Cheerful Giving: 2 Corinthians 9:6-11 Pastor Daniel Reese

for almost two years, and this will be the first time that I've done a sermon on giving and money.

And as I was preparing for that this morning, I realized that I needed to repent before the Lord

because I was not doing you any favors by avoiding it.

Money needs to be talked about in the church because it is such a vital part of our everyday lives.

It's what we work for, right?

I don't think any of us work for free very often, do we?

It's what we use to pay for things. It's what we think about frequently.

Now, I don't know this to be a universal truth. We'd have to do some surveys, which I didn't do.

But I would guess that many of you think more about money than you do about most things.

What's the first thing that comes to your mind when your car breaks down?

Is it trusting the Lord, or is it how in the world am I going to pay for this?

When there's a big medical bill that comes in, is your first thought,

where am I going to get the money to pay for this?

When there's a job loss, do you begin to worry how you are going to pay for your mortgage and other bills?

Or do you know that the Lord is going to take care of you?

As a church, we need to do the best we can to make sure that all of us are equipped with the knowledge

on how to honor the Lord with our money.

So that's what we're going to do this morning.

So I'm going to invite Liza. I think I saw her.

I'm going to invite Liza up here this morning to read this text, and then we're going to dive into it together.

So if you have her Bible, 2 Corinthians chapter 9, Liza is going to read verses 6 through 11 for us.

2 Corinthians 9 · chapter mention

And as she does that, there you go. Y'all are the best.

Way to lead by example.

We want to honor the Lord as we read the text in this place.

Liza, it's all you.

The point is this.

Whoever says, scaring me will also read scaring me.

And whoever says, bansalee, will also read bansalee.

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,

he may abound in every good work.

As it is written, he has distributed freely.

He has given to the poor.

His righteousness endures forever.

He who supplies seed 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.

Amen. Let's pray.

Father God, thank you for Liza.

Thank you for her willingness to read your word to us.

And I pray God, you honor for it.

And God, as we look at this text, I pray that you'll soften our hearts.

I pray that you'll open our eyes to see how good you want us to have it.

So God, we lift this time up to you.

Give me a prayer. Amen.

Thank you, Liza.

So for the last 12 years of my life, I have lived in a farming community.

For 10 of those years, the primary crop was cotton.

The last two have been corn and beans.

Now, where we moved from, the weather is dry, it's windy, and the soil is not the best.

So what a lot of farmers have to do and what they have to rely on in the years that there is drought is insurance.

Now, it wouldn't be wise for them to go spend tens of thousands of dollars to plant a crop during a drought without insurance.

That's a good way to go bankrupt.

And many of them do every single year.

So I've become pretty familiar with how crop insurance works.

I asked a friend of mine many years ago, during a year where there wasn't a lot of hope for a crop.

And I asked him, why don't you just plant along the road so that when the adjuster comes by, he'll be able to see that you planted your crop.

Now, his answer was much more spiritual than this, but he said that he had an adjuster come out one time.

And he didn't just take sampling off the side of the road.

He went into the middle of a 640 acre farm and made sure that cotton seed was planted.

He said the risk to not plant it is too great.

So he would never even consider not having crop insurance because then he would be uninsurable.

And if he wasn't able to have insurance, he wouldn't be able to provide for his family during the dry years.

So a good farmer will always plant the crops to reap a harvest, whether it's going to be dry or not.

A good farmer doesn't just do the minimum in hopes that they are going to prosper.

Now, I want us to look at the law of the harvest.

Now, Roman, I'm going to be a Baptist.

I got three points here and they all start with P.

So ironic that you said that today.

So I want to look at the principle, I want to look at the practice and I want to look at the produce that were promised.

The law of the harvest is a principle as stated in verse 6.

Now, I can summarize that principle in eight words.

Plant little, harvest little.

Plant much, harvest much.

So unless some other circumstances take their toll, that principle will work.

If you invest a little bit, you can only expect a small return.

We also say it another way.

You reap what you sow.

This principle will work with anything, with our resources, with our time, with our talents and our tithes.

But I particularly want us to think about the advantage of investing in God's work.

I also want to give you three truths that accompany this principle of sowing and reaping.

The first one is, you will always reap what you sow.

That means you won't get corn if you plant peanuts.

If you want high grade beans, you need to plant high grade beans.

If you want God's blessings, then you give Him your best.

Now in just about every prayer, we ask God to bless us, don't we?

We want Him to bless us.

But do you know that you yourself determine how much God will bless you?

Jesus told us in Luke 6.38 how the Father decides the measure of our blessings.

He says, give and it will be given to you.

Good measure, pressed down, shaken together.

Running over will be put into your lap.

For with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.

So invest the kind of seed, faith, offering in God's work that you need back from Him.

If you need money, honor God with His tithe even when you don't think you can afford it.

He promises, seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all other things will be added to you.

The second truth is that you will always reap more than you sow.

One peanut planted can grow a bush of many roots that have hundreds of peanuts on them.

One corn seed can produce a stalk with two or three ears having hundreds of grains of corn.

One dollar given to ministry can result in thousands of saints thanking you one day in heaven.

One life lived for God can influence hundreds if not millions to imitate that life.

Now the third truth, applying the principle of the harvest is you always reap later than you sow.

Sowing and reaping don't usually happen on the same day, do they?

It may take months or even years to see your harvest and you may never even see all of its results until you get to heaven.

Now you might say, I've tried tithing but I still haven't caught up with my bills.

I've tried tithing but it doesn't seem to work.

Don't give up sowing calls for patience and faith in the principle of the harvest.

It will work.

In Malachi 3 verse 10, if you've been in church, you know this verse, God invites you.

Malachi 3:10

It's an invitation to you and to me to test him by returning all those ties to the storehouse which is your church.

And see if he doesn't open up the windows.

See if he doesn't open up the floodgates with more blessings than you can handle.

Understand that all of your blessings, everything that you have will not be in the form necessarily of material things.

And God doesn't give a timetable for those blessings.

He will do it when it's best for you.

But he says, test me in this.

Test him in this.

But you can bet on this, God would not issue this challenge if he didn't want you to try it.

And if he didn't intend to bless you in more ways than you can imagine.

Now I think it's important to hear testimonies from those who have tested God with their resources.

I asked several people in our church over the last week to share with me how they've seen God's faithfulness come through.

How they've seen him do this work.

And I'm going to read a few of those today throughout this thing.

Here's one.

They said, we've been tithing regularly for 40 years and have received multiple windfalls from God over those years.

Here's one of those stories.

I owned a 1998 Toyota Tacoma pickup truck.

The body was pristine, but the frame was rusted.

The frame had gotten so bad that the truck became unsafe.

My son was driving it at the time and he had a friend do some welding on it.

Still the truck was unsafe.

I had him get some quotes from several local junkyards to junk the vehicle.

The best price we got was $400.

I feel that.

On a lark he reached out to Toyota to see if there were any recalls on the vehicle.

In fact, there were multiple recalls over the years.

1998 included for the steel used in frames over those years.

It was the wrong steel subject to significant corrosion.

Toyota was offering a repair or replacement option for vehicles up to 15 years from the time the vehicle was sold new.

Toyota informed us that we had four days left on the warranty.

Toyota replaced the vehicle for $13,861.50.

I only paid $11,000 for the truck and drove it for seven years.

Praise the Lord.

I love that story.

I love that story.

40 years of planting seeds.

40 years of giving faithfully.

This is not a get rich quick scheme, but it is a testimony that the Lord takes care of His people.

So what do you do?

What do you do if you're tithing and having financial problems?

You continue to pray to see if there is another lesson God wants you to learn.

Have you first dedicated 100% of your resources to God?

Are you willing to give Him more than 10% if God lays that on your heart?

Are you giving for the wrong reason, just hoping to get more from God?

Is there another area of your life He wants you to commit to Him?

Then when your motive is pure, what do you do while you're waiting on God to provide some relief?

You continue to sow more seed.

You continue to plant.

You keep trusting and investing.

And all you invest will be growing with interest until God starts to pay you back.

So remember that most of your dividends will be laid up in heaven for you with compound interest.

Next, I want to look at the practice.

Look at the practice in verse 7.

This tells us how to use the principle of the harvest.

Do you know how farmers decide how much seed to plant?

They first decide the harvest that they want to reap.

Then they plant accordingly.

They don't just plant haphazardly.

They have a plan.

And that plan begins with not the amount of seed they need to buy, but before that,

they decide what kind of crop, what size crop they want to produce.

They determine how many acres they want to harvest,

and then they plant the seeds to reach that goal.

Here I can give you some practical suggestions about giving.

The first one being, give generously.

Give generously.

If you want to produce a lot, invest a lot.

My motto has always been that you can't out give God.

Now, I want to be clear.

My generosity might not be the same thing as your generosity.

I am not talking about a certain amount of money.

In Luke 21, Jesus condemns a rich man, and he praises a poor woman.

They both gave an offering, but the hearts behind those offerings were very different.

Now, you might be in a season where you consider five, ten, or twenty dollars

to be a generous amount of money.

Or you might be in a season where five, ten, twenty thousand dollars is a generous amount of money.

The point in being generous is not the amount.

It's the heart behind it.

Are you living your life with your hands open, understanding that everything you have is God's?

Everything that you have is God's.

And are you living your life trusting that because everything is God's,

He's going to continue to provide for you in the midst of your generosity?

Now, hear me.

If you're new here, I need you to hear me.

This sermon, this message is not to benefit our church.

We are fine financially.

I do not get a commission check every single month that's dependent on how much money we bring in.

They do not let me fly private up in here.

In fact, every time I've flown since I've been here, they put me by the toilets in the back.

I think they do that on purpose just to keep me humble.

I do not benefit personally by telling you to be generous.

You do.

You will benefit, but have the heart of the widow.

Have the heart of the widow with her two coins.

Understand that by giving generously, you are putting your trust in the Lord to take care of your needs.

And then you're taking away your own ability to control your situation.

Next, give cheerfully.

Verse seven says God loves a cheerful giver.

The word actually means a hilarious giver.

You should be hilariously happy that you're able to invest in God's work.

Thank Him for the ability to give because you know God is going to repay you many times more than what you gave.

When we were in Panama last summer, the 16 of us that were on that trip wanted to bless the missionaries that we were there visiting.

The day we were leaving to come home, we decided, let's pull the cash that we have.

Let's pull it all together and let's give it to them.

So I think it was about $1,300 or so that we were going to give.

We were excited to give them to them because we believed in the work that they were doing and we wanted to bless them.

So we give them the $1,300.

We give them strict instructions on what that money is to be used for.

And guess what?

They didn't do a thing.

We asked them to do with it.

They saw other needs around them and they decided to give the money away.

And the truth of the matter is, I'm not even mad about it.

I don't think any of us were.

We were actually laughing about it just the other day.

Now, I can't wait to go back and give them some more money because I'm genuinely curious.

What in the world are they going to do with it?

I'm looking forward to that time.

It's going to be fun.

Next, always give prayerfully.

Ask God how much His work needs and what your responsible share is.

Sometimes giving money to something isn't God's best plan.

For instance, there are many stories of churches going into a developing country,

seeing a need and throwing some money at it.

Their hearts in the right place, they do it generously and cheerfully,

but they don't necessarily do it prayerfully.

One church decided to buy a couple tractors for a small farming village in South America.

They saw how long it took to plant the crop and to harvest the crop.

So with their American mindset, thought we could provide them some tractors and equipment

and it's going to make their life easier.

And it did. It made their life easier until they had to buy diesel.

It made their life easier until a hose blew and they didn't know how to fix it.

Now those tractors are sitting in a village in South America rusting.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars just sitting there

because the village didn't have the resources or the knowledge to keep them going.

Give prayerfully because the answer is not always money, but sometimes it's time.

Can you give your time?

Sometimes giving generously is sharing the knowledge that you have.

Sometimes giving cheerfully is training somebody a skill

and watching them do it better than you.

Ask God what the best solution is.

And finally give wisely.

Determine that it is your best choice to honor God first.

There's too many stories.

Too many stories of people who want to help.

So they give generously.

They give, but the problem is they're throwing money at a bad situation.

I've seen far too many situations where people are enabled.

They're enabled to continue to do bad things

because the giver isn't wise about the situation.

It does not honor God to give money to a person you know

who's going to spend it on an addiction.

It does honor God when he give with the purpose of building his kingdom.

If you think about the money in your pocket,

in your bank account, your investment accounts, think about whatever that number is.

Ballpark it.

Maybe it's $100.

If I get everything I have, then I could get my hands on in the next week.

Maybe it's $100.

Maybe it's $100 million.

I have a feeling most of us fall between those two numbers somewhere.

Here's what I want you to do with that number, whatever it is.

I want you to ask God to give you wisdom

on how best to use it to expand his kingdom.

With the time and the money that you have now,

how are you using it to invest in the kingdom?

Or are you using it to invest in your own kingdom?

The Jews gave the first fruit to the harvest to God

in anticipation that he was going to bless the rest of the crop.

Now, I'm sure they had needs, just like you and I do at the first of the month,

but they trusted that if they honored God at the first of the month,

he would bless them at the end of the month.

You cannot give God.

Finally, let's look at the produce.

I want you to look at the superlative words in these verses.

All grace, a bound, all things.

All things.

At all times.

All you need for every good word.

Do you see all those superlatives in that text?

It's God repeating Himself.

He's repeating Himself to impress upon us that we can't outgive Him.

He doesn't need our gifts. He owns everything.

He doesn't need it.

We need to learn to turn loose of those material possessions.

Learn to obey God.

And then we'll learn how He can be trusted to bless us abundantly.

Also, look at the benefits of this passage promises.

The benefits to you and me will be increased seed and harvest,

increased righteousness, made rich in every way.

We'll promise a generous spirit.

And look at the benefits to others from our faithful giving.

They will be blessed by our generosity.

They will praise God and they'll pray for us.

That's a benefit to us.

Even God benefits when we give.

He gets thanksgiving. He gets praise.

When we give, God's work grows.

Missionaries like Roman and Emily are supported.

Ministries all over the world are supported.

And guess what? Jesus gets the credit.

Not me, not Cornerstone.

It's a win, win, win situation when God's people support God's work

and say, God's spirit leads us.

Does anybody have any water?

Thank you.

Unopened everything. Thank you.

I hate how water tastes. Do you?

Does anybody have any flavor? You do?

Raspberry lemonade.

You guys, you guys do this? I drink more water if it's flavored.

You guys do that?

Y'all are all coffee drinkers.

That needs its own flavor.

That's generous of both of you. Thank you.

Much better.

Much better.

Do you know why they were so quick to jump up when there was a need?

Because I provided the water and the flavor for it.

All they had to do was sit there and wait for me to make the need known.

That's all they had to do.

They didn't walk in here this morning carrying an extra bottle of water,

carrying a flavor packet, hoping that a need might come up.

Instead, they understood that what had been given to them

would be used to fill a need later.

They could have held onto it themselves.

Shauna could have run out here as soon as I gave it to her and said,

peace out, I'm good.

She could have gotten thirsty and drank it herself.

But they didn't.

Everything you have has been given to you by God.

And once you understand that, it's easier to be generous.

That everything you have has been given to you by God.

Maybe God has given you a skill, a talent.

Maybe He's given you loads of cash.

Whatever it is, those things that He has given you

were never meant to terminate with you.

You're just the conduit that God funnels His resources through.

Don't hold onto the water.

As needs arise, give.

Trust Him.

According to research,

only 5-10% of churchgoers give to the ministries of their local church.

5-10%.

Now, I don't know if that's the case here.

I have no idea who gives and how much they give.

But I would guess that that could probably be said of us as well.

5-10% of our church gives to the ministries of this church.

Do you know what that tells me?

It tells me that 5-10% of us

are trusting the Lord with our money

and the rest of us have some faith issues.

Do you want to grow in your faith in the Lord?

If you've ever been there, you're like,

Man, I really want to trust the Lord more.

I really want Him to strengthen me.

Trust Him with your money.

Test Him.

Let me share one more story.

I was in my mid-30s

and have been involved in church since I was 8 years old.

I must admit to have had my doubts about tithing.

I always felt it was to enrich the pastors.

My life changed when I got married and changed careers.

After years of working in IT, I left my job to start a new venture.

There was no guarantee of income.

Having just bought a new home, I was really scared.

I sold some employee stock and received around $40,000.

Ironically, the stock was worth half this when I handed in my notice.

But miraculously, the company I was leaving became the subject of a takeover

and the stock price went through the roof.

In hindsight, God was getting me ready for my new venture.

I'm not sure why, but due to the unexpected increase in the stock price,

I felt something in me to tithe 10%, which was $4,000 to my local church.

The results during that year were phenomenal.

Sales were popping up everywhere.

Never a week went by without me closing a deal.

I was top salesman in my branch, runner up for Rookie of the Year in my company,

and finished in the top 10 of all salespeople in the company.

I even qualified for an overseas sales convention to Mexico.

I did not correct this.

Overseas is not Mexico.

I'm not going to throw that out there.

You know who you are.

While I was grateful, I did not attribute the success at the time to tithing.

Being young, I somehow felt I was this great salesman.

Invariably, the sales dried up and I subsequently migrated.

It would take me 10 years later to form my own business.

The first year was hard and it seemed like I was working 10 hours a day and reaping nothing.

My relationship with God got back to a great place and God spoke to me about the issue of tithing.

For the first time, I had a full understanding of this divine principle and its effects.

I understood that tithing was really not about our money, but about our hearts.

We can't say we put God first and refuse to tithe the first fruits of our increase.

When Jesus said, seek first the kingdom and all things will be added, I now understand what that means.

Tithing is a great way to demonstrate we are seeking God first.

Invariably, when we do all our needs are met by our Heavenly Father.

I started tithing every penny that came into either my business or personal accounts.

The results have been amazing.

One time I had a choice between tithing $1,200 or missing an important bill that could affect my business significantly.

I put God first and the next day got a letter from my accountant saying that the tax man owed me $14,000.

Trust God with everything and he will be faithful to his promise.

Father, I thank you that you are good. I thank you that you are generous.

I thank you for how you meet our needs.

God, help us be a church that's generous.

Help us be a church that understands that everything that we have is because of you.

You've given us the skills to work.

You've given us the ethic. You've given us the ability.

And so God, I pray for our church.

I don't pray that you will increase our budget.

I pray Father that we will be a people that holds our hands open, ready to give as you lead.

And so Father, I pray you work on our hearts, all of our hearts.

You've been so generous to us.

And so God, I pray that you'll help us be examples of faithfulness and trust.

I pray for many more stories like this one to come out of how you've proved yourself over and over and over again.

And how faithful you are.

And so God, we give you this time.

Moving our hearts, speak to us. Your name you pray. Amen.