Planning for Generosity

The sermon text for today is from 1 Corinthians chapter 16, verses 1 through 4, and 2 Corinthians chapter 8, verse 16 through chapter 9, verse 5.

1 Corinthians 16:1–4 2 Corinthians 8:16

Please listen as I read God's word.

Now about the collection for the Lord's people.

Do what I told the Galatian churches to do.

On the first day of every week, each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with your income, saving it up, so that when I come, no collections will have to be made.

Then when I arrive, I will give letters of introduction to the men you approve and send them with your gift to Jerusalem.

If it seems advisable for me to go also, they will accompany me.

Thanks be to God who put into the heart of Titus the same concern I have for you.

For Titus not only welcomed our appeal, but he is coming to you with much enthusiasm and on his own initiative.

And we are sending along with him the brother who is praised by all the churches for his service to the gospel.

What is more, he was chosen by the churches to accompany us as we carry the offering, which we administer in order to honor the Lord Himself and to show our eagerness to help.

We want to avoid any criticism of the way we administer this liberal gift.

For we are taking pains to do what is right, not only in the eyes of the Lord, but also in the eyes of man.

In addition, we are sending with them our brother, who has often proved to us in many ways that he is zealous, and now even more so because of his great confidence in you.

As for Titus, he is my partner and co-worker among you.

As for our brothers, they are representatives of the churches and in honor to Christ.

Therefore, show these men the proof of your love and the reason for our pride in you, so that the churches can see it.

There is no need for me to write to you about this service to the Lord's people, for I know your eagerness to help, and I have been boasting about it to the Macedonians, telling them that since last year you and Achaea were ready to give.

And your enthusiasm has stirred most of them to action.

But I am sending the brothers in order that our boasting about you in this matter should not prove hollow.

But that you may be ready as I said you would be.

For if any Macedonians come with me and find you unprepared, we, not to say anything about you, would be ashamed at having been so confident.

So I thought it necessary to urge the brothers to visit you in advance and finish the arrangements for the generous gift you had promised.

Then it will be ready as a generous gift.

Not as one grudgingly given.

Here ends the reading.

Thanks, Dad.

Good morning, everybody.

I uh am excited to be here and be with you this morning and get a chance to open God's word together.

My name is Dave.

I get to serve as director of Next Gen Ministries here at Elmwood, which uh is always fun and exciting and uh sometimes leads to breakout uh dodgeball games in the Fellowship Hall on a Friday night with a bunch of little kids, which was awesome.

Uh but we're taking a bit of a detour, if uh in case anybody was wondering what's happening today.

We have been in a sermon series looking at questions that uh you have all uh put in.

Uh asking for a friend was the sermon series title.

I understand that maybe some of those questions weren't exactly asked for a friend, but rather asked just for you.

But we'll get wherever the questions have come from.

They have been incredible.

It's been a great sermon series.

Today, though, we uh we're taking a detour.

We'll be back next week for with Asking for a Friend.

Today we're taking a detour, and uh I love this thing about Umwood.

I love that that every year uh we're committed to helping all of us as a church.

We're committed to becoming more fully devoted apprentices of Jesus.

Being an apprentice of Jesus affects every area of our lives, from intellectual to emotional to relational, uh, our physical being, uh spiritually and financially, our whole being is tied into how we follow Jesus, and we don't want any area of our lives to fall outside of the scope of God's redeeming plan for us.

And so, because we know we're broken and we know that God has called us to Himself, our whole selves to be made whole by Him, we we take a break.

Twice a year, uh, we take a break and we we talk about serving God with our finances.

This is this isn't a difficult topic, um, but it's one that we can make difficult if we don't handle it well.

We take a brief sermon series to consider how to respond to generosity with generosity to the God who became poor on our account, who was rich, who became poor.

We take this after Easter, a little break, talk about generosity.

And then also we take this break right now before we head into our meeting to talk about how we're dealing with our finances as a church, and we think through how is this going?

How are we doing this?

Are we serving God with our finances?

Are we allowing the Spirit of God to redeem even this part of us?

Before I jump into the text, there's a couple things that I want to highlight, a couple things that I want to put out there.

We believe that talking about money is important.

And it's important because it's kind of a barometer.

It can show us the very nature of our hearts.

In other words, the way we relate to money and our possessions always reveal something about what's going on inside of us.

Talking about what we love, what we value, what we worship.

Because the Bible talks about our relationship with money as an aspect of apprenticeship to Jesus, we want to talk about it as well.

And then secondly, secondly, uh, there's plenty of examples.

Just a quick search on the YouTubes will find all kinds of examples of pastors teaching about money really, really poorly.

It's all over talking about money in a manipulative or a self-serving way.

Uh, what we do at Elmwood is try to run as far as possible from it.

What we try to do is we try to open the scriptures, try to try to read it, uh, figure out what it's saying, and then try to apply it to our lives with the help of the Holy Spirit.

That's gonna be the goal.

I'm not trying to go far afield.

I promise you, um, even so that you know the end from the beginning, I want to I want to say uh what we're gonna talk about today.

The goal today is just to talk about that it's good to make plans to be generous.

That's the it planning to be generous is part of the life-giving way of Jesus.

That's that's the goal today.

And we're gonna talk about three different parts of making a plan.

Uh there are other parts, but there are three that I think we can highlight from these texts.

First, uh, make a clear plan.

Second, act with wisdom, and third, be ready and eager to give.

As we uh jump into our text, would you please pray with me?

God, we pause.

And we consider your word that it tells us to go to the ant and consider its ways and be wise.

Recognize that it has no commander, no overseer, or ruler, yet it stores its it it stores its provision in summer and gathers its food at harvest.

God, you said go to the ant and consider its ways and be wise.

Because even ants make plans when food is plentiful, so that they're ready when the colony needs it.

Jesus, thank you that we have much more of an example than just an ant to learn about how to follow you and how to best serve you in this life.

Thank you, Jesus for coming to be our example.

Thank you for this chance to interact together, to be your hands and feet to each other as we journey together.

Father God, I ask you to prepare our hearts and minds to worship you as we listen to your word.

Holy Spirit, I ask you to convict us again today of our need for you.

God, thank you for showing us your love by sending your son, the second person of the triune God, to die that we may live.

We love you, Jesus.

Amen.

Uh, for those of you that are still learning your way around the scriptures or the Bible, uh, who might not know the story and the stories that are found within this thing, uh, I need to I need to take a moment, uh, even if you've it's been a while since you've cracked open this book.

Uh we're gonna take a moment to talk about how uh the text we're reading today comes to us from the Apostle Paul.

The Apostle Paul was a church planter, it was planting churches all over the world.

Um the church that he was writing to today, we find in modern day Greece, he was commissioned by, Paul was commissioned by the risen Savior.

He was walking down the road, risen Savior came and uh smacked him upside the head and says, Hey, you're gonna be my follower.

I'm gonna show you how much you must suffer for my name.

And he went blind.

I mean, I guess if you interact with the risen Savior, it's it's a scary moment.

But Paul was brilliant, incredible man followed after God.

Holy Spirit guided him exactly where he needed to go to be cured of his blindness, and this brilliant man who could have spent his days in the academy just writing and studying the Torah instead laid it aside to make and sell tents and decide that this was going to be his job so that he could interact with people in the Roman world and talk to them about King Jesus.

After he helped a church get started in a Roman town, he'd sell tents, he'd he'd talk to people in the marketplace, and after declaring this incredible news, people's lives would be changed.

The good news that God loves us, has proven his love by dying so that we could live.

He starts a church up and then he moves on to another town, does it again.

Meets people, tells them about Jesus, starts a church, moves on to another town.

But always stays in contact with his brothers and sisters in the previous towns he's been a part of.

And he writes letters to them.

And he has people help him write those letters, and those letters in a lot of ways become the New Testament.

Become much of what we have in our New Testament writings are the letters written by Paul to other churches or from other believers to other churches.

Corinth was one of those cities.

The Corinthians, 1 Corinthians, is a letter to the church at Corinth.

It's one of those places where Paul helps start a church.

The relationship between Paul and the church at Corinth is awesome.

If you're a Bible nerd, this is like your bread and butter.

This is in Bible nerds in the room unite.

I understand there's not many of us, but the Corinthian correspondence goes back and forth.

We know in the scriptures tell us of at least four letters from Paul.

There's letters and delegations being sent from Corinth to Paul.

There's this whole correspondence.

Judging by the blank stairs in the room, not everybody's a Bible nerd.

I got like two.

I got two people that are like, yeah, come on now.

Thank you, Caleb.

All right.

Okay, not incredibly fun, but incredibly fun for nerds.

There's a Corinthian correspondence that goes back and forth.

We have letters two and four in our scriptures that we call 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians.

In the middle of the questions back and forth, in the middle of the conversation about how to follow Jesus well, Paul writes about a problem.

There's a problem, not that there's problems in Corinth.

We're kind of in the middle of a Corinthian series.

But there's a bigger problem.

There's a problem.

Over here, if we're looking at a map, over here on the east end of the Mediterranean, there's this massive famine because there's a drought that's happening in the east end of the Mediterranean.

Israel is going through problems.

When we have a drought, you can't water on the odd days of the week.

When they have a drought, people die.

So it's incredibly different because we're talking about 2,000 years ago.

And Paul says, uh, we got problems.

Can you help?

And Paul organizes a solution for the believers back in Israel.

He organizes a solution and says, hey, Roman world, let's get together.

Let's help our brothers and sisters in the Holy Land.

It's a huge undertaking.

It it uh consumes Paul's final missionary journey.

It's recorded, that's recorded in the book of Acts.

It's an incredibly difficult task, but Paul saw it as the duty of the followers of Jesus to give to those they didn't know personally.

None of these believers in the rest of the Romans world knew these believers personally, but he said, uh, we need to care about them.

Yes, care about the ministry that's happening in your local communities.

Paul wrote about how to give to widows and how to give to their your teachers, how to make sure to support those in your neighborhood.

Also, give globally.

Give to these people you don't know.

Paul talked about why he and the churches were doing this huge collection as he wrote to the church at Rome.

And he wrote this, what chapter 16, verse 25.

Now, however, I am on my way to Jerusalem in the service of the Lord's people there.

Macedonia and Achae have pleased to make a contribution for the poor among the Lord's people in Jerusalem.

They're pleased to do it, and indeed they owe it to them.

For if the Gentiles who share in the Jews' spiritual blessings, they owe it to the Jews to share it with them their material blessings.

The very nature of the gospel is to share in the blessings of people you don't know.

Paul says.

We have a problem in Jerusalem so far, and a proposed solution, this gift.

Because God has gifted you, oh church in Corinth, with so much.

Which should you leave you asking at this point in the sermon, what does any of this have to do with us?

What is what why why are we talking about this, right?

This is a good question.

We should be considering this.

From here on in, Paul's words are gonna get super practical.

It's just uh practical words to the church in Corinth in the first century.

What we're gonna have to do is we're gonna have to draw out some ideas about how to how we can be wise in the 21st century.

Concepts, ideas, con like how are we gonna make wise choices with our finances?

It may look a little different in time because we're we're separated by time and distance, but I think we can glean concepts and we can figure out how we can be wise about planning to be generous.

I wanted to declare boldly before we start looking at the very practical words and these practical concepts.

Uh, I don't have this figured out perfectly in my life.

I'm still working on this.

Uh I can I can tell you what the the scripture says, I can open that, I can read it, uh, I can glean concepts, but I'm not trying to say that I have this figured out.

I've got stories from people who have uh shared with me their the way they are planning and they are figuring this out in their lives.

I'm gonna share those with you.

Um but I want I want us to just admit right now and just live in this space where this is a collaborative learning environment for as we deal with how we're gonna plan to be generous.

And as you try to be generous, and as you try to be generous, and as I try to be generous, and we work out a plan and we figure it out and we try it, and it works or doesn't, we can then go to our small groups or to a men's event, and after chili, we can say, Hey, how are you doing?

My plans did not work so well, or my plan, this actually is working real well for me.

And we share them together and we work out this thing together as the body of Christ.

Is that okay?

Can we do that?

Okay, I got one yes.

One yes says we can move forward.

Thank you.

Um for what we call 1 Corinthians, right?

This is the second letter, 1 Corinthians, second letter, of chapter 16.

We see uh Paul encouraged families to set aside a sum of money in keeping with your income, is what Paul says.

And Paul isn't actually imposing here a flat fee, right?

This is very, very practical.

Paul's writing and saying, set aside some money.

Not a flat fee.

Not every Christian must give 200 denari a year.

Instead, he asks those who make little to give, give, give from what they have, those who have a lot to give from what they have.

I I am I am uncertain of what a exact percentage of in keeping with your income might be.

I know that Paul was steeped in the Hebrew scriptures all of his life, and so I mean that the norm of the Hebrew scriptures would be 10%, and so maybe that was what he had in mind.

But given that he doesn't specify an exact amount, I think instead what Paul is trying to emphasize was not the size of the gift when he said, set aside some money in keeping with your income.

Instead, what he was emphasizing is make a plan.

Make a plan.

Make it specific.

Make it clear.

What's your plan gonna be in the Corinthian church?

No one knew exactly when Paul was gonna show up to gather this money to bring to Jerusalem.

There were no air tags in Paul's luggage for them to be able to track him around the world.

Instead, Paul says, make some plans to be generous.

Make some plans to be ready.

So that when I come, we're ready to roll.

Set aside some money regularly.

Today, this could look different from person to person in this room.

What's your plan gonna be?

Maybe uh your plan to give to this global idea, giving to people you don't know, is that every time you go to Target, you're gonna buy granola bars so that you can have them in your glove box, so that every time you drive by a homeless person on the street, you can give out a granola bar.

Maybe that's your plan.

Maybe, maybe your plan uh is that you know someone that works at a ministry that that's helping women escape from sex trafficking.

And so you're going to give money to that ministry regularly, because that's your plan to give to people that you don't know.

Maybe your plan to give uh money looks a little bit like there was a there was a family at the church I was at just previous to Elmwood, and this family had figured out, this is okay again, I don't have this figured out.

They had this figured out where their income would be direct deposited into not just their bank account, but into four bank accounts.

They had their, we're gonna live off of this money bank account, they had their we're gonna save this money bank account, they had their we're gonna give this money to the church bank account, and then we're gonna have this fun money that we get to give away every single year, and it's gonna be an awesome bank account.

And that was their plan to be able to give money away, is that they had four separate bank accounts to figure out how to give money away.

So they had a clear plan to follow God about how to be generous.

What exactly y'all's plans are gonna be is not as important as the reality that we all need to make a clear plan to be generous.

And the plan, I think, is actually not even as important as what Paul calls the Corinthians to do in the next passage that we read.

If we flip forward in our scriptures, we're gonna flip forward to chapter eight.

page one more page there it is chapter eight we're gonna find at the end of chapter eight paul sending an incredible spending an incredible amount of time explaining what's going on uh pen and paper at this day in age I mean we just like recycle paper if you print something wrong you just like put it in the recycling bin and it's gonna be okay uh pen and paper in the first century is incredibly expensive and Paul spends a just an incredible amount of time in the scriptures writing out all of these we want to avoid criticism by the way that we administer this liberal gift.

Here's all the details if I'm God and I'm like designing how to make the Bible I'm probably gonna skip over the details of the dude's names who are gonna be in the like in the convoy to take the money to I'm gonna skip over this but Paul takes time as he's writing the scriptures to make sure that everybody knows here we're gonna take pains to do what's right.

Not only in the eyes of the Lord but in the eyes of man.

We're gonna make sure that we act with integrity.

I think we can glean from this section at the end of chapter 8 of 2 Corinthians that it's incredibly important for givers to know how their gifts are being used.

I think it's important Paul is proving to the Corinthian church that their gifts their investment is going to be handled well.

Paul is asking them to be wise stewards of what God has given them.

Paul is saying to the church at Corinth, act with wisdom I'm a wise investment here's why you can tell we all have limited resources in this world I wish we had more money to give away I wish I had more money to give away but I don't and so therefore we have to all be wise concerning what organizations and individuals we choose to support and give gifts to we have to just be wise we have to think we shrewd as serpents we have to figure out how to do this well and act with wisdom it might mean that before you give money you need to do a little bit of research.

If you're thinking to yourself do you know what I don't give money to Elmold right now but I kind of want to I got a great idea we got a church meal come do some research right listen to how we we decide to spend your gifts and support the ministry that's happening here.

Do some research about that ministry that's supporting women coming out of sex trafficking do some research with the people you support worldwide God may call you in order to be wise to never give money away again that might have come out wrong.

God may call you to give final products to people that you don't know this this idea don't give cash give give something that they need I was uh I was out to eat with uh an elder from again the previous church and someone came up and said hey can you give me money for gas I'm trying to get home to St.

Cloud to see my kid who's in the hospital and I don't have money to get home can you can you give me some gas money?

And the elder without skipping a beat let's go to the gas station I'll fill up your tank he didn't want to give cash to be spent on something else but he was willing to give gas a final product maybe that's how God is calling you to be wise every person in this room needs to listen to the Spirit of God.

How am I supposed to be wise with my investments you and yours may decide that if you're gonna be faithful to God to give it means giving to every person that asks without question and without hesitation.

That's how God is calling you to be wise because all of us are in different stations in life and all of us have the opportunity to follow God as long as we are acting with wisdom and making a clear plan this is how we're gonna do this.

This is how we're going to give to those we don't know yet who are in need.

Lastly the last little thing that we're gonna pull out of our passage today is uh that we all need to be ready and eager to give.

If we if we look at Paul right at the beginning of chapter nine especially in verse five uh we see this idea that he's asking the Church of Corinth, be ready.

I thought it necessary to urge the brothers to visit you in advance and finish the arrangements for the generous gift you had promised.

Then it'll be ready as a generous gift, not as one grudgingly given.

Paul thought it was so important for the Corinth church to get all their ducks in a row or at least maybe in the same pond.

Let's get the ducks in the same pond together that he was willing to send out some of his fellow workers.

There's a truth in church planting and in ministry that ministry is lonely when you're doing it by yourself.

It's just a lonely place if there's not people supporting you and around you.

It's a little bit like the the salesperson that goes knocking door to door trying to sell whatever's in their carpet bag.

It's a lonely road and Paul says this is so important that I'm gonna send my fellow ministers away from me and be more lonely because this is so vitally important.

Be ready.

Don't just be physically ready.

Yes get all of the money all of the coins all of the things in the same space but get your heart ready I want this gift to be given joyfully I want this to be super exciting.

You get the chance to give money to people you don't know because they're in need.

Let's get it get it on this is great.

Come on now this raises a question for me and I hope it does for you though as well when I give money away to those I don't know what's the state of my heart what's the state of your heart are we ready to generously give are we eager to give our resources to others and as I look at the answer to that question I realize I've got a ways to go I'm still learning I'm st I'm st I'm I'm not there.

Paul says just a couple verses later God loves a cheer cheerful giver and I'm not always there for mistakes I'm working on it I have a ways to go before I'm able to say I have a really really clear plan it's awesome I I I'm still working on always acting with wisdom and following the Spirit of God in my life as I give I'm still not always ready and eager to give I have some things to figure out I've got some things figured out but not everything.

And it's actually one of the reasons that I love being a follower and apprentice of Jesus I love it for uh two two big reasons here the the first is because I want to follow somebody that actually does make clear plans.

I want to follow somebody that acts with wisdom and I want to follow somebody who is ready and eager to give.

If we all spend a moment and just consider the cross of Christ if we look at the cross of Christ and consider what he did for us we see the very plans of God playing out for the benefit of the whole world.

Paul wrote to the church at Ephesus that God's been planning for the redemption of all things from before the creation of the world God definitely plays the long game not the short game and so we follow after Jesus who makes clear plans.

When we look at the cross of Christ in our minds in our mind's eye we see something that might look like foolishness to the world but is certainly the wisdom of God on display.

It looks like the leader of a religion tortured to death but we know that what we're seeing at the cross of Christ is the author of life taking on death head on and destroying it and stopping it in its tracks.

We know that we see when we see the cross of Christ in our mind's eye we see someone acting with wisdom.

I don't want to follow someone like that.

When we look at the cross of Christ we see God ready and eager to give the author of Hebrews says that Jesus endured the cross scorning its shame all for the joy that was set before him.

I can only imagine that it wasn't easy to be tortured to death and yet Jesus did it willingly with his glory and our good in mind.

I want to follow after a God that makes plans I want to follow after a God that acts with wisdom and I want to follow after a God that is ready and eager to give because I'm still working on it.

Make a plan.

Act with wisdom be ready and eager to give why because in essence it it it is the the life giving way of Jesus that we're called to be on and this is the second reason why I love being a follower of Jesus because I'm not always there and I know all of us aren't always there either and I love being a follower of Jesus because I know the best news in the world that God loves me.

God demonstrated his love for me and that while I was still a sinner not exactly making good plans not exactly acting with wisdom not exactly ready and eager to give Christ died for me.

And he died for you.

And that's a great place to be following after a God like that that when we fall short he has already met the impossible standards on our behalf.

All it takes on our part is to turn around and say I'm sorry Jesus help me to turn around and follow you and God welcomes us home with open arms and you can once again be back on the life giving way of Jesus this morning we're gonna get a chance we're gonna get a chance to eat a huge meal together and to consider how Elmwood is making plans, acting with wisdom and how Elmwood is ready and eager to give it's going to be incredible for those of you that aren't budget buffs there's great food for those of you that don't like food I don't know there's a budget to pass.

I don't I don't know but before before I invite you to that meal I pray for that meal I want to invite you to a different meal.

And I want to invite you to a meal that's right behind me.

A meal that represents something even more beautiful more valuable than any meal down there.

It's a meal that represents the broken body of Jesus on our behalf because we are broken sinners it's a meal that represents the shed blood of Jesus shed for the forgiveness of our sins this meal and that meal both also point forward.

They point us forward to a better meal a meal where we don't have to look at our finances and say there's only a finite amount a meal where all of a sudden the whole world has changed a meal where God lays out everything for his kids he's planned to do it and he's excited to share it with everyone who trusts in him for the forgiveness of their sins a plan for a feast that will last for eternity that meal is the meal that we're actually looking forward to where we don't have to worry if we're enough or if we have enough because God will be our generous host we're looking forward to the wedding supper of the Lamb and so I invite you to this meal and I invite you to that meal later all to point you forward to the best meal that we're all ever share.

As I invite you to the communion table let's take just a few moments and consider how how we might have messed up.

Just silent confession and reflection