II Corinthians 8:1-15 and 9:6-15

Our reading today is actually coming from two chapters, so we're starting off in 2 Corinthians chapter 8, and then we're going to read chapter 9 a bit from that as well.

2 Corinthians 8 · chapter mention

Beginning in chapter 8, verses 1 to 15.

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 favour 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.

Accordingly, we urge Titus that as he has started, so he should complete among you this act of grace.

But as you excel in everything, in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in all earnestness and in our love for you, see that you excel in this act of grace also.

I say this not as a command, but to prove by the earnestness of others that your love also is genuine.

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for our sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.

And in this matter I give my judgment.

This benefits you, who a year ago started not only to do this work, but also to desire to do it.

So now finish doing it as well, so that your readiness in desiring it may be matched by your completing it out of what you have.

For if the readiness is there, it is acceptable according to what a person has, not according to what he does not have.

For I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened, but that as a matter of fairness, your abundance at the present time should apply their need, so that their abundance may supply what your need, that there may be fairness.

As it is written, whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack.

And continuing in chapter 9, starting in verse 6.

The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.

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

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 is given to the poor, his righteousness endures for ever.

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

For the ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints, but is also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God.

By their approval of this service, they will glorify God because of your submission that comes from your confession of the gospel of Christ, and the generosity of your contribution for them and for all others, while they long for you and pray for you because of the surpassing grace of God upon you.

Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift.

And so reads God's word.

Welcome to you.

My name is Mark.

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

This sermon today, this talk today, is a bit of a one-off, a standalone.

We concluded John's Gospel last week after 47 sermons.

If this is your first week, why weren't you here?

You missed 47 talks on the Gospel of John.

Um, and we are uh we are going into a new sermon series, uh, eight weeks thinking a little bit about uh about gender, our bodies, and about sexuality and about marriage and singleness and all of that good stuff.

So that will uh that completely uncontroversial sermon series begins next week.

Um and so this one's kind of a little bit of a bridge between the two.

You know, well, why why is why is a Sunday on generosity and on giving?

Why is it a bridge?

Well, I think there's actually lots of connections uh between the sermon series that we're going into and this morning.

But by the way, we don't normally do topical series.

We're doing it now for the next eight weeks or so.

Our normal practice is to do 47 sermons in the Gospel of John, um, and is to go through books of the Bible, but we want to speak about issues that we're that we're particularly wrestling with, uh, that our world is particularly wrestling with and has things to say on it.

And we want to hear uh what God has to say, uh, what Jesus has to say on uh on these issues.

And that's true too for generosity.

Generosity, just like gender and how you view your body, it's a it's a discipleship issue.

What I mean by that is if you are a follower of the Lord Jesus, probably uh what Jesus has to say on these matters is different to what the world has to say on these matters.

And so if you're working out, well, what does Jesus say about who I am and about uh what I what I own, what I earn, my possessions, all of those sorts of things, then you are working out, well, how should I conform my life to what the gospel calls me to do as a as a follower of Jesus?

Both gender and marriage and singleness and all of those things, and generosity this morning are all issues of what does it mean to follow the Lord Jesus as a as a human being?

Not only that, but going into the next eight weeks, one of the things that that we will need to cultivate in and amongst all of us is a generosity of spirit as we contend with these issues that are uh controversial, where there are disagreement, uh where there are pastoral sensitivities.

And so we want to uh to acknowledge that actually as we go into the next eight weeks, having a heart that's generous and thinking about where that comes from uh is going to be a good thing, just in terms of our own mindset and disposition going into the to the next eight weeks.

And then the final connection as we as we consider these things is that both generosity and the Christian view of the body and our identity only really make sense when we see that there is a God who stands behind our world, that I am a created being, that I did not make myself, nor do I uh nor did I create the things that I own, that they're ultimately a gift.

And if they're a gift, well, what are they for?

And the final connection, I suppose, is this that both the Christian view of the body and of gender and all of those things, and the Christian view of generosity and where that comes from, they're both different to what the world would tell you.

And so we have an opportunity over the next eight weeks to think counter-culturally.

You know, Jesus calls the church to be a city on a hill whose light cannot be hidden.

One of the ways that we will commend the gospel of the Lord Jesus, the good news of his message, is if we are known and seen to be a genuinely generous, lavishly loving people.

And those are just some of the reasons why we're thinking about this before we go into the next eight weeks.

Before we think about any of the principles or where to's or why fors, the most important thing to consider this morning is this what creates a generous heart?

How do you become a generous person?

Presuming that you want to be, you don't want to be like Ebenezer Scrooge.

You know what Dickens uh says of Ebenezer Scrooge, he says that he was as cold and solitary as an oyster, clamp, shut off from the rest of the world.

Assuming that you don't want to be that sort of person, but you want to be known as somebody who is who's generous and loving and uh and and and lavish and gracious.

How does that come about?

How do you cultivate that in your life?

Well, will pressure and the expectation from other people do it?

You know, you're sitting uh you're sitting in the pub and uh and everybody else is is baying around and you can think, oh, it's kind of getting to my turn.

And you know that person who doesn't put their hand in their pocket.

If you don't know that person, it's you.

Right?

Everybody feels the uh the pressures, that social pressure to be generous.

Will that create a generous heart, though?

Well, no, it won't.

It might produce generous actions, but it won't change your heart.

What about what about if I guilted you into being generous this morning?

What if we went with guilt and fear and shame?

But sometimes uh that's it that's kind of the notes that some charities play on, you know, the guilt of our uh of our Western lives, and that is worth acknowledging, we are profoundly blessed here in the West.

Uh, but is does guilt and fear and shame, maybe guilt from family?

Maybe you're uh the kind of person who has moved to Dublin from overseas, and one of the things that you're doing is you're you're having to send money home.

That's a great and good and blessed thing to do, but maybe that's motivated by kind of a guilt to do that, or you feel guilty when you feel like you can't do that?

Does guilt produce heart change?

Never.

Never.

It's one of the things that we uh should be learning from the uh from the Christian history of our country is that guilt and shame doesn't produce heart change.

That only the grace of God can do that.

You might perform generous actions, you might do generous things, but they are not coming from a place where your heart feels a desire to be generous.

So your heart feels the pressure of guilt and shame and fear.

What needs to happen in order to produce a generous, a radically generous person?

Well, you need an encounter with the radically generous God.

And that is the message of Christianity, that God has been radically, lavishly generous to you in his son, the Lord Jesus.

One of the things that we saw way back at the start of John's Gospel was that Jesus' first miracle in John's Gospel, uh, well, what was it?

It wasn't uh it wasn't the resurrection of Lazarus, it wasn't the healing of a of a blind man or a deaf person.

What was Jesus' first miracle?

And this is your test, this is your exam, to see, did you remember any of the 47 sermons?

What was Jesus' first miracle in the Gospel of John?

Shout it out.

Wine.

Turning water into wine.

And one of the things that we saw there is that Jesus doesn't just produce enough wine to get them by in the party.

He produces about 1,200 bottles worth, right?

Gallons and gallons of good wine.

The master of the ceremony says you've kept the best wine for now.

Well, what is that teaching us?

Well, what it's teaching us in part is that the kingdom of God is not rationed.

That God doesn't just drip feed his grace and go, well, I suppose you can have uh uh a little bit and just come on in.

No, no.

He is the abundant Father who lavishes his grace upon us.

That there's something, there's something ostentatious and over the top about the kingdom of God.

Or when the prodigal uh in that story that Jesus tells about the two sons and the younger son takes the inheritance of the father and he goes and he squanders it and he's laid low and he's uh he's longing to eat the pig's food that he's tending and he's starving, and he comes back to his father, and he's intending to say to his father, Gino, I'll just just treat me like a servant, just just give me enough to get by.

But what does the father do?

The father isn't having any of it.

The father says, No, no, no.

Uh put the best robe on him.

Who owns the best robe in the household?

What the father does.

He's saying, go on and get go and get my most expensive piece of clothing and put it on him.

Get a ring, a precious thing, and put it on his finger.

Kill the fattened calf, the animal that was destined to go to market that would have that would have made money for them to uh to get by for the next month.

He said, No, no, kill it now and let's eat it and let's enjoy it.

Why?

Because our father is lavishly generous.

The only way that you'll become a generous person at heart, not just performing generous actions, is if you encounter the radical, lavish, reckless generosity of God in his love for you.

And that's what Paul talks about.

If you take nothing away from this morning, I want you to see the lavish generosity of God for you.

If you've got the Bible on your phone or whatever, the uh 2 Corinthians, that's where we are.

If you have it in your phone or if you've got a hard copy, if you look at it and draw your attention to one verse, maybe two verses actually.

Um chapter 8, verse 9 of 2 Corinthians, where Paul says, For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

What's grace?

Grace is undeserved kindness.

People think of it as a biwilly type word.

People talk, oh, grace.

What does it mean?

That God has been undeservedly kind to you.

It's not that you've merited it, it's not that you've earned it.

It's that God has been kind to you simply because of how he is himself, that he is loving.

That though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty, his poorness, you might become rich.

Just follow the logic of this verse.

Paul is saying, Know the grace.

So this is how you become a generous person.

What's that what know the grace of our Lord Jesus?

That is, know what it is that Jesus has done for each one of us.

Know that unreserved, unmerited, undeserved kindness of Jesus.

And how did Jesus show this grace for us?

Well, Paul tells us that he was rich.

How rich was Jesus?

Well, Jesus was the King of heaven, the beloved of the Father, ruler of the angels, author of all life, that he was surpassingly and wonderfully rich.

And yet he did what?

He became poor.

He set it all aside.

The king took off his robe, laid aside his crown, and exchanged it for a crown of thorns.

That he became poor and gave it all away, literally on the cross.

They strip him naked as he dies.

He dies with nothing.

Why did he do that?

Did he do that as an example?

It certainly is an example of uh of radical generosity, but it's much more than that.

Jesus did this.

Why?

Well, Paul tells us.

He says, yet for your sake he became poorer.

Why did Jesus do this radically generous thing of leaving heaven, coming to earth, living a perfect life, dying a death that we deserve?

He did it for us.

For you, for me.

He experiences poverty and deprivation and isolation on that cross.

So that we might be made rich.

By his poverty, you are made rich.

Not in terms of material wealth, for that is here today, gone, gone tomorrow, but eternally wealthy.

That by his death upon the cross, your debt of sin is paid, it is written off, it is cancelled, that you, like the prodigal, are are clothed in the in the robe of the perfect goodness of Jesus.

So that as the Father looks at you with all of your warts and failings, with all of your uh all of your past regrets, he doesn't see them, he sees his perfect son.

That you are clothed in his perfect life, that you are adopted as a son or a daughter of the king, never to be abandoned, never to be forsaken, loved unconditionally and eternally, held secure by his nail-pierced hands.

That is the lavish, generous, reckless love of God for you.

That before he ever uh talks about generosity as a discipleship issue, Paul wants the Christians to see that.

That all of our generous actions are a response to our generous God, that all of our generous actions come from a heart that has been changed by this generous God who laid down his life for us, that as we come to him in faith and repentance, as we acknowledge our need of him, he changes our priorities, he changes our desires.

When you encounter the generous Jesus, you have your heart transformed by that generosity.

And so you look at life differently, you look at the things that you have differently, you come with different desires and different priorities.

Contentment is a different thing for you.

I struggle, uh, I must confess, with with discontentment.

And I think sometimes that the Christian contentment is sitting there and just kind of knuckling through through gritted teeth and just trying to get on with that.

But that's not what Christian contentment is.

Christian contentment is changing our perspective to see how much we have been loved and blessed in the Lord Jesus, and finding him as the place of our our rest and the source of our delight, not in the things that uh the moth and rust will destroy, as he says, but in the things that he has given to us eternally.

And so we begin to realize that the hymn writer who says, My worth is not in what my in what I own, not in the strength of flesh and bone, but in the costly wounds of love at the cross.

My worth is not in skill or name, in win or lose, in pride or shame, but in the blood of Christ that flowed at the cross.

The gospel creates generous people.

If you have heard and understood and count yourself as a follower of the Lord Jesus, one of the most godly responses, as in responses that image what God is like is for you yourself to be a generous person, time generous, space generous, wealth generous.

Our generosity is a response, a God-glorifying response to the gracious to our gracious God.

And it is used by God as something that can be a blessing and is good for others.

It is also an act of faith and dependence that says my my identity doesn't come from my stuff anymore.

You know, that's people think that that's what life is.

Come on in, guys.

Uh people think that that's what life is.

You know, life is a game, and whoever has the most toys at the end wins.

But nobody ever puts that on their tombstone.

You think of uh J.D.

Rockefeller, the great um businessman in New York back in the turn of the 20th century, was asked, um, you know, Mr.

Rockefeller, how much is enough?

He said, just a little bit more.

Just a little bit more.

You touch your your heart to stuff, and it will never be enough.

You touch your your heart to that heavenly inheritance that Peter talks about that's kept in heaven for us, that is unperishing, unfaded, undefiled, unspoiled, kept in heaven for you.

And it will satisfy you eternally, and it will allow you to uh to endure the uh uh the ups and downs of material change.

Your hope is like a rope.

It matters very much what you attach it to.

You attach it to stuff, to career, to material possessions.

When you lose it, what happens to your hope then?

You attach hope to that heavenly inheritance that's kept eternally with a God who loves you and who laid down his life for you.

That changes everything.

It means that actually you can look at the stuff that you have and say, This is a gift, this is a gift for me to enjoy.

None of none of what I'm saying is saying that the things that you own are bad, or your career is bad, or or the money is bad.

That's not what I'm saying at all.

I'm saying that he cannot give you the identity that you need.

When your identity is in the Lord Jesus, when you have experienced his lavish generosity and you're following him, then you can look at these things and go, these are great.

But I'm also going to hold them with an open hand.

Because the Lord could take them away from me, and I could still have the source of my greatest joy.

Being generous is also an act of worship that says, you know, all that I have, Lord, comes from you.

I'm blessed because you have been so kind to me.

But you could you could take these things away.

You own them.

I'm stewarding them, I'm taking care of them for a time.

But they're ultimately yours.

Generosity is a disciple issue.

We cultivate generous hearts and we pursue generosity because of who Jesus is.

We want to grow to be more like him.

And so we seek to be generous with our time and with our gifts, that is our abilities, as well as our wealth and our possessions.

So what creates a generous heart?

An encounter by faith with the radically generous God.

How then, thinking more practically, should we be generous?

So Paul here in these in these two passages that Lisa read uh wonderfully for us, Paul gives us some principles for how we ought to be a generous people.

And that's on the the next slide.

So he begins in chapter uh in chapter eight, in verse eight.

Sorry that my northern Irish accent makes that number hard to say.

Um sounds like I've been eating in the past tense.

It um eight, there we go.

Uh says, I say this not as a command, but to prove the earnestness uh uh sorry, I say this not as a command, but to prove by the earnestness of others that your love also may be genuine, for you know the love for the grace of our Lord Jesus, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you may become rich.

And then in this manner I give my judgment.

This benefits uh you who a year ago started not only to do this, but also had a desire to do it.

And so he says, verse 11 So now finish in doing it well, so that your readiness and desiring it may be matched by your completing it uh out of what you have.

Now the context here is that um there is a there's a famine going on in Jerusalem.

Some of the Christians, uh the followers of the Lord Jesus in Jerusalem, are dying because they don't have enough food.

And so Paul is letting it uh known across the the world that there is this issue, and we'll come to that in our final point, as you can see up on the the slide.

But the uh the Corinthians who he's writing to, who were uh in this kind of uh this hub of a trade route across the empire, uh, they were uh they were quite well off.

And so they immediately heard about this need and they were like, yes, we'd love to help.

Tell us, how can we help?

And now the time has finally come to say, well, I'm gonna be coming through and I'll take up the collection.

Then you know there was no revolute, there was no stripe then.

So Paul's coming through, and he said, I want to, I want to give you that opportunity to be a blessing.

But they started with a response to the generous God, and they saw this need and they were willing.

And so Paul in writing, he says he doesn't want to just uh he doesn't want them to give out of fear or guilt or shame, he doesn't want to compel them to give, but he's seeing that there is a willingness and a desire to, and he's saying that's how we start.

That's how we start with being a generous people, is by having that willingness to see where there is a need and to meet that.

Paul knows that they're generous, that their generous desire, and so he doesn't that they have this generous desire, and he doesn't want to just embarrass them just by arriving.

That's why he sends a letter ahead and says, Look, I want to get your affairs in order.

I'm coming, I'm coming, and I don't want to just go.

So um, remember I said about the uh the um the guys in Jerusalem, do you did you have did you take up a no?

I'm gonna let you know when you think about it, and when I arrive, we'll do this in a very adult way, willingly.

And then he says, prayerfully.

So connected with uh uh with this in verse 7, he says, uh, but as you excel in everything, in faith, in speech, and in knowledge, and in all earnestness, in our love for you, see that you excel in this grace also.

Um, and so he wants them uh to I've put down the wrong reference.

I'll find that in a second.

Um maybe it was chapter nine.

Uh and this is the point.

Whoever sow, well, we'll come to sowing and reaping.

Let's let's read chapter 9, verse 6.

Sorry, everyone.

Uh this is the point is this whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.

Uh, each one of you must give us he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compunction, for God loves a cheerful giver.

That is that they are to to come and to and to consider, to think about, to have conversations in their own house, and to seek what God would lay on their heart in terms of how they might be generous in meeting the needs that they have become aware of.

So one of the things to think about is well, do you ever do you ever pray through your budget?

Do you ever bring your stuff before God and go, Am I using this right?

Is this how you would have me uh consider these things?

You know, James says, you know, you don't want to just go into a town and say, well, uh, we'll spend a year here and we'll make some money.

He says, you know, don't be so uh don't be so arrogant to think that you know the future.

You go into it, uh, into that business venture with an attitude of, well, if the Lord wills, we will do this thing or the other.

Again, it's because generosity is an act of dependence, it's an acknowledgement of who God is.

And so we come to him and say, You have your way, Lord.

I think that this is the best thing to do.

I think this is the plan that I need to be uh to be journeying towards, but I do so with an attitude of if the Lord wills.

You're in business, you're working right now, you're thinking about promotion and career advancement and all of those things.

You think, well, if the Lord wills, because what matters is that I am growing as a generous disciple of the Lord Jesus.

Paul also, in those verses that I've read, uh, says that God loves a cheerful giver.

And so one of the things that um that that creates a generous heart is that we give joyfully.

Again, he doesn't want to shame them into it.

That doesn't that doesn't change anything.

It might meet the immediate material need, but if you're just like, fine, if you're sitting here and you're like, okay, well, uh, let's let's get to the ask, really?

Uh no, we've missed the point.

It's a response, a joyful response to what God is doing.

It's that I get to be a blessing.

You know, one of the things that um that I really struggle with in the early days of uh of planting city church is I never wanted to talk about this stuff.

If you're here this morning, this is unusual.

Um, and it's particularly if you're new or visiting, I never wanted to talk about this.

And it wasn't until uh I became friends with somebody who uh was quite wealthy.

And as a Christian, he was saying, no, you must, because actually, one of the things that when I when I don't know that there's these things going on, it means that I don't have the opportunity to come in and serve because God has gifted me in this sort of way.

And it's my joy to see God use what he has given me to be a blessing to other people.

And one of the reasons, one of the things that Paul is trying to uh cultivate in the heart of the Corinthians is this kind of joy in being generous and in saying, imagine if they got letters back from Jerusalem.

You know, after they had given, they got letters back saying, you know, my family uh got through the famine because of your generosity.

You know, the prices of bread had uh they'd gone through the roof, but because of uh of your uh great love for us, that reminds us so much of the love of the Lord Jesus.

We were able to survive.

What joy that would that would give them.

It's willingly, prayerfully, joyfully, and sacrificially.

Paul mentions in chapter 8 the Macedonian Church.

Now, the Macedonian church were not like the Corinthian church.

The Macedonian church were very poor.

They had very little of their own.

The Corinthians were well educated, they were rich, they formed part of this trade route.

Come on in.

Uh, but the Macedonians, the Macedonians had very little, and yet what we read in chapter 8 is that they begged Paul to join in giving to the saints in Jerusalem.

That's a generous heart.

They didn't have much to give, but that's beside the point, actually.

You remember Jesus' story of uh, or you know, he's sitting in the temple uh courts, and uh all of the religious leaders and all of the Pharisees, they're coming and they're giving their offering.

You know, they're they're getting their their bags of coins and they're going, oh, oh my goodness, that was so that was so heavy.

Oh, that was a that's a lot of money in the offering plate.

They're doing it because they like to be seen.

They were doing it uh as a as a as a prideful thing.

And then what happens?

Well, this widow comes along and she has these two small coins and she drops them into the offering plate.

She goes on her way, and what does Jesus say?

Jesus says, Well, she's given more than the rest.

What does he mean by that?

What it means is that she has given out of a heart that is not seeing, not looking around and going, Are they seeing how much how much I'm giving?

She gave out a heart of a heart that is dependent, out of a heart that is sacrificial.

Note the detail.

Two small coins.

She gave them both.

You know, oftentimes the king isn't counting what you give.

The king's counting what you keep.

The Macedonians were were not rich, but it does not take a rich person to be generous.

Anybody who has spent any time in some of the more impoverished uh countries of the world know this.

How lavishly generous people are with so little.

And they give in response to need.

Paul made them aware of what was going on and that aroused in them a desire to give.

They give in response to a concrete need.

So I want to do that.

That's okay if you'll indulge me for five minutes.

I want to tell you a little bit about what God's doing in City Church and where we're going over the next little while.

Because sometimes we we we talk about these things in in members' meeting.

If you're not a member and you call City Church your home, become a member.

Um ask me about that and we can we can begin that process.

But I'm excited by what God's doing, and I want to to tell you a little bit about what is going on and where we're going as a church.

City Church's mission is this we exist to connect people to greet to Jesus, to grow them to spiritual maturity, that they might serve the community and go to the nations.

What's our mission?

Connect, grow, serve, go.

That's all we're about.

We want people to meet Jesus and go on in spiritual maturity to serve others and to take the gospel, the great hope of the Lord Jesus, wherever God places them.

In recent weeks, we sent off our first daughter church.

If you are here for the first time, uh we just planted our first church, Redeemer Church Dublin.

They're meeting right now this morning.

We sent them off by uh 18 or so uh men and women with Duncan and Becky, and we are feeling their loss.

And we sought to be generous in sending anyone who would go.

And we have also been generous as a church in sending financial resources because churches take a long time to become financially self-sustaining.

Did you know that?

Um that uh we we are not yet currently financially self-sustaining, and we'll talk about that in a minute.

And so we uh we are a helping redeemer, but we're not one and done.

You know what our prayerful ambition is as a church?

If you're looking in, what's city church about?

We want to see more churches planted.

We want to see more people come to know the Lord Jesus.

We want to plant churches in Dublin, we want to plant churches in towns and villages all across Ireland.

The evangelization of Ireland is going to be church planting in those rural areas.

We want to give people from all over the world a vision for church planting because it's the church that is God's chosen means for changing the world.

It is through the church as the gospel is planted, as people come to know and to love the Lord Jesus, that lives are changed.

And so our ultimate desire is not just to be a church that says, well, we've planted one church, but to be a church that plants multiple healthy, vibrant, growing churches.

But hand in hand with that, we cannot just keep on looking outside of ourselves.

That is hugely important.

And one of the things that I love if you're partnering with us in City Church is that we all get to be part of something that's bigger than us.

And yet, hand in hand with that is our desire as leaders to shape a community that is cared for, where people are equipped, nurtured, pastored, discipled, counseled to grow in their faith.

Not everybody is ready to kind of jump on to the to the mission train.

Some people need healing and hope and love.

And so we want to do that well.

But also in the last 18 months, City has wonderfully and by God's grace doubled in size.

And we continue to welcome new people into our midst.

September was a huge bump time for us.

Some of you joined in that last September bump.

Some of you are here and you're exploring whether you're going to be part of our community, and I hope that you will be.

But in order to be uh to to properly care for people, that means greater investment, both in terms of location, and we're beginning to fill this screen, and in terms of staffing, people working among us.

I want to celebrate a couple of things with you that you're not you're not aware of.

I uh I this came to me as I was preparing this.

Is that I get to see underneath the hood of City Church all the time, and most of you don't.

So let me give you two things uh that you can uh thank God for.

Gustavo.

Gustavo uh and Jackie are here among us, and Gustavo is now working with us as a part-time intern.

Gus has been, or Goose as we call him.

Goose has been quietly and wonderfully investing in uh lots of people in church, but particularly in the internationals, especially Spanish speakers.

And one of the things that's happened recently is uh they've begun this Spanish-speaking uh gathering, this kind of community group, and it has uh outgrown their apartment.

They've had to move to a larger location in the building that they're uh that they're in because so many people want to come together to worship God, to sing his praises, and to uh and to read his word, to study it together uh in uh in Spanish.

That's not something that people are aware of.

Yeah, it's wonderful.

Uh and uh we also brought on Sarah.

So Sarah is running the marathon uh this morning uh up in Belfast.

That's not the thing to give uh uh praise and thanks for.

Uh you can pray that uh Cameron does a sub-three hour uh time.

Uh no, but Sarah, but uh we brought on Sarah also in September uh to develop our children's ministry.

And this is so cool.

Uh you know, we want to feel we want City Church to be a place where where families feel confident, bringing their children, knowing that they are going to be discipled well in a safe environment, in a uh in a philosophy of ministry that's centered around the word of God and where young people trust the Lord Jesus from an early age.

We want so many testimonies to be to begin by saying, I never remember a day when I didn't trust the Lord Jesus.

Wouldn't that be a great thing that you know, 20s, 30s, uh 40-year-olds are saying, I never remember a day when I didn't trust the Lord Jesus because I was discipled from an early age.

And Sarah's been uh been thinking uh through these things.

You City Kids, when we first started, City Kids was two or three women who were on every week.

There were months and months and months on end uh when Philippa, my my wife, who's actually on City Kids today, was on it every single week because there was nobody else.

Last Sunday, there were 15 City Kids leaders in our house for lunch and for uh a City Kids Leaders meeting.

Yeah.

Because more and more people are being trained and equipped, more and more people have this generous generosity of desire to nurture the young people among us.

And those are just two examples of what they of what the Lord is doing.

There's still so much to do.

Our growth means that people need to be cared for.

More people need to be raised up and trained to be community group leaders and elders.

We've just sent an elder, and it's just me, uh, Peter, and Ben at the minute.

And that requires equipping and training.

It requires somebody to give the time to build in those systems so that people are actually nurtured and cared for.

It's one of the reasons why we've been uh searching for an assistant pastor, somebody who loves us, who loves people and who wants to see them grow.

That's essential for the well-being of City Church.

And could you imagine?

Just dream with me for a second.

Could you imagine if we had our own place in the city?

Imagine if we had our own place in the city, what we could do.

We weren't just in a cinema screen and I couldn't quite see your faces.

Imagine if I could look you in the eyes.

A place to grow, a place from which we can serve the city.

One of the questions that I get asked all the time is what why don't we do kind of more mercy and justice ministries?

Man, I'm up for that conversation.

It's hard to do in terms of our infrastructure right now.

A place where we can develop new ministries, a place to break bread together, to equip and train people for gospel living as well as full-time gospel work.

And right now, this minute, we have an estate agent actually on the case looking for us.

But I don't know if you've noticed, if you pay rent in Dublin, it's quite expensive.

And so commercial rate rent is also expensive.

I'm going to conclude uh just very uh in just a couple of minutes.

But I want to give you just a quick hit of of where we're at, if somebody goes to the to the next slide.

So right now, our we have two streams of um of what of income.

There's internal, that's us guys, and then there's external.

Internally, we give about 120,000 euro a year annually.

And externally, that is from other churches and other generous people, we get approximately 80,000 euro.

200,000 euro over the course of the year, and we are uh we're spending around about 17,000 a month, 204,000 a year.

So we're running a kind of a slight deficit, but we have some savings in the bank, things like that.

But we don't have much margin, as you can see there, much wiggle room.

Our vision for growth, that is hiring uh an assistant pastor and moving forward to um uh to hopefully lore willing, acquiring a building in the city, uh, we predict would mean increasing our monthly outgoings from 17,000 to 24,000 uh euro a year.

That's 288,000.

Uh sorry, 24,000 a month, 288,000 euro a year.

I can't I can't help with that.

That's overwhelming.

It is overwhelming.

On average, on a Sunday morning, there's about 120 people here uh in this room, maybe slightly more this morning, and we're growing.

Many of you are regulars, many of you are members.

And together we can partner with one another to maximize our impact in the city, to care for one another, and to love where God has placed us more effectively.

And so what I would lay before you is just this vision that if each of us here gave an additional 20 euro a week or 80 euro a month, that would increase our annual giving by over 100,000 euro a year.

That would allow us to move into the next phase of the church so that we can continue to grow, but more importantly, so that we can continue to care for people well.

For some, that that might be too much.

For others, they will be able to do much more.

But together, we can partner with one another to deepen our ability to care for people and to expand our reach and our impact, not for our fame, not for our glory, but for the glory of Jesus.

In considering our own personal response, Paul gives this principle.

He gives the principle of sowing and reaping.

You maybe read those verses and you immediately think of televangelists.

You know, I don't own a white suit.

Uh, I deliberately didn't get one for this morning.

Uh, you know, I'm not uh I'm not putting up a number to ring or anything like that.

What does Paul mean when he uses this principle of sowing or reaping?

You know, people have used this in shameful ways to manipulate people uh out of money.

But the principle is this.

You people think that sowing and reaping is about a single material transaction between you and God.

If I give God uh uh lots, he'll give lots back to me, the end.

But that's not what these verses are about.

Rather, they're that they are an encouragement to the giver.

First, how?

How are they an encouragement to the giver?

It is that giving achieves something.

But just as in agriculture, there is the rhythm of sowing and reaping, so it is that when we give to God's work, he will see it done.

Just in the way that we put seeds in the ground and we don't see what's going on under the soil, so it is with our giving that God will bring about a harvest.

Your money, your wealth, your time, your treasure, your talent, it doesn't just pour into some sort of void.

It goes to a God who is able to bring about life.

And so Paul wants to encourage you that there is a rhythm of sowing and reaping, that your sowing will not go unutilized.

But what is what is it that is reaped?

What is it that is harvested?

Well, Paul tells us in verse 10 of chapter 9.

He who supply seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase what?

Your money?

No, increase the harvest of your righteousness.

God gives you resources and then encourages you to give to use those resources as a blessing to others.

Why?

Because it will return dividends in terms of your righteousness, in terms of you becoming more like the Lord Jesus, and in terms of righteousness being seen amongst other people.

That there will be blessings in the church because of this generosity.

God increases personal wealth only to increase personal generosity.

Sowing and reaping is not about you becoming rich, it's about you becoming a blessing.

God encourages us, let's finish here.

God encourages us to be generous because He's been generous to us.

God encourages us to be generous because we know the greed.

Actually, we don't.

That's the reason why we have to say it.

Greed can easily grip our hearts.

You know, it's the thing about greed, yeah, they overeating and all of those things.

You know when you're lusting.

You know when you are desirous of uh of someone that you shouldn't be.

But greed's more under the skin, isn't it?

You don't always know if you're being greedy.

And so Paul and Jesus speak a lot about these sorts of things because they can grip onto our hearts without us even knowing about it.

But he also knows that generosity is good not just for us as individuals, but for the community around us.

So can I encourage you to reflect upon these principles?

Willingness, prayerfulness, joyfulness, sacrificial and in response to need, and to think, how can I partner with my brothers and sisters in the church that I am calling home?

If you're this is one of the things we say around giving, if you're our guest, be our guest.

It's not about your money this morning.

But speaking particularly to those who call City Church your home, partner with us in the ways that we've described so that God might bring glory to Himself through our ministry here in the city.

If you have any questions about what the Bible teaches on this or how we administer funds, one of the best things that you can do, if you want to see how we administer funds, become a member.

Go to citychurchdublin.ie forward slash membership, submit a membership form, be interviewed, join us.

Because we want to be transparent, we want to be accountable.

We want to lift the hood on our uh on our finances and you see everywhere where it's going.

This morning is an unusual uh time of talking about it.

It's not our particular, it doesn't make me feel particularly comfortable.

I'd rather actually talk about uh gender, sex, and sexuality.

So come back next week and have me speak about things that are uh that make me more comfortable than talking about money.

Thank you for listening to this week's sermon.

If you found this helpful or want to know more about City Church Dublin, please visit our website found in the link below.