"Give 'till You Are Rich'" 2 Corinthians 8:1-5 Thanksgiving Worship Service

Second Corinthians chapter eight.

Really d insightful and joyful passage that is often overlooked.

But I I pray this morning that it will echo in your heart and encourage you in your own walk with the Lord.

I'm gonna read the first five verses.

2 Corinthians 8, verse 1.

2 Corinthians 8:1

Paul says, We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia.

For in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part.

For they gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means, of their own accord, begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints.

And this, not as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord, and then by the will of God to us.

This is the word of God, and I pray that He seals it on your heart.

The first Thanksgiving celebrated in 1621, the Plymouth colonists had just emerged from really a devastating winter.

Nearly half of the original settlers had died from disease, exposure, and starvation.

Many families were still grieving, husbands, wives, parents, and children.

Yet at harvest time, instead of hoarding for survival, they set aside food for a communal thanksgiving and hospitality.

What's often overlooked in this is that, as I mentioned, half of them had died, many of those of starvation.

So you're dealing with people that are literally starving to death.

And yet from the food that they grew, which was not as easy as planting a tomato plant in your yard, by the way, and we're talking months of backbreaking labor, farming in unfamiliar soil, learning new survival techniques.

This is an extreme amount of work and dependence upon God's provision for every tomato.

And yet instead of hoarding it, although they had watched their friends and family starve to death, instead of hoarding it, they gave it generously.

There were no grocery stores there, there was no social safety net, there was no surplus economy.

To give food away meant that all that cost, sweat, risk, and perseverance was dissipated in front of you.

The colonists merely didn't celebrate among themselves either.

They extended hospitality to the Wampanong people that were there, the Indians that were there.

According to the best records we have, about 50 colonists hosted roughly 90 Native Americans for a Thanksgiving feast, by the way, that lasted several days.

That's what I'm talking about.

And you're talking about the end of November in Massachusetts.

We scrolled through the Facebook, you know, like on this day in the years past.

I can't believe how many times we've had snow on this day in Virginia.

Just in the last like five or six years.

You go back to Massachusetts, you're talking about people giving away food to Indians and to others in a festival that lasted several days that they needed for their own survival.

That really is the pattern in a lot of ways for our own Thanksgiving Day celebration.

You see this in 2 Corinthians chapter 8.

2 Corinthians 8 · chapter mention

Paul is addressing the Corinthians, he's writing the Corinthians, which were not a poor church, by the way.

The Corinthians had money, the Corinthians were a thriving Roman city.

So, granted, in the Corinthian church, there's going to be poor people and there's going to be rich people, like any church.

But Corinth was not a poor place.

So Paul doesn't talk to them about the Corinthians here.

He talks to the Corinthians about, in verse 1, the churches in Macedonia.

Macedonia is a very poor place.

The churches in the New Testament that are in Macedonia are Philippi, Thessaloniki, or the Thessalonians, and the Bereans.

Those are the three churches that I know of, anyway, that are in Macedonia that are mentioned in the New Testament.

And think of those churches.

They're all known for different things.

The Philippians were known for their joy.

Above everything else, the Philippians were joyful, joyful people.

The Thessalonians were known for their persecution.

Paul tells them repeatedly in both 1 and 2 Thessalonians how much they were suffering for the gospel.

And the Brians were known for, of course, studying the Bible.

To hear something and search to see if the scripture is true.

Macedonia itself is a place of extreme poverty because it was kind of the capital of Alexander the Great's empire, which fell to the Roman Empire.

And the Romans enslaved them, they taxed them, they decimated them.

The Romans crushed the people in Macedonia as a way of extracting vengeance upon them for the wars against the Greeks.

One commentator described the Macedonian population, not the Christian population, but just the population in general, as marked by, quote, high taxes, high rates of slavery, low income, and massive persecution for their Greek heritage, reduced the Macedonian population to abject poverty.

Yet these are the people, when you think of the Philippians, the Bereans, and the Mass and the Thessalonians, these are the people that were probably Paul's most favorite people in the New Testament, weren't they?

Like commentators debate over if Paul liked the Philippians or the Thessalonians more.

That's the contest.

The Corinthians did not make the list, by the way.

It's like Paul, Paul tells them, I'm so thankful that I don't even remember your names.

The Philippi, he wouldn't take money from the Philippians.

I mean from the Corinthians.

He let the Philippians give him money, even though they didn't have much of it.

He told the Thessalonians, if somebody's not willing to work, they shouldn't eat.

So even in their poor context, he's telling him to motivate people to work.

So that your testimony among the lost is magnified.

And the Bereans were just praised for loving God's word.

These were Paul's most favorite people.

Yeah, they weren't the most mature church.

The church in Ephesus was the most mature church.

But he loved the Philippians and the Thessalonians.

He took help from them while encouraging them to weigh into work.

And that becomes the model that he tells the Corinthians about, which has got to be a slap in the face of the Corinthians because they are a proud people.

The Corinthians view themselves as so mature.

They view themselves as above the Apostle Paul, by the way.

That's kind of the undercurrent of both 1 and 2 Corinthians, is that the Corinthians look at Paul as beneath them.

That's how godly they are.

You know, Paul did his best, but we have outgrown him now.

And so to get a letter from Paul that says, hey, good work.

There's some things you can fix.

And by the way, let me tell you about the best churches I know about.

They're in Macedonia.

You got to be kidding me.

You can think of analogies today for that, where people that are very proud of their area and for something, and yeah, and somebody might praise some third world country for exactly what you're proud of in your own area, kind of thing.

I'm not going to give any of those examples because that would unnecessarily offend most of the congregation.

But you can think of your own examples, and that's the situation that's here.

The Corinthians are so proud, and Paul says, Man, you ought to consider the Macedonians who are marked by poverty and starvation and persecution.

He says, You want to check out joyful, generous, delightful people.

Turn your eyes there.

I mean, that those are people, like I said, that are just marked by poverty.

He's going to break that transition into a lesson here on how to multiply your giving.

He's teaching the Corinthians how to multiply their own giving.

So that's the goal here.

I'm not going to give you a high-level overview of 1st and 2nd Corinthians, but just trust me on this as we step into chapter 8.

Paul is writing this section of scripture to convince the Corinthians to multiply their giving.

He's used this word multiply a few times to them already.

They multiply God's glory through evangelism.

For example, back in chapter 4, his suffering has been multiplied.

He's all arguing to this.

I was talking about this with Michael Connor, who's reading this through the lens of a missions pastor.

And he says, this is where it gets to the point.

You know, those missions letters that are all about we're doing this and we're doing that.

They're getting to the point of you multiplying your giving back to the mission fields.

And 2 Corinthians is certainly from that perspective that only a missions pastor could truly identify.

From that perspective, it is a missions letter.

And he's telling the, but his goal here is to the Corinthians, I want to multiply your giving.

How so?

By telling you about the Macedonians first, to multiply your giving.

Understand that it's about grace, not gold.

You want to multiply your giving, understand that giving is about grace, not gold.

Verse 2, in a severe test.

Alright, we'll get to the verse 2 in a second.

We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been given, that word given is a financial word, among the churches of Macedonia.

God's grace given to Macedonian poor impoverished churches.

The Macedonians, as you go through chapter 8, and this goes on into chapter 9 as well, you're going to understand, gave generously.

Their giving was a reception, and here's the key: a reception and a reproduction of God's grace given to them.

God gave them grace through the gospel.

They received God's grace.

They then reproduced God's grace as it left them in the form of giving money.

And that's the thing that's often overlooked about giving to the Lord's work.

You receive grace through the gospel.

That grace doesn't terminate on you through the forgiveness of sins when you place your faith in Christ.

That grace can reside in you, but it then goes out from you and is magnified before the world or multiplied before the world as you in turn give things to other people.

So God's grace comes to you and that is then refracted or magnified as it leaves you through generosity.

That's the idea.

So the Philippians and the Thessalonians and the Brians were able to do that.

They were able to magnify or multiply the grace of God, though they were poor, but through their generous giving.

So you understand here that you multiply your giving, it's not about the dollar amount.

It's not about the gold that you give, it's about the grace that you receive that then goes out from you.

So giving is a way of multiplying grace.

The Macedonians are not the heroes of the story, in other words, but it's the grace of God that is the hero.

God's grace comes to them.

That's what Paul's esteeming.

The Macedonians are great, but it is in verse 1 the grace of God that was given to them.

God gave them abundant amounts of grace.

And you can tell when a person's been radically saved, because the effect of God's grace in their life is they go from holding on and hoarding to letting go.

They have a desire to give in light of what they've been given, to generously sacrifice for those in need, especially other believers.

And it is true that very wealthy people can give without grace.

You know that.

They can give without sacrifice.

It's just, it's almost not even worth explaining because you understand this, but you know, somebody with somebody with a thousand cows can give one away, and it's no sacrifice of them at all.

But somebody with two chickens can give one away, and it's a tremendous sacrifice.

That's the idea.

It's not about the gold, it's not about the livestock, it's not about the food that goes out, it's about the grace that you've received that is then multiplied in how you give.

And so you have to give graciously and gracefully because it's a multiplication of grace.

Like I said, there are those that give without sacrifice.

The Macedonians are not able to give without sacrifice.

When the Macedonians are giving, it's like they skipped a meal in order to give, kind of giving.

They're not in the place where they said, like, I can give when I get to this level of income, I can give when I get to that level of income, I can give to, I can give once I have this much in the 401k, I can give once I have this much in the checking account or whatever, then I'll be in a position where I can be generous.

The Macedonians are in a place where they're skipping meals in order to give a little.

And you can give like that and still be meaningless if you don't give with a gracious disposition.

Because you're multiplying grace.

Paul tells the Colossians this way: we're filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ.

Jesus' sacrifice on the cross was sufficient for everything, but there's something lacking in it.

What's lacking is the presentation of that sacrifice to the watching world.

How can you fill up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ?

Well, you live in an obedient life, delighting in the grace that God gave you in light of the gospel, and you endure persecution for that.

And that's how the giving is happening here.

They are giving graciously and gracefully because it's putting on display the grace that they've received.

And listen, I know that there's a battle in people's hearts between the desire to be generous and also the desire to hold on to what is theirs.

And that is a battle between the trust in God and a trust in self.

That's a battle between the trust in God's grace and the trust in material provisions.

And in the case of the Macedonians, God overwhelmed their hearts with his grace.

This is obviously not a foreign concept for us.

It's a foreign nation and a foreign people and a foreign language, but it's not a foreign concept.

It's not a demographic concept, it's not an income concept, you know.

Whatever level of income you have, you have this battle in your heart.

Like, oh, if if we had a little bit more, then we could be generous.

It's about the grace that you have now and how that's multiplied as it goes out.

It's about grace gotten, not gold.

Second.

It's about sacrifice, not sustenance.

Sacrifice, not sustenance, which I'm moderately confident I spelled correctly.

Verse 2 is staggering.

They were in a severe test of affliction.

That Greek word for affliction here, it's the word uh philipsis.

It's a word that's a real I think it's a cool word.

Uh it's a word about pressure.

It's the word used for crushing grapes, stepping on grapes, making wine.

It's a word used in the olive press, where the olives are pressed and the oil comes out.

There's a word for that.

We don't have olive press, and we don't make grapes, we don't make wine with our feet.

Praise God.

So we don't have this exact kind of word.

But the but the Greeks did.

They did press down olives and they did step on grapes, and they had a word for it.

That's a word for pressure that produces juice and eventually it overflows.

You can put all the grapes in and you press it hard enough, and it comes out on top.

Whatever you're pressing down comes out.

So that's the what that's this word image.

You're pressing on something until it shoots out.

Okay, so what's being pressured right here?

The Macedonians are being pressured, they're being stepped on, they're being crushed by persecution.

But what comes out?

Giving.

Joyful giving.

That's why this is an astonishing verse.

These people are being crushed literally to death in some cases, and they're being pushed down, and the harder persecution pushes them, the harder affliction steps on them, the more joy through their giving is what comes out.

That's amazing.

1 Thessalonians 1, verse 6 is Paul says the same thing to them.

1 Thessalonians 1:6

You received the word with much tribulation.

He tells the Philippians, Philippians 1.29, it was given to you not only to trust in Jesus, but also to suffer for him.

So Paul tells both the Thessalonians and the Philippians in the New Testament they are under extreme persecution, and yet here in verse 2, they are have an abundance of joy.

That's the only thing you can finish that sentence with.

They had an abundance of what?

Not money, not food, not clothes, not opportunities, not friends.

They had an abundance of one thing and one thing only: joy.

That's convicting, isn't it?

Because sometimes we have an abundance of food and clothing and friends and work and money and things, but not joy.

And they got pressed, and joy is what came out.

How could they be so joyful?

It is an experience contrary to every human expectation.

It only makes sense in light of heaven.

Verse 2 says, their extreme poverty overflowed in a wealth of generosity.

That word overflowed is hearkening back to Philipsis again.

It's whatever's happening to them, it's not just shooting out, it's overflowing.

Eternal joy in light of heaven that breaks into the here and now through their cash.

Every dollar you give is connected to your heart.

You know that?

Jesus says that.

Where your treasures there, your heart will be.

You give your dollars away and they have strings still connected to your heart.

So you give them away and it pulls out a little bit of your heart every which way they go.

The Macedonians, their hearts were in heaven.

So their dollars showed you strings that tied to heaven.

So they're persecuted by this world, just makes them more joyful for the next.

Third.

Willingness, not wealth.

Willingness, not wealth.

They gave according to their means, as I can testify.

Beyond their means, beyond their means of their own accord, the SV says of their own accord.

If you have the NAS or uh maybe even the NIV, it says free will.

People will love to ask me, do you believe in free will?

And I have two possible answers to that question.

My first answer is free from what, which is my favorite answer.

But I have a second answer also.

Does the New Testament ever use the phrase free will?

And the answer is twice in two places, and this is one of them.

And it is obviously meant a little bit sarcastically.

Okay, these people are giving beyond their means because of the grace that they've given them, God has given them, but of their own free will.

Well, free from what?

They're undergoing severe persecution, and God is pressuring them in a pressure cooker.

So whatever free will means, it doesn't mean free from God's intervention, that's for darn sure.

They're being crushed, and yet God manipulates that for them to give willingly.

I was at a church once when the pastor said we need this amount, and like shut the doors, ushers.

Let's go.

What if Sean did that this morning?

Those Jamaican people, precious people, lock the doors, ushers.

That's not how you give in the New Testament.

There's no 10% even thing in the New Testament.

The New Testament never commands 10% giving, which is a common misconception.

Because that would undercut this very style of giving.

There's no command to give.

There should be a willing partnership where you give to your church because you're excited about what your church is doing.

There's a willing partnership.

That would be undercut if somebody stood up here and said, The Bible commands you to give 10% of what you have to the Lord's work.

That ends up negating the whole way giving functions in the scriptures.

It's about your willingness.

True giving is not a matter of how much one possesses, but of how much their heart delights in their giving.

It's about willingness, not wealth.

And of course, the actual amount of gifts varies upon income.

Like I said earlier, you could have a wealthy person that gives one of a thousand cows with no joy, and it's nothing in the Lord's eyes, and you have a poor person who gives one of their two chickens away, and they do it joyfully and with delight in it, and it is worth more in the eyes of the Lord than the cow was.

And obviously, the Lord doesn't need the cow or the chicken.

And also, obviously, if you get that point, you have to go to the next part of that point.

Also, equally obvious to somebody who's walked around a block more than three times, is that someone's joy in giving is not dependent upon their wealth.

That is the classic misunderstanding of people.

And you think if I had more money, I could give more joyfully.

But then also, I've just listened to a lot of sermons on preaching, I listen to several.

On 2 Corinthians this week.

It's interesting how fast preachers will sometimes talk about how hard it is for wealthy people to give generously.

And I'm not sure that's true either.

I think honestly, and this probably matches your experience too, if you've, like I said, walked around the block more than three times in your life.

The joy somebody has in giving is probably disconnected from the actual amount of money in their bank account.

Because you know wealthy people that give generously, and you know wealthy people that are stingy.

And I'm sure you know poor people that give generously, and I'm sure you know poor people who are stingy.

You're probably going to be left to deduce that someone's joy in giving, their willingness, is disconnected from their wealth.

That's certainly true of the Macedonians.

They had so little and they were giving so abundantly.

Because it's about their joy.

I imagine at some earthly level, you could see if you had less material things, you would have less incentive to love the world and more incentive to love heaven.

I suppose that is true.

But apart from the work of the Lord in your person's heart, that's not going to happen either.

The Lord did work in the Macedonians' heart, though.

And so they gave beyond what they could do.

The language there in the middle of verse 3, beyond their means, what that means is if they were to have met with a financial consultant, he would tell them, don't give the amount you're giving.

They're giving beyond what they had.

Which again, there's a wise way to give and a foolish way to give.

And Paul's not extolling foolishness, but he is making the point that you can be wise and you can go beyond your means with joy.

It's meaningless if you go beyond your means without joy.

They gave of their own accord.

Nobody told them to.

There was no rule that was given to them.

And by the way, that's true in the Old Testament too.

There were tithes given to the Old Testament Israelites, but there are verses like Exodus 25, verse 1.

Exodus 25:1

Yahweh said to Moses, speak to the people of Israel that they take for a contribution from me.

From every man whose heart moves him, you receive the contribution from me.

That's Exodus 25, verse 1.

Exodus 25:1

So even in the Old Testament, with their system of tithes, there was still this basic command in the heart of the law that you give when your heart delights in giving.

The Lord doesn't need your money.

He didn't save you for your money, he saved you so you can magnify the grace of God by your joy.

And there are very few things that do that as well as giving.

We saw Jesus in Matthew, end of chapter 17.

Remember, he established with the fish with the coins in his mouth, he established he wasn't required to pay the temple offering, but he would do it anyway.

That's the right way to give.

Like you can't make me, but here you go.

That's the difference between taxes and giving to the church.

You don't have free will to the government.

The government will never say, hey, we don't want your taxes unless you're excited about what we're doing with it.

Wouldn't that be lovely?

That's the difference in the church, taxing in the church.

You give to the church as you're excited about what the Lord is doing.

Notice this crazy word in verse 4.

They were begging us earnestly for the privilege of giving.

What?

They were begging to be allowed to give.

Which lets you know Paul at first is like, no, I don't want your money, Macedonians.

I don't want your money, Philippians.

You guys are dying.

And they're begging him.

That word begging is a cool word too.

I won't drag you through a whole New Testament study of it, uh, but it's a fun one.

It's the word like the lepers begging Jesus to be healed.

The centurion begging Jesus to heal his servant.

That's this word.

Here's the Thessalonians begging Paul to take their money.

Crazy talk.

And that's because it's connected to worship.

Verse 5, our final point.

It's about God, not gifts.

Ultimately, it's not, I'm not even really talking about giving here.

I'm talking about your relationship to the Lord.

Verse 5.

This is not as we expected, Paul says.

Didn't see that coming.

But they gave themselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God to us.

First to the Lord here, there's different ways of saying first in Greek.

This is the word protos, which is first not by chronology, but first by importance or by pattern.

The English word prototype is the idea that you get things after that based upon the prototype.

So notice the logic here.

Again, this would be kind of thing that's evident in Greek.

It's harder in English, but it would be evident to the Greek reader here that their relationship to God is their prototype for giving to the church in Jerusalem.

That's where the money is going, is the church in Jerusalem.

Their prototype is their relationship to God.

So in other words, how you relate to God becomes the prototype for how you give.

And you can reverse engineer it.

Are you stingy?

That reveals back to your heart towards the Lord.

And it's not because giving is the priority.

Remember, God has the cattle on a thousand hills.

He doesn't need yours, but your giving reveals your delight and your priority that you put in the Lord.

It's the prototype, is Paul's word.

It's a pattern for what follows.

One commentator writes that, quote, the supreme act of worship is not giving money, going to church, or singing hymns, but giving oneself to the Lord.

Paul tells the Romans that he offers his life as a living sacrifice.

Then everything else flows from that.

Everything else flows from it.

Their delight in the Lord became the pattern for how they lived their life to God, which plays out to people.

So when you take all this together, you recognize if you just look at the points in the screen, that you give because of grace, not because of gold.

You give because you were given grace.

Lord doesn't need your gold.

He'll use it, but he doesn't need it.

You give because you received grace.

Secondly, your giving is designed to be sacrificial.

You're living as a sacrifice, not as hoarding, not as sustenance.

And then willingness, it's all about what makes your gift meaningful in the eyes of the Lord and others, frankly, also, is your delight in giving it.

Not a command.

You're not giving because you have to.

You're willing to do it.

And then finally, it's all about your worship to God, not again about the gold or the gifts themselves.

It's about your worship to God.

A pattern, of course, for this is all Christ, who had the riches of heaven, who set them aside to become poor in a sense on earth, and became obedient all the way to the point of death, even death on the cross.

Jesus had the riches of heaven, he died the death of a condemned, condemned criminal on the cross.

He gave his life so that we would live.

He, though being sinless, died so we can have forgiveness of our sins.

He being sinless bore the penalty of sin so that we can have the riches of heaven in him.

He dies, leaving us his estate.

He resurrects, takes it back, and brings us with him into glory.

That's the pattern of the gospel.

So you can see if you believe that about Christ, it becomes a pattern of giving for you, right?

If you believe Jesus had riches, he emptied himself and went, in a sense, below the poverty line, and then he gives his life out in an undeserved way.

He was innocent and he sacrifices his life to give things that he by his right possessed but divested himself of.

He gives freely to us.

We receive them.

That would then be the pattern or the prototype for how we live our lives with open hands and generous hearts.

And I do want to share this with you.

This sermon is not meant to be corrective at all because Emmanuel is, you guys are an incredibly generous church.

Do you know I went through our accounting software this morning as best as I know how to?

I'm not good at using it.

You can ask the accountants.

I'm not good at using it.

But do you know the two highest periods of giving in our church's history have been during COVID, was number one, when the church closed.

You know, and there was there was a while, there were like six weeks, and there was, you know, 50 or 100 people here.

But our giving was higher than it had ever been in the church's history during that time period.

And then in the last six months.

The church has given so much in the last six months.

It's incredible.

And it's incredible when you realize that that giving came in while the government was shut down.

I know many of you didn't receive paychecks for five weeks.

And yet money kept coming to the church.

And I know just anecdotally that some people were giving to church because of things like the food bank, and they recognized with the government shut down, there were people in need, and so they upped their own giving.

But I know a lot of people have so fiscally managed their finances well enough that even though they weren't receiving paychecks, they were able to keep to keep giving anyway.

But it's just amazing to be.

I don't know every person's story, of course, but it's amazing to me that in a time where a significant part of our congregation was not being paid, our giving went up.

It's such a gracious congregation.

In that sense, we're like the Macedonians.

We don't share in their poverty, but our church reflects in their generosity, which of course is patterned on our walk with the Lord.

You've been generous with resources.

We have a six-story cross on our roof.

You've been generous with the people.

There's such godly people in this church.

You've been generous with money through this church.

There are such wealthy people in this church that give so generously in ways I'm sure their co-workers and their even maybe their family members don't completely understand.

There are people that have very little that give so generously in this church.

Our church is marked by sacrificial and generous giving, and we're so thankful for that.

We know this is an unusual place, and we're grateful for it.

We're grateful for this day where our government has commanded us to come together and give thanksgiving to God.

What a world, Lord, what a world.

And so here we are.

We gather together today to give thanks for what you've done in our life in the year that's gone by.

Highs and lows.

We know there's been death and loss this past year.

There's been new birth and growth and abundance.

All of it comes together.

All these roads cross in the church.

Some people here have had the best year of their life this year, and some have had the worst, and yet we're all in one building on one day together.

It's your grace, it's your spirit that binds us together, and you do so with generosity.

We're thankful for the generous way you've made this church.

We give you thanks for it in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now, for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, ibc.church.

If you want more information about the Master Seminary or our location here in Washington, DC, please go to tms.edu.

Now, if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.

area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.

I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.

But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.

Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.