Joyful Generosity

Amen.

Well, good morning, Sacred Mission.

My name is Justin, and I'm one of the pastors here.

And it's my joy to be able to bring God's word to you this morning.

As Brian said, we're wrapping up this sermon series called For the Love of.

And what we've been trying to work through is our heart's relationship to our stuff.

And the scriptures talk about this over and over again, right?

We kind of have this wrong and unhealthy relationship with our stuff, where our affections are greater for it or for them than it is for God.

And so we talked about in the beginning of this series how Saint Augustine referred to this as the order of our loves.

And this was a big thrust of his life work that what we need to strive to do is to order our loves properly.

Because in truth, God has given us all things to enjoy.

And so what the scriptures don't call us to is this kind of disdain or unhealthy relationship with stuff, right?

God says, no, I've given you things to enjoy.

Like this should be good.

I am a father who is generous, who desires to give to his people.

I've given you all things to enjoy.

Food and relationships and land and nature.

Like, right?

I've given you all this.

Enjoy it.

Just keep it in its right place.

That the enjoyment of me is always greater than the enjoyment of my stuff.

And so a lot of us, the problem is we become prodigals, right?

The heart of the parable of the prodigal son is that that son loved the father's stuff more than he loved the father.

And in fact, he said, I'd rather you'd be dead so I could have your stuff because you don't mean that much to me.

So what do we have to do?

We have to work, as Augustine said, to order our loves properly.

And so today we're going to be wrapping up the series with a really a condition of the heart when it comes to our generosity.

And I think that this is potentially one of the core realities that we have to engage with in the truth of the gospel for how our heart sees God and responds to him in light of who he is.

So let's dive in.

But actually, before we do, I forgot this last week.

I did, I'm not going to forget.

And this is nothing, it's Mother's Day, like in a few weeks, right?

So I'm not forgetting moms.

I'm forgetting to do what my staff told me to do.

But hey, we're so excited to celebrate Mother's Day in just a few weeks on Sunday, May 12th.

We delight in the gift of motherhood.

This place is swarming with children in such joy-filled ways, right?

We love what children bring to the life of the church.

And so we want to celebrate the gift of motherhood.

One of the ways that we do that is we give free professional family photos away on that day.

And so this is an opportunity to invite friends, invite family, come dressed up.

We want to present to you a professional family photo so that you guys can just enjoy that, right?

Put it up and look at it and be just proud of the gift of God that He's given to you.

And so that's gonna be on May 12th.

And then, men, men, this is your reminder.

Do not forget that uh you should buy a gift for that woman who has given birth to your children.

Make sure that you're doing that now.

Mine's already delivered, so I'm good, right?

Right?

All right, now we're gonna dive into the text.

So here's where we're at.

We're in 2 Corinthians.

Paul had already written a letter to the church at Corinth in 1 Corinthians, he's writing them again.

And a big part of this letter is that Paul is trying to collect this offering so that he can bring aid and relief to the Christians who are at the church in Jerusalem.

And so he's writing, he's encouraging the church there at Corinth to be generous, and he's also putting forward as this example, these other Gentile churches throughout Macedonia that have already displayed generosity even out of their poverty.

And so Paul's gonna call them to the same thing, right?

If they were able to do it, Corinth, you're able to do it.

And he gives them this example of this loving generosity, and then Paul gets down to the brass tacks of the point that he's trying to make.

He even says in verse 6 the point is this, right?

Let's get through all the fluff, let's get through all of the ask, and let's get down to the point.

And this this is what Paul always does.

This is this is the core of this pulpit.

There's two options.

When I preach this sermon, when you hear the instruction of the Word of God, there's two options.

That we either point you to law and performance, or we point you to gospel and liberty.

Those are the only two options.

And we've grown up in church culture, most of us, where we were week in and week out, pointed to law and performance.

And that's a yoke around us that oppresses us, it burdens us, it makes us weary, right?

And my job is is to say, no, no, that's not the way.

The way is this gospel and liberty.

And that's what Paul's gonna do.

He's gonna address the heart through the truth and beauty of the gospel, and that's what's going to enable us to live in joyful generosity.

So let's see here.

The point that he presents is really what we would call a spiritual axiom for kingdom living.

A spiritual axiom for kingdom living.

So an axiom is a governing principle that influences a way of life, right?

And I don't know if you ever watched the book of Eli.

Uh, if you're a ladies, Denzel fans, anybody?

No, that's cool.

I uh I'm not a lady and I like Denzel Washington.

But he wrote, uh uh he played in this movie called The Book of Eli.

And what it did is it presented the truths of Scripture as so powerful, so authoritative, that these greedy men tried to get their hands on it when it was in scarce and not able to be uh uh um uh had and known and studied.

And so Eli was this guy who protected it from men who could use its truth and power.

So, what am I getting to?

There's truth that governs life.

And it's established by God.

It doesn't matter if you're a Christian or if you're a non-Christian, there's truth that governs us because of God's sovereign reign over his creation.

And we exist within it.

Now the hope is that we awaken to those truths in light of the finished work of Jesus and we flourish within them, right?

But but this axiom for kingdom living, Paul presents, it governs this aspect of life within the kingdom of God, and it's this whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.

So, you see, all of us, here, here, here in response to that, all of us desire something in this life.

And one famous philosopher, he said, all of us, the pursuit of humanity is happiness.

Even those who hang themselves.

Like, do you want to see the extent of which we will pursue happiness?

It is at all costs, no matter what's in our way, we're going to pursue happiness in our life.

And we're gonna pursue it through prosperity, we're gonna through it through uh uh uh unhealthy uh displays of satisfaction and companionship, right?

And as Christians, what we tend to do is we often tend to have this relationship with God where we expect Him to deliver on the things that we believe will bring us happiness.

And what happens when that doesn't come through?

Unfortunately, we have a propensity to point the finger and cast the blame on God as the one who failed us.

But the reality is that for many of us, when we look at this life, this axiom of which Paul puts before us, we honestly rarely ever, ever look to the life that we have lived.

As Paul puts it, the seeds we have sown to allow for the right placement of the blame to just be put upon ourselves.

The outcomes I'm experiencing in this life are by this axiom, this principle of the kingdom, because of the seed that I'm sowing to get that harvest.

So, so look at the place where you're at in your life currently.

Man, if if it's if it's struggling, if you're struggling in your in your relationship with your spouse, if you're struggling in your finances, if you're struggling in your occupation, if you're struggling in your health, I'm not trying to say that there's no outside circumstances that what, but by and large, we have to look at the seeds that we've sown is creating the harvest we are reaping.

Now, this does not affect or fly in the face of God's amazing grace.

If anything, it's in spite of it, because the principle stands to govern our lives in his grace.

God's grace is what allows for lazy, poor, and destructive sowing to harvest blessing that is both bountiful and indescribable.

This is the this is what makes God's grace amazing.

We sow into our flesh, we sow into sin, we sow all this bad seed, right?

And God says, in spite of all that, I'm gonna bless you through Jesus, and I'm gonna cause this indescribable, bountiful harvest to be brought into your life.

This is God's amazing grace for us.

That we would know him and have him through Jesus, even though we sowed to the destruction of our own flesh.

Paul wants the church to understand something, though.

In light of this axiom, he wants them to be governed by this kingdom principle, and he wants us to understand that we cannot expect a bountiful harvest in this life.

We shouldn't just have this naive expectation that if we sow sparingly, we're gonna somehow reap bountifully.

He wants to know that there's a connection between the work of our sowing and the harvest that we reap.

So, verse 7, he's gonna dive in.

Each one of us must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

Now, this agricultural metaphor of sowing and reaping, right, governs a multitude of aspects of our life.

We talked about relationship, health, finances, and so forth.

But here, Paul wants to narrow it down and focus it on generosity.

That's the context that he's directly applying this to.

And Paul wants to expound upon this to help us understand the expectations that God has for us as we work to function inside of it.

So here's the end goal.

What does God want from you?

He wants you to be a cheerful giver.

I'm gonna use this language.

He wants you to live in joy-filled release.

That's what God wants for you.

Now, Paul, what he's going to do is he's gonna help us understand two threats to that joy.

Two threats to that joy.

And he establishes this foundational principle and it comes to our generosity.

So let's dive into this together.

First, he says this at the heart of the instruction is God's love-filled desire for us to be cheerful in the work of generosity that we're doing.

While God expects faithful obedience, God's not mad through faithful obedience, right?

To the way that He's called us to live.

He desires for us to move beyond cold obedience to a warm place of delight, gladness, and joy in the work that we do for his glory.

So if we ever think that God's commands and law for us, that in this obedience, there's this growing gladness, cheerfulness, joy in the things that we call He calls us to because we understand that our flourishing is found in obedience to what He's called us to as His people.

And so He doesn't, He wants us to move beyond cold obedience to a place of delight.

And as it comes to bear on our generosity, He lovingly desires for our hearts to come to a place where giving is this joy-filled release because of this, because we discover a true absence of any need.

This this God's able.

Why does God have the right to call you to this?

Because he has in himself created the absence of any need.

So God now has the right to call us to this joy-filled release of our goods.

And then here Paul's gonna establish something for us.

So there's this principle that we are gonna see here.

There's this notion that we are to give out of a resolve of our hearts.

Uh, literally, he says, let each one give as he has decided in his heart.

So here's what I want us to see something.

We're getting out of law and into liberty, right?

Many of us, if we grow up in the church, well, we probably heard like the tithe and 10%, and it becomes what happens with this is it becomes a law in and of itself, and we convince ourselves that if we somehow meet this percentage, God will be delighted in us.

It's almost as if we are serving God uh in a demand of his delight of us if we just meet this magical percent number.

And so we go after giving in a way that we are trying to be commended before his throne uh by meeting this percent, because our fear is that we will be condemned before him if we don't do this.

But Jesus blows this up.

Jesus, uh like all of these laws that we see uh that that we tried to hold on to to make God be delighted in us, Jesus comes in and he just blows it up in a way that's so beautiful, and he talks about just this radical generosity.

Hey, rich young ruler, that that rich young ruler probably tithed, gave to and he says, sell everything and give it to the poor.

If you want to enter the kingdom of heaven, be radical like that, be generous like that.

Because he's calling us to a life that is not just uh measured up to some percentage that we give, and now we've met the bar, and now God's happy with us and satisfied.

No, he's calling us to discover how in him every need that we have ever had in our life is fully and eternally met and satisfied.

That all joy and gladness is discovered in him, and so now there's nothing that this world has for us.

Nothing.

So now do we get to do?

We just get to live like this, open-handed.

It's not a bar.

Jesus met the bar.

It's a response to his generosity that he's called us to as his people.

So, so giving becomes a matter of the conscience.

This is where we get into liberty, right?

One of the key things that we see the work of the New Testament do is to bind the man to his own conscience.

Paul dealt with this in matters of even like food.

Hey, if you can eat food sacrificed to idols and you're not violating your conscience, not sin to you.

If you say you can't do that because you're violating your conscience, because you see it as sin, then if you do it, it's sin to you.

And then, hey, brother, if you have a weaker brother and he needs help because he sees this as a violation, you get to use your liberty to say no and abstain from this so that you might love him and not cause him to stone.

This is liberty, right?

And so we're we're we're bound by our conscience.

Like let's go back three years ago or whatever.

Hey, COVID, jab, is it sinful?

Well, I don't know.

Let me look at the text.

Uh oh, yeah, thou shalt, if Pfizer puts forward a new jab, thou shalt.

We don't see that anywhere in the text.

And what were we trying to do?

As Christians, we were trying to get our brothers and sisters in Christ to violate their conscience by binding them to what?

Not liberty, but law.

And a made-up law.

And a weak, pathetic, non-powerful law.

Instead, we should have said, brother, what is your conscience telling you?

Oh, this is how I love my neighbor, then brother, do it.

What's your conscience telling you?

I can't, I can't do this because I love my neighbor.

Then, brother, don't do it.

Like, wouldn't the church have been like better if we did that?

I don't know.

I just, maybe.

Okay, so here, Paul's saying, your generosity is first a matter of your conscience.

We're not trying to hit some bar.

Jesus met the bar.

But he says there's two threats to your generosity being robbed of joy.

Threat number one is this reluctance.

Reluctance.

And Paul says, man, if you give with regret, that's gonna be a thief of joy-filled generosity.

If you give with regret.

Um, what should our giving come from?

Our giving should come from a heart awakened to the inexhaustible generosity of God and to the purposes and people of his kingdom.

That's where our generosity should come from.

A heart awakened to the inexhaustible generosity of God and to the purposes and people of his kingdom.

We have to start with the gospel truth of God's generosity toward us and work from that truth and gospel response with our own generosity for his kingdom.

Because this is what that does.

That moves us from regret to gladness.

That moves us from regret to gladness.

Man, I'm I'm I'm in this with God.

I I see how generous he is to me, and I desire to, in response, be generous to others, to his purposes, to his people, and I'm gonna do this with gladness because I'm not here with this reluctance of should I keep hold of this?

Should I hold this close?

Should I pull back anything?

And you just see release in him.

So you can now give with gladness.

The second thief or person uh thing that attempts to rob us of joy in our giving is compulsion, he says, reluctance and compulsion uh to give from pressure.

That's what compulsion is, to give from pressure.

So, so uh, if you're visiting with us uh today, we've planted five years ago.

This is the first series we've ever done on money.

I got saved from a prosperity gospel uh thing, right?

And the Lord redeemed me, saved me.

And so I have an unhealthy response to uh preachers standing up and and and talking about giving, right?

And I'm I'm seeing how, well, the scriptures uh talk about it a lot, so we need to talk about it because our hearts tied to this.

So if we love you, if we love you as your elders and your pastors, and we love your hearts, we're gonna be talking about these things.

And so, but I understand that compulsion.

If you want God to be happy with you, if you want to be blessed, if you want to make sure that that life goes better, if you want to satisfy, right, this this disappointment in the face of your heavenly father, then you're gonna give, you're gonna give, you're gonna give.

And man, I just saw people like, hopefully, God's happy with me now.

Here, hopefully he'll give me all the stuff I ever wanted now.

And it just sickened me.

And so I understand this giving from pressure, and there's gonna be two pressures that we face: either a pressure that we believe somehow our giving is earning his delight in us.

It's not.

Jesus earns the fullness of the Father's delight in us for us.

And the other compulsion is that somehow you are missing something in your life that you believe is going to satisfy us, and you hope that dropping enough quarters in this cosmic claw machine is gonna hand it to you.

That's what you think.

And God's like, no, I just need you to be awakened to me.

To me.

When we are practicing generosity, it should not come from pressure.

I believe it should come from partnership.

Not pressure, but partnership.

Here's what we desire we desire for.

For you to find joy in the way that God is working in and through us here at Sacred Mission.

And I don't mean like top-down clergy-paid professional Christians, right?

I'm talking about us.

When we see and celebrate the stories of what God is doing in and through us as His people, and you discover this place as somewhere that's healthy, right?

That's going to encourage gospel-centered mission and it's going to call people to repentance and faith.

And we're going to baptize people and dedicate children and open up new opportunities for people to you see this.

And you say, I want to partner in what God is doing.

I want to partner in that.

That's what we're always calling you to.

Man, just let's keep partnering together to see God continue to move.

Partnership with God's kingdom, to see his purposes and his people flourish.

So, church, we have to contend against letting the resolve of our hearts be violated by either regret or by pressure.

We should work from a place of our own conscience of what we will be giving.

And let me tell you, regret and pressure, they're going to rob us of the desire that God has for our generosity to come from a heart that is of joy-filled release.

That's what He desires from us at the end of this.

It's not to earn anything, it's a response from everything that He has done for us.

Verse 8, and God is able to make all grace abound to you so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work, as it is written.

He has distributed freely, he has given to the poor, his righteousness endures forever.

So here's the reality.

Some of us are going to be uncomfortable with this next section of the text because we have such an animosity toward the toxic effects of the prosperity gospel.

And then we've understood wrongly the scriptures through other theological lenses, and we come to something like this text, and we just we can't be comfortable with it.

Because it's saying, if you give, God's gonna give you more.

And that's what the text says.

We're gonna dive into it to understand it better, but here's what we're gonna be committed to at sacred mission.

We're gonna allow the Bible to speak.

We're gonna allow the Bible to speak.

How dare I, or how dare any of us as elders try to weave into the scriptures our own understanding, our own opinions, our own perspectives instead of submitting first and foremost ourselves to the truth of God's word, bringing it to you before you, we've got to wrestle with it.

We gotta contend to understand it and embrace it, but we've got to allow the scriptures to speak for what they say.

Simple as that.

So let's dive into this together for just a moment.

So, in true fashion, what's Paul gonna do?

Paul's gonna root God's desire for us to be cheerful givers in the person and work of God Himself.

So this is the beautiful way that Paul sees and understands the kingdom of God.

Why should we be able to live in joy-filled release?

Because we abide through Christ in joy-filled abundance.

That's why.

That's the root principle here.

Why should we be able to live in joy-filled release?

Because in Christ we live in joy-filled abundance.

Every good work that God has called us to is this people, including the good work of generosity toward his purposes and his people, are supplied to us by abundant grace.

You see, it's easy for us to be a people of release when we resolve to rest in God's lavish abundance.

And he's going to call us to this, but let's look at the passage one second, because we hear this all sufficiency, all things, all time, right?

We hear that.

And God, Paul's not ascribing that to God.

Paul's ascribing that to God's work in you, meaning you will have all sufficiency in all things at all times.

What Paul is really trying to help us understand is if God has called you to something, He will supply everything you need to accomplish it.

Because this is the beauty of His sovereign grace.

Look at Ezekiel.

What's the prophet Ezekiel say?

That that for his own name's sake, so whose name on the line?

Your name's on the line.

Justin Rames' name ain't on it.

What does that mean to God?

In the fullness of time in the cosmos.

Justin Ramos is a blip, a speck of sand, right?

So, Ezekiel, according to my name's sake, I'm going to save a people.

I'm going to take out the heart of stone.

I'm going to put a heart of flesh.

I'm going to wash them clean.

And here's what I'm going to do: I'm going to cause them to walk according to my statues and purposes, to fulfill the good works of which I have set before them.

For my name's sake, God said.

So do you think that he's going to predestine you, Ephesians chapter 2, end of it.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

Why were you elected?

Why were you predestined?

So that you might walk in the good works of which he predestined for you before the foundation of the world.

God's name's on the line.

He's going to make sure that every good work that he has called you to, he is going to supply every need necessary to accomplish it.

Because at the end of time, when it all ends and Jesus comes back in all of his radiance and glory, no one's going to be able to point to the name of God as if it wasn't the most exalted, magnified, glorious, sufficient, accomplishing name in all of time and history and space.

No one's going to be able to do that.

So if he's called us to something, this is what Paul's saying.

If he's called you to something, he, let's just work through this.

He God is able to make what?

All grace abound to who?

Out of his abundance, you're abounding to you.

So that, here's the reason.

Why is God going to do this?

So that having all sufficiency in all things, in all times, God, no, you may abound.

In his abounding, he causes us to abound in all things.

Why?

In every good work.

That's what God gives to us so that we might fulfill the good work he's called us to.

Now that's a prosperity gospel I can get behind.

He causes our good work to abound through his abundance.

So what Paul's saying God makes his grace to abound to us, that we would have all sufficiency in all things at all times, so that we would abound in every good work that he has called us to.

You see, in light of that, we should never fear or have timidity about stepping out in faith and doing the things that God has called us to do.

And I'm saying that from a position of tremendous fear and timidity and trying to step out.

I believe God's called us to amazing things here at Sacred Mission.

And we're trying to line ourselves up for this next step of where God has called us to.

And you know where my fear, anxiousness, timidity comes into play?

It comes in when I try to trust in the name of Justin Ramos.

I don't have the education, I don't have the skill, I don't have the experience, I don't have the charisma, I don't have the anything in me to get us to this next place.

Church, if we're banking on me or our leadership team to try and get us to the next place of where God has called us to, we're hopeless.

It's gonna have to be through him who abounds and causes us to abound.

And so when we understand this truth, we should have no fear or timidity, even in our generosity.

Because if it is supplied to us, a gift of grace by him, it is done so that we might faithfully live out what he has called us to.

We can do all things through Christ, because he has supplied us with all things to accomplish all things that he has called us to.

And in that truth, and you and I, we can live in joy-filled release.

It ain't on you to do what God has called you to.

It's on him.

Like his name's at stake.

And he's not gonna let his name be defamed because of our inability to accomplish what he's called us to.

He's gonna say, we're gonna see this.

He's not only the giver, but he's the multiplier.

This is where it gets good, I think.

Verse 10 He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing.

Oh man, this is tough.

And increase the harvest of your righteousness.

You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God.

So here Paul says, Not only will God supply you with what is needed to accomplish the work, but as we open our hands to release, he multiplies the seed to be sown.

Here's what I want to do.

I want to live a life of bountiful generosity now that I'm surprised and shocked by what God can do with it five years from now.

Because here's what he's promised.

If you just open your hand and you start sowing this seed, he's gonna multiply the seed that's able to be sown.

So so here's what he's saying: I'm gonna be able to do through you more than you've ever thought or imagined if you just open up your hand in joy-filled release.

You see, if we desire to be used by God in radical ways, I think there's two things that we have to focus on.

Number one, we have to focus on a trust in Him that causes us to rest in his abundance and a promise that we have to believe in that God's word will never return void to his people.

So let's talk about this.

The trust.

The trust is this God supplies all that we need to accomplish all that he has called us to.

That takes an immense amount of trust on our part, right?

To be able to step out in faith, to be able to answer the call, to be able to do something in this kingdom.

But not only do we have to trust, there's this promise that as we give, he will actually increase our capacity to give in larger and more impactful ways.

You see, if we want to be a people who make a generational kingdom impact in this area, through this church, through our testimony of the gospel of Jesus, I believe that it will be through the God multiplying impact of our generosity.

You want to see what God can do?

What we're having to understand here is we've got to be willing to sow seed from a cheerful heart and watch how he multiplies our ability to keep sowing and keep doing more and keep doing more.

You see, God has given us a God-sized vision here at Sacred Mission.

It's one that we cannot accomplish in our own strength and resources, that all may know the joy of his salvation.

We want every, if if we could have it our way and we understand this, but that everybody in this greater Cincinnati area would know the joy of his salvation.

Because they're all looking for it in everything that's going to dissatisfy and heap on sorrow and destruction.

They're all looking, and we want to shout, it's only going to be found in him.

And not only has he called us to a God-sized vision, he's called us to a God-centered mission to accomplish it.

As his church, we are sent on mission to make disciples and plant churches.

Make disciples.

So what do we want to do?

We want to be disciples who make disciples.

We want to continually equip you and send you out to be able to make disciples of those around you, your neighbors, your coworkers, your family members, your friends, right?

And then we want to plant churches.

We want to see gospel-centered, healthy, God-glorifying churches saturate this northern Cincinnati area so that more and more people can do what?

Know that joy.

That joy of his salvation alone.

So, what do we have to do?

We have to trust that what he has called us to, he will abundantly supply us with the means to accomplish it.

And that there is a promise that if we open our hand to release in generosity, he'll multiply our ability to do more than we ever thought or imagined.

I have a very wild imagination.

If you got into my head, it would, you would be scared, probably.

But here's the reality.

I can look out 10, 20 years from now, and I can see what God can do.

And the reality is that is so crazy small compared to what he can really do.

Even my biggest vision of what God could do is radically smaller than what he's actually able to do.

And I believe that there's this call that he's making us to put him to the test.

You want to see me multiply?

You want to see what I can do?

You're gonna have to open your hand.

See, this is this is this is what he's calling us to.

And in here, this isn't the prosperity gospel with a reformed bumper sticker slapped on it, right?

Oh, we're gospel center, but hey, you know, here's the difference.

Here's the message of the prosperity gospel.

I give so that by God's blessing, I can have more.

That's the heart of the prosperity gospel.

I give so that by God's blessing, I can have more.

Here's the gospel truth.

I give so that by God's blessing I can give more.

That's the difference.

That's the difference between what the scriptures are calling us to and what false teachers call us to.

Why are we called to give?

Not so we can have more, so we can possess more, so we can continue to try and find our hope and salvation and stuff, but so that we can give more to the purposes and people of God.

And this is the heart of verse 11.

Verse 11, you will, if you do this, you will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way.

This is the promise that he gives to us as his people.

And look, I love, you want to know what real wealth looks like?

Proverbs 11 shows us this, 24 through 25.

One gives freely, yet grows all the richer.

Another withholds what he should give and only suffers want.

Whoever brings blessing will be enriched, and one who waters will himself be water.

Look at that.

One who gives freely, yet grows all the richer.

What because they know that their wealth is not in their stuff, but somebody who withholds.

Look, we we are in one of the wealthiest areas of the state of Ohio, and it is filled with home after home after home of sorrow and sadness and want.

Because they're trying to find it in these other things that's never going to be able to satisfy.

And they wonder what is going on.

It's like, man, your hope is in this.

Keep going.

So, this kind of God multiplying, radical generosity produces something in us.

Paul leaves us with this this thanksgiving to God.

Man, look at look, greed will never cultivate gladness.

Greed will never cultivate gladness.

You think that if you can hoard your treasure like some dragon in a Tolkien story, right?

That if you can just have all your stuff and be, that somehow you're gonna be happy with that, it's greed's never gonna produce gladness.

Never.

It's in the total loss of things.

And the reorienting our heart and mind to know that we have gotten everything in him is gonna produce gladness in our hearts.

Gladness is found in joy-filled release because we have found the eternal satisfaction of our desire in him.

Let's wrap up the last of this chapter here, uh, 12 through 15.

Paul closes out this passage, helping helping us underse the beauty of what he calls an inexpressible gift that comes from God.

So, so what is this gift from God that's supposed to leave us speechless?

I believe it's this.

I believe it's the overflow of joy in God that gladly meets the needs of other people for his glory and their good.

It's the overflow of joy in God that gladly meets the needs of other people for his glory and their good.

This is the driving motivation of a cheerful giver.

That our joy in God is so overflowing that it becomes a life spring to others, where their relationship with us is one of joy-filled burden sharing, and our joy in God increases, our love for one another increases, our abscribing Him glory increases.

All of this is the fruit of a cheerful giver.

And this gift is something that leaves us speechless, he says, in awestruck wonder of God's grace and majesty.

So, so what's our main idea?

God's bountiful generosity establishes and enables us to be generous.

This is what Paul says.

His bountiful generosity establishes.

How does it establish?

It establishes us to be generous by supplying us with the seed of generosity in the first place.

As 1 Chronicles 29, 14 says, this prayer of David, for all things come from you, and of your own have we given you.

Look at what Paul, look, look what David's saying in there in that prayer.

All things come from you, and anything we've ever given was yours that we gave back to you.

Like, like we have to realize this isn't ours.

There's nothing in all of creation that we are able to declare as mine.

It's all his.

It's all for his glory, it's all for him.

And so, so we got to realize he establishes our generosity by supplying us with the very seed, and then he enables our radical generosity by multiplying that seed in our hand.

He sustains and increases our generosity because a cheerful giver becomes a radical giver as he continues to glorify God through a life of joy-filled release.

2 Corinthians 9 10, this is what Paul said.

He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will what?

Supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness.

Now, look what Paul says is the fruit or the reward of our generosity.

It's not more stuff, it's increased righteousness.

Man, do we want the righteousness of Christ in us by grace through faith to be displayed in our lives to others?

Do we want to live that righteousness out in us?

Paul's saying one of the keys to unlock that, to reap a harvest of increased righteousness, is generosity.

Because I think maybe this is the secret.

The less and less we're able to depend on our stuff, and the more and more we have to depend on Him would bring out the fruit of righteousness in our lives.

Just maybe.

You see, a life that reflects the bountiful generosity of God is a life that reaps the harvest of increased righteousness.

God is the giver.

And Paul's helping us understand that the giver always gets the glory.

But but we have a problem, and we're trying to wrap this up here.

We have a problem.

And it all is based on how we see God.

So at the beginning of the passage, Paul said, He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly.

Our problem is we have sparing hearts.

We have sparing hearts.

Let me unpack this.

My generosity towards others is a direct connection to my view of God's generosity toward me.

Let me say that one more time.

My generosity towards others is a direct connection to my view of God's.

Generosity toward me.

The people who sow most bountifully display that God is a bountiful giver.

Yet many of us, if we are honest with ourselves, we fail to see God as a giver.

And instead, myself included, you and I, we see God as a taker and not a giver.

We see our lives and possessions being just drained by a God who demands from us.

He demands that we follow after him, that we are obedient to him, that we give our things to him, that he just continually desires to not give life but to drain us of it.

He's draining us of pleasure by his laws and commands.

He's keeping us from the things that we so desperately desire.

He's draining us of happiness as he demands that we care and love for others.

He's draining us of comfort with his demands of generosity and justice and mercy.

He's draining us of glory with his demands that we ascribe it to him.

Many of us, if we are honest with ourselves, we see God as a taker, as one who drains us because we believe that he is taking all that we desire from us.

And this person who sees God in that light is the person who sows sparingly.

Because here's what to spare means it means to hold back.

It means to keep for your own pleasure and satisfaction, to restrain so that something cannot be taken from you.

You see, we have sparing hearts because we see God as a taker.

And he's going to take from us, and so we have to hold back.

We have to hold back.

If that's our view of God, if that's our understanding of his relationship with us as his people, there is no other proper response than for us to hold back.

Hold back our possessions of this world because we've decided in ourselves, we've deceived within ourselves that the pleasure, happiness, comfort, glory we long for is not going to be had in Him, but it's going to be had in our stuff.

So you hold back.

I hold back.

I foster a sparing heart because I believe God is holding me back from that which is going to bring me the joy I so desire.

You see, I'll give something.

I'll give something because I've convinced myself that I want to satisfy God's incessant demands.

I want to have Him through my own work and my own self-righteousness delight in me, but ultimately I'm just doing this so that I can appease him, and I'm going to hold back all this other stuff because in it I believe I'm going to find the joy that I'm looking for.

Because if I give it to God, he's just a taker.

The root feeling of my heart is not to think about how much I get to give in response to his generosity, but how much I need to keep in response to his draining, taking nature.

You see, I need to keep because to God, to me, God is a taker.

I need to have a sparing heart because God has held me back from the life that I truly long for.

So if my view of God is that of a demanding drainer, then I will have a heart that seeks to drain the pleasures of this world that it offers, because I've deceived myself into believing that God is not a giver of pleasure, but a taker of it.

And so this kind of heart spares.

But here's the beauty and truth of the gospel: God has spared nothing.

God has spared nothing.

If we church are tempted to believe that God has held back from us, if we are tempted to believe that he demands from us instead of being generous toward us, then can I just call our attention for a moment to think about the terrifying nature of his generosity?

You want to see how generous God is?

It will terrify you.

Romans 8 32.

He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all.

How will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

You want to see how terrifying God's generosity is toward us?

He held nothing back, including Jesus, his own son.

Now think about this for a moment.

We have sparing hearts.

We hold back from God because we believe, we've convinced ourselves He is holding us back from all joy and delight that we so desire.

And he says, You don't get it.

I spared nothing so that you could have eternal fullness of joy in me.

You see, how generous is God?

He's terrifyingly generous.

He didn't keep Jesus for just himself.

He didn't spare, he didn't hold back his own son.

It was from overflowing joy that God gave us his son to meet the needs that we as his people had for his glory, for our eternal good.

God is not a taker, he's a glorious giver.

And that, not because of some law of 10%, not because of some guilt trip that the preacher tries to put you on, not because of some regret and really believing that if you let go, you'll gain.

Man, it's from the reality that God is the most glorious giver for us.

That we can live in joy-filled release for Him.

God gave to bring you joy.

There's nothing that He will ever hold back from you.

God gave His Son to bring you to Himself, the eternal lifespring of all joy.

So, what does this do for us?

We are free to live in bountiful generosity.

We are free to live in bountiful.

This should be liberating for us.

I don't need any.

When I look at the cross, when I look at the empty tomb, when I look at the generosity of God that he did not even spare his own son, what do I need?

Like, literally, what do I need?

I have everything in him.

And if I have this trust that he's gonna supply everything that I need, if he's gonna give me everything I need to accomplish what he's called me to, and in my generosity, he's even gonna multiply that so I get to be even more generous.

Man, think about the lavish, perceivably reckless nature of the generosity God has called us to.

Like it should not make sense to the world.

And so I have a challenge for us this morning.

We'll wrap up.

Here's this challenge for all of us here as we kind of close out this sermon series this morning.

Number one is this some of you are not giving at all, and I'm calling you to give.

Some of you are not giving, and let me preface this real quick.

Some of you are not giving because you can't give.

And there is grace abounding, there's mercy, there's generosity of others that desires to come around you and give to you.

If you're in that position this morning, don't hear me trying to put something on you that you're being just crushed under right now.

In fact, text us, scan that QR card, let us know.

You need the church to give to you this morning.

And so here's what I'm not calling you to do.

I'm not calling you to just give one time to appease your conscience and try to satisfy the demands of some God who you want to delight in you.

Don't do that.

Just keep your money.

Here's what I do want to call you to.

I want to call you to a regular rhythm of giving.

Because the end goal is not a larger bank account for us.

The end goal is that we start to align our minds and hearts with the righteousness of God, and in view of his radical generosity, and that our hearts become cheerful in the duty and delight of being generous in response to it.

So I'm calling you to a regular rhythm of giving.

Some of us, we are giving sparingly, and I want to call us to give bountifully.

So I'm just simply gonna ask this question.

What are you holding back?

What are you holding back?

And the more important question, why are you holding it back?

I know I hold back from fear, I hold back from uh anxiousness, I hold back because of selfishness, and like I see some new shiny thing, and I'm like, I want that.

Um what are you holding back?

Why are you holding back?

Increase.

Take this next step to go from sparing to bountiful in our generosity.

Third challenge.

Some of you are giving out of reluctance and compulsion.

Man, I don't ever want that for anyone here in this church to give out of reluctance or compulsion.

That's not our heartbeat.

Our heartbeat is you see what God's doing and you say, I want to partner in that.

I want to partner in that because I want to see it keep going.

I want to see what God's gonna be able to do with this in five, ten, twenty years, and how we're gonna be just looking back amazed at how we saw his hand continually multiply what we were striving to accomplish.

So we're never gonna ask you to give out of reluctance, out of compulsion.

We're gonna ask to give out of a cheerful heart.

It's moving from this cold duty to joy filled partnership.

Let's pray.