.

Can't go on that weekend trip.

I can't buy that thing that Amazon's been recommending to me for the last six months.

I can't eat as much sushi as I want to eat because sushi's expensive, you know what I'm saying?

If I were to give, then I can't have this.

Like, I can't do everything I want to do.

I can't go everywhere, everywhere I want to go.

And Paul says that I don't have to give, so why should I give?

It's a fair question.

And Paul is about to answer the question in a surprising way, but also in an uncomfortable way.

Because Paul says when we give or don't give, it reveals something about us.

It reveals something about my heart.

It reveals what I trust, what I love, and what I actually believe about Jesus.

Giving isn't really about giving.

Giving is about my heart.

And Paul begins in 2 Corinthians chapter 8 by giving these exam an example of a group of people that they were poor, but they gave.

2 Corinthians 8 · chapter mention

And because they gave, they were an example of what generosity looks like.

So I want you to see it this morning.

It's in 2 Corinthians chapter 8.

2 Corinthians 8 · chapter mention

If you're ready for it, would you say amen?

Amen.

Paul says this.

Paul says, Hey, we want you to know, brothers and sisters.

So these are followers of Jesus.

Now, let's think about this.

He's talking to a group of people.

The book of the Bible is 2 Corinthians.

Corinthians, any idea the group of people that he's talking to?

He's talking to the bam, Corinthians, that's right.

Corinthians, he's saying, I want you to know Jesus followers.

So, brothers and sisters, so if you're not a Jesus follower, you don't gotta worry about it.

But if you are a Jesus follower, I want you to know about the grace of God that was given to the churches of Macedonia.

So Macedonia, that is a place, it's a region in northern Greece.

And there are actually two books of the Bible, two letters, Thessalon Thessalonians, and then also Philippians, was written to some of the churches in northern Greece.

So, Corinthians, I'm gonna tell you about these people in Macedonia.

Here's what he says in verse 2 He says, during a severe trial brought about by affliction, their abundant joy and their, what's that word, and their extreme poverty overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part.

They were super poor.

Now, this region, not only did they have economic challenges, but they were also ravaged by wars.

Also, the Roman government was in charge, and the Roman government would tax the snot out of these people.

Now, I don't know if it sounds familiar for a government to tax the snot out of people.

I don't know if that like sounds familiar to anybody in here.

Just don't look at the gross versus the net on your paycheck, right?

But these people had the snot taxed out of them.

In fact, the word extreme here, it means like as deep as the ocean.

This is how poor they were.

Like they were like poor in all caps.

Like beans and rice for dinner poor.

Like, before I buy my guacamole, I better check my bank account poor.

Like these people, they did not have a lot.

But it says that they still, they still had abundant joy, which really kind of hits a myth on the head that a lot of us have.

And here's the myth that only rich people can be happy.

And however you define rich, because we all define it a little bit different.

It's easy for us to think, oh, like if I was just rich, then I would be happy.

If I could just live in that house, in that place.

If I could go on any trip I wanted, oh, oh, oh, if I can just buy a self-driving brand new Tesla, then I would be happy.

But here's the reality: these people were still joyful.

And if you really think about it, how come we hear stories and watch videos of some of the wealthiest and famous people?

We watch their music video, all this stuff, and they share about how they were super rich, they were at the top of the world, and they still weren't happy.

You know, there's a bunch of research and several studies that have come out about happiness, and statistically, financially generous people tend to experience higher levels of happiness and life satisfaction than others.

And that's exactly what we see in 2 Corinthians chapter 8.

2 Corinthians 8 · chapter mention

But on the surface, you think, how could you have more life satisfaction?

How can you have higher levels of happiness if you can't have as much stuff?

Because stuff is what I think is gonna make me happy.

Because doing like I can do more things and like buy more stuff on Amazon if I could just uh but if I give, I can't do all that stuff.

Well, consider this.

You were made in the image of God, and God is a generous God.

So when we give, we're acting in consistency to how we have been created.

Think about this.

John 3 16, for God so loved the world that He gave.

So when we give, we are living in alignment with how we've been created.

And what God has done is God wired generosity into the human soul.

He wired it into the gener into the human soul.

And here's what I'm learning as I get older.

Some of you this morning reminded me in this past week that I'm getting older.

Some of you said that I'm 50 years old.

I was offended.

No, I'm not 50.

49.

No, I'm just kidding.

37.

Here's what I'm learning in my older years is that the most generous people, just kidding, are often not the people with the most, but the people who trust God the most.

The most generous people are not the people with the most, but the people who trust God the most.

I I experienced this firsthand.

When I was in college, there was a retired missionary who had spent a majority of his life, him and his wife, on the mission field of Japan, making Jesus known there.

And in his mid-60s, he retired.

And rather than retiring and spending the rest of his time on a golf course or fishing or hunting or whatever he liked to do, he made the decision that he was going to spend the rest of his days investing in the next generation of ministry leaders and the next generation of missionaries.

Which I just want to pause for a second and I want to say this for those of us in our church that might be a little older, whatever that looks like, you define it.

Is there a generation, there's a younger generation like me that's coming up behind you that that needs your investment.

And a way that you can live your life with purpose and meaning is to invest in the next generation.

A way you can live your life with meaning is to say, hey, here's a younger couple, here's a younger adult.

This is what I'm gonna do.

I'm actually gonna like meet them and just get to know them.

And I'm gonna say, hey, how can I pray for you?

And I'm gonna pray for them.

And I'm gonna follow up with them the next week and say, hey, I'm praying for you.

And in a in a biblical church, there's inner generations, right?

The older need the younger, and the younger need the older.

And I would say in a lot of environments, it's like segregated.

You have the young people hang out together, the older people hang out together, but this is what we need.

We need the the generation that's a little ahead of us to invest and get to know in the next generation.

And young generation, that's my generation.

What we need to do is we need to honor them and get to know them because you need them and we need each other.

That's what we need.

That's what we need.

And this missionary understood that.

So what he did was he became kind of like the campus grandpa.

Like this guy always had joy.

Everybody liked to be around him.

He was always happy.

And I sat in the class with him, and I was like 20 years old, and me and my knucklehead friends were sitting there, and he was actually teaching this very passage, 2 Corinthians chapter 8.

2 Corinthians 8 · chapter mention

He was talking to us about this, and he's like, guys, he's like, the world says you gotta have more stuff to be happy, you gotta be rich to be happy.

He's like, look at these people, and we're like, Yeah, okay.

He's like, I'm gonna prove it to you that you can be generous and there's joy.

We're like, prove it to us.

He said, Me and my wife, years and years ago, we made the decision that every year we were gonna increase what we give by one percent.

Now, my 20-year-old self is sitting there in the seats, and I'm thinking, this guy's old.

I'm like, what like I'm I'm doing the math.

I'm like, hold on, 1% like every year.

And he said, We give over 50% of our income away to God's local church and to worldwide missions.

And all of us sat there and were like, what?

Because we know his joy and the most joyful man on that college campus was also the most generous man on that college campus.

Because financial generosity and joy tend to travel together.

Paul is talking about the generosity of these people, and this is what he says in verse 3.

He says, I can testify that according to their ability, this is these people in Macedonia, and even beyond their ability, of their own accord.

These people are giving beyond even what makes sense to them.

It says, he says in verse number four, they begged us earnestly for the privilege of sharing in the ministry to the saints.

Now, what this offering was was there were some followers of Jesus in the city of Jerusalem that had experienced a famine.

And so Titus was going around, and Titus was saying, Hey, we need to receive an offering to help these people over here.

The churches at Macedonia, these Jesus followers, they were like begging to be a part of this offering.

Paul's like, y'all might want to sit this one out.

Like, y'all are beans and rice for dinner poor.

Y'all don't have any money.

Like, y'all are just trying to like make ends meet.

And the churches in Macedonia are like, nope, we are gonna be a part of this offering.

We are, look at that word, they begged us.

And verse 5 says, and when they gave, it was not just as we had hoped.

Instead, they gave themselves first to the Lord and then to us by God's will.

So before they ever gave up their finances, they gave their heart.

Amen.

Man, there's this passage in Matthew.

I don't know if y'all ever read Jesus talking, and you're like, man, Jesus, you're getting all up in my business.

It's making me uncomfortable.

Y'all ever read, y'all, you know?

And sometimes I'm like, I'm like reading about stuff Jesus said, and I'm like, yeah, I just want to skip past that one.

I don't really like that one.

Like, you stepping on my toes, Jesus.

Let's go to uh let's just go to the love places of the Bible.

I like those, right?

And one of those places for me is Matthew chapter 6.

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

Jesus talks about financial giving.

He says that giving shows what my heart is and like what I actually worship.

And Jesus says that as a pastor, I can't stand up here and I can't say, hey guys, I'm spiritual.

Because I'm preaching God's word.

Because I read the Bible every day this week.

Because I I I prayed for you.

I I love you, so I'm spiritual.

Jesus says, Hey, Pastor Nate, I'll see your heart when I look at your finances.

Relax about that, Jesus.

Jesus says, Hey, Pastor Nate, I'll see what you actually worship.

I don't care if you got your hands raised over there.

I'll see what you actually worship by looking at what your bank account says.

Verse 6, he goes on.

He says, We urge Titus that just as he had begun, he was the guy that was receiving the offering, so he should also complete among you this act of grace.

Verse 7, now as you excel in everything, in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in all diligence, and in your love for us, excel also in this act of grace.

So this is what we know about these people.

They are followers of Jesus.

They were growing spiritually, they were growing in their faith, in their speech.

They had learned, like, hey, there's some certain words we probably shouldn't say.

They had learned that, like, they were growing their knowledge of God, of like who God was.

They were diligent in service, in all diligence, they were serving, they were diligent.

But Paul says this, listen, listen.

You need to excel also in this act of grace.

The act of giving.

He says, I'm nudging you in this way.

And then he says that part in verse eight.

He says, I'm not saying this is a command.

I'm not saying you have to.

Rather, by means of the diligence of others, get this.

I am testing the genuineness of your love.

You don't have to do this.

But I'm just testing like the genuineness of the love that you have.

And then he gets to the motivation, the heart of giving in verse 9.

He says this.

He says, For you know, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

That though he was rich, for your sake he became poor.

So that by his poverty you might become rich.

Hey Corinthian people, your motivation to give is not.

If you give, you're gonna be filled with joy.

That's not the motivation.

Hey Corinthian people, if you give, you'll get a really good tax write-off.

It's gonna help.

April's coming along next year.

No, no, here's your motivation.

Here's your motivation.

The grace of Jesus Christ.

Of everything that he has given to us.

We give because God has given everything to us.

Hey Corinthian people, do you remember?

Do you remember that Jesus was in heaven with splendor and glory, majesty, and the worship of the angels?

And he came down to this broken, jacked-up, beat-up world filled with sin, and was willing to enter this world and experience rejection and betrayal and beating and crucifixion for you.

And because he gave, you can have eternal life.

And because he gave his life, you can be a child of God.

And because he gave his life, you're accepted by God.

And because he gave his life, there's no condemnation, you can walk in freedom.

Because of his grace.

Do you remember that he was rich but he became poor?

So his poverty, you can be rich.

This is the motivation for giving.

This is not I give because I have to.

This is not I give because, well, this is what I don't know.

No, no, no.

I give because he's given everything to me.

This isn't the like, well, you know, if you don't give, like you're gonna get zapped.

If you don't give, no, no, I give out of a response to what he's done for me.

This is the motivation.

And in this matter, verse 10, I'm giving advice because it's profitable for you who began last year not only to do something, but also to want to do it.

Now, also finish the task so that just as there was eager desire, like these people were planning on giving, they wanted to give, there was a desire at one point.

There may also be a completion to what you say you want to do according to what you have.

Verse 12 if the eagerness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what a person has, not according to what he doesn't have.

Paul says, give.

Now when we we think about giving, giving can be scary.

Because for a lot of us, we find a lot of security in our money.

We find a lot of uh just peace by looking at our bank account.

By thinking how much money we have and and the idea of giving, it's almost like we don't we're losing security.

It's fear, it's scary.

Like, how can we do this?

I'm gonna share a story, and I'm gonna just share a little personal struggle that I've had with this, and I'm gonna be a little vulnerable, and that's okay because uh because we're just family here.

And just I feel what you feel when it comes to giving.

So Angela and I uh we have a little bit of debt, and I literally hate debt.

Like I am as anti-dead as they come.

Like Dave Ramsey would probably tell me to calm down.

I'm like, I am I'm anti-debt.

And from a human perspective, what can make sense to me is to say, hey, I'm gonna be a good steward, and I'm gonna focus on paying all of the debt off.

I've looked at numbers on my bank account here, and I'm like, man, like, if I didn't give, then this could go down quicker.

And I could even justify it.

I'm being a good steward, Lord! It's been like, ugh.

What do you do when you know what God wants you to do sometimes doesn't make sense when it comes to human logic?

Angela and I, we made this decision together that no matter what, we're gonna give 10% of our income to God's local church.

Like, no matter what, like, this is what we're gonna do.

And we have said that this isn't just like a good idea for us, but this is like an actually like a conviction for us.

And I kind of want to give a testimony because over the last six months, we have given and we have seen as much debt paid off as I was hoping to have paid off an entire year through some unexpected things and different things have happened.

And honestly, I can't fully explain it other than to say this when you put God first in your giving, God's gonna take care of all the rest.

He's gonna take care of all the rest.

And what I've learned from me is that giving isn't about how much I give, but about me trusting God with everything I have.

Our income might go down, but what giving is about, it's about me saying, God, I trust you with everything.

And can I encourage you to trust God with your giving?

Can I encourage you?

Some of you are like, Pastor, maybe like, I wanna, I wanna like grow in my faith.

I'm telling you, you want to grow in your faith and trust God, give.

It's gonna make you trust God.

You're gonna be like, ah, God, I don't know how's it gonna happen?

God, I'm gonna give something to you.

When you give, it's like, God, your first place in my life.

And listen, I want to encourage you to give.

But if you're gonna give, this is what you're gonna have to do.

Number one, you're gonna have to make a plan to give.

It's one thing to hear a message, you're gonna be like, oh, I should probably do that.

That's a good idea.

But what we do is we we gotta make a plan to give.

I want to get super practical, and this is description.

For me and Angela, this isn't necessarily prescription for what you need to do, but this is how we plan.

We have a budget, we have a little good old-fashioned budgeting app that we use every month.

And on our budgeting app, what we do is we have giving to God's local church, and then we give to bless some people and do some other different things in there as far as financial generosity.

But we we plan every month to budget, it's in our budget.

This is what we do.

And then also, what we've done, like many of you have done, is on sassoonchurch.com, we set up recurring giving.

The reason why we do this is because I can be spiritual for like three seconds, set up recurring giving, and then the internet takes care of the rest.

It's a beautiful thing.

And if you're gonna give and like actually say, I want to follow Jesus in this area, you have to make a plan.

And then number two, you need to act on that plan at the beginning of each month.

I would encourage recurring giving, but another way is to say, at the beginning of every month, I'm gonna act on this plan.

So it's not like Lord, after Costco, and after Amazon, and after Target, and after Pete's coffee.

If I still got a little something, something, here we go.

No, this is what it is is Lord, Lord, Lord, you are first in my life.

You are Lord of all.

And here's what's gonna happen it's gonna train your heart.

And I'm also gonna say, too, I'll be honest, at first, this is gonna be hard.

And what it's also gonna teach you to do is it's gonna teach you to trust God because few things make us trust God, like giving of our finances.

Because at the end of the day, financial generosity is about trust.

It's not like God, God's trying to get something from me, like the church is trying to get something from me.

God's taking care of us, He's taking care of us for a long time.

We're good.

Like by God's grace, God takes care of his church.

God's not up in heaven saying, Oh my goodness, if they don't give, heaven's gonna go bankrupt.

Come on, y'all.

This is what it is.

This is what it is.

Giving is something God wants for you, not something God wants from you.

And when we understand the grace of God, and the grace of God gets into our hearts, it's gonna happen is generosity is gonna flow from our life.

When grace gets in our hearts, generosity flows from our life.

So today, here's what I would encourage you and challenge you to do if you're a follower of Jesus to learn, to give, and be generous.

Let's have a word of prayer together.