Luke 8:1-3 & Romans 16:1-2 – Generosity

Beginning to gay with our reading from Luke chapter 8, verse 1 to 3.

Luke 8:1–3

Soon afterward he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God, and the twelve were with him, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities.

Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Chusa, Herod's household manager, and Susanna, and many others who provided from them out of their means.

The second part of our passage is Romans chapter 16, verses 1 to 2.

Romans 16:1–2

I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a servant of the church at Sancriae, that you may welcome her in the Lord in a way worthy of the saints, and help her in whatever she may need from you.

For she has been a patron of many and of my myself as well.

And so reads God's word.

I'm one of the leaders here at the church.

And it's great to have you with us, especially if you're new or uh or visiting with us.

As Peter said, uh, we have uh come to the end of our lengthy two-part series on uh on generosity.

We'll be back in Romans uh next Sunday, uh picking up the uh that letter in Romans chapter, uh Romans chapter six.

Uh but every year, around about this time, we take a moment to think about what does it mean uh to be a generous people as we partner with others um as a uh as a church.

And so you heard uh about Cameron and his ministry.

And uh last week we were hearing from Owen and his work at Christian Unions Ireland.

We'll hear hopefully a little bit from uh from Duncan and from Redeemer Church uh in just a few minutes' time.

As you can hear, I'm a little bit sick.

Uh and so uh don't come and talk to me.

Um you are forewarned.

I will probably leave quite sharpish afterwards for your own for your own sake of quarantine down here at the front.

Uh but if you've uh if you've got one of these, uh it's good to have it open in front of you.

Uh you can pick one of the two passages, I would say, uh start at uh looking it anyway.

Uh but if you don't, if you have one, look down at it.

And uh if you don't, if it's on your phone, pull it up on your phone uh and uh and see it there because really it is a very remarkable thing.

Week after week we take it for granted that uh that we have access to the to the Bible in our language.

Uh what an amazing thing that actually you can uh come here on a Sunday uh or through the week privately yourself and open up the Bible and you can read it in a language that that you can understand.

You think, well, yes, Mark, is this how profound your sermon's going to get?

No, no, I'm gonna try and make it slightly more profound than that because we take it for granted, but it wasn't always that way.

You know, for the first 1500 years of the of the church, the Bible was predominantly, if not exclusively, in Latin.

And only those who were educated in Latin could read it and study it.

So that meant that the access to the Bible, to God's word, was reserved for people who either had set aside themselves to join that kind of monastic life, or people who were particularly wealthy and could get the education required to study the Bible in the language that it was that it was written in.

But in the 1500s, there was a there was a man who God raised up called William Tyndale.

And Tyndale believed that everyone should have access to the Bible in their own language, because he believed that if everyone could read the word of God, then anyone could have a relationship with God.

Anyone could know God.

He had this wonderful conviction that we still shared, that actually when you read the Bible, you hear God's voice.

They say, well, wouldn't we want that for everybody?

Wouldn't we want people to read the Bible in their language and then they could get to know the God who made all things and have a relationship with him?

Now, there was just one problem.

Well, there were two problems.

Uh the first is that uh what he was uh proposing, that is, translating the Bible from Latin into into old English, what he was proposing was was illegal uh at the time.

It was seen as uh as heretical, as a challenge to uh to the church's authority.

And the second problem was that it was very, very expensive, what he was proposing to do.

And so, alongside William Tyndale, God raised up another man, a guy called Humphrey Monmouth.

Now, you may have heard of Tyndale-Tildale Bible translators and things like that, but I'll tell you now that there isn't one person in this room, possibly Cameron, because he's a geek like me, uh, who's heard of Humphrey Monmouth.

Humphrey Monmouth was a merchant.

He he was a drapier, that is, he made and sold curtains.

And God raised him up in his business life to a level of wealth and influence that he became the backer of William Tyndale.

In fact, he he took him in and kept him safe from the authorities.

He paid for all of his expenses and uh and housed him, used his his merchant business in order to then get the translated English Bibles uh across England and out onto the out onto the continent.

And in the end, both men paid dearly for it.

Monmouth was arrested and uh Tyndale was was killed.

But again, if you look down on your lap, you realize, well, hold on a second.

The efforts of this man, these men have been wonderfully used.

You have a Bible that you can read in your language because of the bravery of Tyndall and the support of people like Monmouth.

Stories like this are not rare in the history of the church.

We could speak of uh John Newton's backer, a guy called John Thornton, John Newton who wrote Amazing Grace, or we could speak of Lady Huntington funding the evangelistic ministry of George Whitfield, or we could speak here at City Church.

Over the last 10 years or so, there have been churches and individuals who have given tens of thousands of euro.

In fact, Ben asked me at our staff meeting this week.

He said, What do you think it is now?

Like, what do you think it's into?

Over the last 10 years, it must actually be in the millions to enable us to do what we do.

And in these passages that we were uh that we read, we caught a glimpse of people, women, in the cases of these two passages, who partnered first with Jesus and then with Paul to fund and support their ministry and the advancement of the gospel.

And so in the second of our two talks, as we've been thinking uh on this theme of generosity, I want you to see one thing.

That is that each one of us is called to be a gospel partner, a gospel patron.

Partners who join forces together so that more people can hear the good news of Jesus.

The good news of sins forgiven, of newness of life, of relationship with the Father, adopted as a son or daughter of the living God, brought into the eternal community of the church with hope indestructible.

But that's what we're called, in a sense, to partner together in.

And we do so as gospel patrons.

So let me make my first point, which is this gospel patrons are how God works in the world.

That this idea of people partnering together to see the gospel advance is how God chooses to work in the world.

Start of Luke chapter 8, um, as Lisa read for us, gives us an insight into some of the people surrounding Jesus' ministry.

Luke 8 · chapter mention

And he lists these three women, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Susanna.

And then he says that these women supported Jesus' ministry out of their means.

I find that curious, don't you?

Because you kind of step back and you think, well, it's Jesus, right?

Why does Jesus need the help of other people?

Why does he need the help of these three women to fund his ministry?

You just think about some of the miracles that he did.

That he turned water into wine.

Why didn't Jesus start a uh a winemaking business, open up some sort of North Galilean vineyard, uh, you know, just from a tap out of his back door?

Why did he need the support of others?

Or uh you think of the time when he was uh he was tempted by the devil, and the devil says, Well, you there's rocks here, why don't you turn them into bread?

Jesus could have become a baker.

So he could have gone out into the desert and just made loaves of bread every day and sold it at the market.

Why didn't he do that?

Or you think of another time when he sent he sent uh Peter out to go and uh do some fishing and to catch a fish uh that had a had a coin in its mouth?

He could have done that every morning, sent Peter out, and why don't you uh why don't you go catch another money fish, Peter?

And that will fund our fund our ministry.

But he doesn't do any of that.

Why doesn't he do any of that?

And then of course you remember, well, he's he's the son of God, and why didn't his father send him to a rich household?

Why wasn't Joseph a man of means?

And so when he died, Jesus inherited some wealth.

But none of that is what happens in the gospel.

What we read in Luke chapter 8 was that there were these women, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them, for Jesus and the apostles, out of their means.

Luke 8 · chapter mention

How curious.

Why was Jesus dependent on the generosity of others?

I do not believe that it was by accident.

Partnering financially for the sake of the gospel isn't how the church works in an emergency.

It's how God wants the church to work.

We see that in Jesus' ministry.

He wants to provoke and promote the generosity of his people in order to fund his mission.

So partnering with others of lower, of lower means who are taking the gospel out, who are being set aside by God for the advance of the gospel is not just an add-on to what the church does.

It is part of how the church operates.

And it was the same for Paul's ministry.

What we didn't read was a passage from the book of Acts.

And you could read uh from Acts 16 about a lady called Lydia, who was a uh a fabrics merchant, and she supplied the needs of Paul and his apostolic companions uh while they were with her and and beyond.

And then here in our Romans reading, uh, we read about a lady called Phoebe, a servant of the church, and she is explicitly in verse 2 called a patron of many and of myself as well.

People who God has raised up in order to help to fund and to finance and to allow to exist and to thrive the work of the gospel.

The same's true for us.

Let me just read you some of the churches, not even the individuals, who have partnered with us on down the years.

We've got Irish Church missions.

Cameron and I are connected through Irish Church Missions, that kind of mother mission agency.

They gave a lot of support, financial and otherwise, to the early days of City Church, and now we have the privilege actually of uh of giving back to them and allowing them to continue to do the uh the work of advancing the gospel.

City Life Church in Austin, Gospel Life Church in Seattle, Origin Church in Sacramento, Livingstones Church in Nevada, Kilhorn Church of Ireland in Anna Long, St.

Nicholas's Church in Carrick Fergus, County Antrim, St.

Elizabeth's Church in Dundonald, County Dyne, Porticoville Church in Charlottesville, Virginia, Foothill Church, Glendora, California, all patrons of City Church for the sake of the gospel, to say nothing of the scores of individuals who I will not name, because I wouldn't want to embarrass them.

Becoming a gospel patron, a financial partner, is not just something that we need to do in order to have our expenses covered.

No, no.

It is how God chooses to advance his mission in the world.

You might sit here and think, well, I'm not actually a person of much means.

I'm not a rich fabrics merchant.

I have not made or sold my own curtains.

Uh I'm not sure that I could do that.

Well, that leads me to my second point.

The gospel patrons have many different backgrounds, but one thing in common.

Gospel patrons have many different backgrounds with one thing in common.

The patrons mentioned in these passages had different means, had different social standings.

Uh, there's there's no indication that Mary Magdalene was particularly wealthy, uh, though there's some differences there.

She was unmarried, uh, and so it seems perhaps that she had little personal wealth.

Whereas Joanna, Joanna, on the other hand, is married to Cusa, who was the manager of Herod's household.

She herself uh would have had many servants and fine clothes.

She's the lady who flew, who flew first class with her husband and uh and knew what the good champagne was to buy.

Or Lydia in the book of Acts.

She's a businesswoman.

She's hardworking and savvy and she's built up her own business.

Phoebe in the Romans passage, she seems to have some sort of wealth, wealth enough to be a patron, but we don't know uh how much or where from.

But here's the interesting thing about that.

While we don't know about her wealth, what we do know about is about her generosity.

We might not know about her wealth, but we know about her generosity.

Different women, different social standings, different means.

And yet they had one thing in common.

They had each had their lives changed by Jesus.

They had each had their lives changed by Jesus.

This comes forthfully in the in the in the Luke passage.

Or in verse 2 it says there were some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities.

Mary called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out.

This mention of Mary's deliverance from seven demons alludes to a backstory that we're not fully aware of, a one of deep brokenness.

The Bible might not be clear about her past, but it's clear that there is significant hurt, significant pain and shame, and yet Jesus has set her free.

Joanna, it seems, had experienced some sort of sickness, and she had encountered Jesus, and he had made her well.

Lydia in Acts was a Gentile woman, a woman searching for God.

And what we read there was that when she heard the gospel message, Luke writes that the Lord opened her heart with different backgrounds, different stories, different faith journeys with one thing in common.

They'd all been set free by the Lord Jesus.

They'd all had an encounter with the risen Jesus that had changed their life forever.

And from that changed heart flowed generosity.

When it comes to considering this whole thing of partnering together for the sake of the gospel, the first question for you to ask is not, well, okay, how much do I need to give?

No, the first question that you need to ask is, Am I a person who's had my heart changed by Jesus?

Am I trusting in him?

Has he set me free?

Have my sins been forgiven?

Is has my life been renewed by him?

And if you're here and the answer is no, then we're so glad that you're here.

But I also know that in one sense, this isn't going to make a whole lot of sense to you because why would you want to then partner in this sort of way?

It is only when we understand the transforming power of the gospel will we want to see it go out to others who are lost, who have not heard it.

Once our hearts have been transformed by Jesus, then we will understand the goodness of partnering together for the sake of others, whatever our means, whatever our background.

So, gospel patrons, what we've seen so far is that this is how God chooses to work in the world.

When we talk about generosity and we're asking you to consider uh your own giving and how it is that you support uh the mission at City Church, what we're not asking is for something unusual.

This is how the church operates.

This is how God has chosen uh to uh uh to cause his church to to flourish by the partnership and the and the generosity of of his people.

And that doesn't mean that it's just the uh the high net worth individuals or the people of means.

No, it's anybody who's had their heart changed by Jesus.

It's one of the things we saw last week, wasn't it?

That you'd act you don't actually need to be uh wealthy in order to be generous.

In fact, very often as you look across the world, the people who have the least are often the ones who who hold it most generously, isn't that right?

And then finally, gospel patrons are siblings, siblings who serve.

Look at how Paul describes Phoebe.

Let me remind you of it.

He says, I commend to you our sister, Phoebe, a servant of the church at Sencree.

She's not simply a financier, she's a sister, a family member.

She's likely the one who's who's carrying the letter uh uh to the church in Rome, and the church in Rome would not have known her.

Paul knows her, Paul knows her faith, and he knows that because of what Jesus has done, they are all family together.

When we partner together for the sake of the gospel, we do so not as disconnected individuals, but as households, as family.

So we looked at, if you were with us in the chocolate factory last Sunday night, we looked at uh that we are God's family.

We are God's household, we are God's messengers to the city.

And the reason why the churches that I have mentioned, the individuals that support us, the reason why they do that is because they recognize that though we are disconnected, and though you have probably never met them, that you're their brothers and sisters.

And they want to be a blessing to us.

Brothers and sisters adopted by the Father.

For the sake of the gospel.

Our brotherhood, our sisterhood.

Amongst us and with those whom we bless.

Just over a year ago, we uh planted Redeemer Church and uh in order to be a uh a gospel community on the south side of the city, they're in church town, where there's about 10,000 uh people in need of the life-giving message of of Jesus.

We sent Duncan and Becky and uh and 15 or so others to plant that church.

And they've been going now for about a year.

And you might not you might have joined in the last year and you have no idea who they are.

But let me tell you this there are brothers and sisters.

There are brothers and sisters that we get to bless.

We partner with them financially, we continue to support them because they're a brand new church.

And this one, the list of churches that I have uh that I have mentioned, those churches that have blessed us, it would be wrong, wouldn't it, if actually just the um that it just stopped there?

That there was those who gave and those who took.

That actually they give to us, and then in time we give to Redeemer and then to others.

Now this grace in that way tends to flow downhill, and we get to be a blessing to them.

I want you to hear now I'm gonna just you know give you a warning.

Uh Duncan appears on this video, and he is huge.

So, you know, um, but we're gonna we're gonna roll VT before I uh before I close out Hi City Church.

My name is Duncan.

I am the pastor of Redeemer South Dublin, and I just wanted to take this moment to shoot this short video to thank you for your partnership in the gospel.

Um, many of you we know and we love, and we are grateful for you, and and some of you you we've never met uh since we've left City Church.

We were planted just over a year ago, and this behind me is where we meet each Sunday.

That's my car just being filled with the stuff, and uh, we have just gathered uh this Sunday to worship and praise God here in South Dublin.

And what I wanted to express is my gratefulness to you as a church that when you partner with other churches, you are reaching new areas in this city and across the world, and that your partnership so matters to us, both in prayerfulness but also financial giving and the relationship we get to share in Christ Jesus, that we deeply care for you guys, we deeply want God to flourish and make your work fruitful there where you are, as much as you do for us.

So we want to say thank you.

We are so grateful for you, and and we do not just think this is us alone doing this work, but we know that you are alongside us.

That by God's grace, when we are seeking to engage this community and seek to engage them with the gospel, it is not just us, but you are joining us in that work, in that ministry, as you give financially, as you pray for us and the Lord to work in and through us.

So thank you so much.

We appreciate you, we love you, and we desire that the Lord would continue to grow you into the image of the Son as you seek to make much of him where you are.

Churches have partnered with us, and now we get to partner with others.

And as I've said many times before, the planting of Redeemer Church is just our uh it's our opening gambit.

They were our guinea pigs.

What a thing it would be if we became a church that continued to bless other gospel ministries throughout Dublin and perhaps even more excitedly beyond Dublin for the sake of Jesus' name.

Because I think that when we when we find ourselves partnering with uh with others, we become aware that really we are part of a story that is much bigger than ourselves.

These women that we read about in Luke chapter 8, Mary Magdalene and Joanna, they were not just partners that helped to fund Jesus' ministry.

Luke 8 · chapter mention

In the end, they became witnesses.

They were the women who went to the tomb that first Easter Sunday and saw that the risen Lord Jesus had indeed conquered death and went to tell the disciples of it.

That same Jesus promised that the gospel would go to the ends of the earth.

And so at some point in a church in Saint Cree, a lady called Phoebe either volunteered or was asked, we don't know, but she went to take that gospel letter from the Apostle Paul to the ends of the earth in the ancient world to Rome, the very center of all civilization.

But when you become a gospel partner, you realize that you're bigger than something much bigger than yourself, but something much bigger than just us here at City Church.

And so the kingdom spread goes on and on across the world and down the generations, and it's and it's come to us, and we get to be a blessing to Duncan, we get to be an encouragement, I hope, to Cameron, and to countless others that we seek to be a blessing to and to enable to do the work of ministry.

So, what does God ask of us?

Well, he asks us to join him in his mission.

You heard it earlier, but how you might join him in your workplace, but also how he might use you now as partners together for the furtherance of his ministry, of his mission, using his chosen means.

Gospel partners, supporting gospel ministry for the glory of his name in our day.

That in a little while, when the QR code comes up and you scan it, that you respond as a gospel partner, seeking to make the gospel known in Dublin and beyond.

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