"Grace That Grows" | 2 Corinthians 8:6-8 | Sunday Morning Worship Service

2 Corinthians 8 verses 6 through 8 is what we'll read this morning.

2 Corinthians 8:6–8

The text begins with this.

Accordingly, we urge Titus that as he had 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.

This is the word of God, and I pray that He would seal it in your hearts.

A few years ago, a security video from a mall went viral.

It was an older man who was getting on an escalator at the mall, and perhaps you've seen this video, and he stumbled as he was getting on and fell down on the escalator.

And the escalator is, of course, going up, and he's trying to get himself up on the escalator and he falls backwards and tumbles down several stairs.

And then he tries getting up again and trips on his own briefcase and falls backwards down more stairs.

And a third time, the guy falls maybe four or five times.

Every time he tries to get up and take a step forward, he falls down again.

And wouldn't you know it?

He gets to the top of the escalator.

He's always falling backwards, but somehow arrives at the top of the escalator.

If you've seen this video, you know what I'm talking about.

If you have not seen this video, you have probably lived this video.

If you are a Christian, that is an image of our sanctification.

We know the Lord is taking us up into the image of Christ.

We know the Lord is transforming us.

We know God is working in us, bringing us heavenward, but our efforts, it seems, are always going backwards.

Sometimes our spiritual life seems like one step forward, two steps back, and yet somehow, mystery of mysteries, we keep growing in godliness.

And that is because the Christian life is a life of spiritual growth.

I'm not saying the Christian life is a life of uninterrupted growth, or it's not a straight line growth.

It's not a life without stumbling, but the Christian life is a life of spiritual growth.

Sometimes we feel like we are falling, but over time God works in us to bring us forward into higher and higher degrees of godliness.

It was the philosopher of our age, Shell Silverstein, who described it this way: I tripped on my shoelace and I fell up.

Up above the clouds, up where the colors blended into the sky, I fell up.

That describes the sanctification process that God keeps bringing us up despite our efforts to the contrary.

We stumble, we sin, and we regress, but the grace of God continues to move us towards maturity.

Salvation, of course, gives us our spiritual life, and then we grow in our spiritual life.

There is a reason the Christian life is called the Christian life.

Because we're living it out, and we are growing and maturing, just like your physical life.

Your physical body grows and matures and gets older and ages.

So it is with a spiritual person.

The spiritual person grows in maturity and ages.

We have a joke in our family where we often will tell our youngest daughter, Geneva, to stop growing up.

We like her as a little girl.

Stop growing up.

But the problem with that is that she keeps growing.

And as she has pointed out a few times, it is because we keep feeding her.

Well, you could no more command the child to stop growing than you could command a Christian to stop growing.

What are you supposed to do?

Say, stop being conformed to the image of Christ?

It's the Spirit of God who works in us to conform us into the image of Christ.

Paul tells the Philippians, work out your salvation with fear and trembling, knowing that it is God who works in you and through you to will and to act according to his good purpose.

And if God who gave us his son and seals us with his spirit, of course he's going to give us everything pertaining to life and godliness.

God who gives us all things through his son and spirit is not going to withhold godliness from us.

But he doesn't give us to us instantly either.

We grow and mature.

We trend upwards, and trend is the right word.

Over the Christian life, you are trending towards godliness.

You are godlier today than you were yesterday, and you'll be godlier tomorrow than you were today.

And that's not always going to be true, though, because there are days that are bad, like when I said you're godlier today than yesterday.

Some of you are thinking, let's not talk about yesterday.

Okay, so go a year ago.

You are godlier today than you were a year ago.

And you'll be godlier next year than you are today.

It's a trend upwards.

In a sense, it's like the stock market.

It is trending upwards.

Yes, there are dips and yes, there are declines and all of that, but generally it trends over time upward.

I am not a licensed broker, so that is not investment advice.

It's merely making the point that generally things trend up.

And so it is spiritually as well.

We don't mature in a straight line, but over time we grow in godliness.

There's a sense in which we're like an oak tree.

An oak tree, the acorn falls to the ground.

The acorn has to die for the oak tree to live.

The acorn has to be no more.

And that's conversion.

You are dead spiritually, you are living for the flesh and the lust of this world.

And the Lord gets a hold of your life.

You become convinced that your sins were given to Jesus Christ, and that Jesus suffered and died on the cross, bearing the penalty for your sins, and that he rose from the grave on the third day, and that his resurrection assures your salvation if you put your trust in him.

And so what happens is you are leading your own life and you become convinced of that, and you put your faith in Christ, and the old you dies.

That's what Paul says a few chapters earlier in 2 Corinthians 6.

The old man, when you become a Christian, the old man is dead.

Behold, anyone who is in Christ is a new creation.

The acorn dies and in its place becomes a little a little oak tree.

And you know, those little new oak trees are so small, like a squirrel could eat them.

They're tiny.

But over time they grow.

And by the third year or so, they have roots that go down.

And they keep growing.

And they're going to keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

Not that every year is necessarily a ban or year.

I mean, some years there might be blight on the tree, or some years there might be a lightning striking the tree, and branches fall off, or who knows what happens.

Disease can hit the trees.

And do you know the crazy thing with oak trees is every year all their leaves fall off.

But you know what?

Next year they all grow back.

And more of them grow back next year than the year before.

I think of that every fall when I start blowing leaves.

There were not this many leaves last year.

And so it is with the Christian life.

And sometimes you feel like it's everything is dead.

And lo and behold, it grows back more robust than it was before.

That is the Christian life.

It is overall progress and increasing maturity.

And so here's a very interesting question to think about.

When you hear me say that you grow in spiritual maturity, what does that mean?

Like, how would you see growth in spiritual maturity?

That's where Paul starts in this passage with the Corinthians.

He's going to give five descriptions of spiritual maturity, five measures of spiritual maturity.

And he does that in verse 7.

Before we get to verse 7, though, verse 6 sets you up for this.

I'm not going to get all the way back into Paul's relationship with the Corinthians, as complicated as it is, but we looked at that last week.

Remember that Paul is asking the Corinthians to give money for the church in Jerusalem, and he's using the Macedonians, this poor church, as an example for that.

He's writing to them, and he says back in verse 1, the churches of Macedonia, which is the Thessalonians, the Philippians, and the Bereans, they gave so generously for the church in Jerusalem.

So he's asking the Corinthians to do the same.

The letter of 1 Corinthians, or maybe even a letter between 1 and 2 Corinthians, was brought to the Corinthians by Titus.

The Corinthians do not like Paul.

They view themselves as having graduated beyond Paul's ministry, but they do like Titus.

In God's providence, they respect Titus.

And so Paul is sending Titus to collect the offering.

That's what's described in verse 6.

We urge Titus that what he had started on his last visit there, he should complete among you this act of grace, collecting their offering.

He's letting them know.

Hey, Titus is going to be there on Thursday.

It would be awkward if you don't have your church's money ready for him.

And so he gets into that by reminding the Corinthians in verse 7, as you excel in everything he says.

Now, this is Paul talking to a church that doesn't like him, and that is by all accounts an immature church.

When you read 1 and 2 Corinthians, you do not come away from these two books going, man, that church is a mature, godly church.

I always laugh as a pastor when some people say, Oh, we should do this because the Corinthian church did this.

Look how the Corinthian church spoke in tongues.

We should do that.

No, you if the Corinthian church does something, it's an argument against doing it.

Do you understand that?

That's who Paul's talking about.

Even so, he points out to them that they are growing spiritually.

And this gives us hope.

I mean, if the Corinthians are growing spiritually, man, praise God.

That means someone like me can grow as well.

Their growth is seen in five areas.

He lists them in verse 7.

The first is in faith.

They're growing in faith.

Now, faith, of course, is a gift.

In one sense, faith is binary.

You either have it or you don't.

And that's talking about saving faith.

Before you come to faith in Christ, you have not come to faith in Christ.

You don't have faith in Christ.

Then you have an encounter with Christ through the preaching of his word and the gospel.

You believe it, and you come to faith in Christ.

That's the work of the Spirit in your life.

The Spirit causes you to be born again.

He plants a seed in your heart.

That seed is life and spiritual energy.

You are brought from darkness to light, from death to life.

You were dead, now you're alive.

That's saving faith.

It brings you alive.

And in a sense, you can't get more saving faith.

Saving faith is regeneration in that sense.

You can't get more regeneration.

You know, a baby is born, the baby's not more born.

And so it is with a Christian.

You come to faith.

You don't gain saving faith throughout your Christian life, you have it at the moment of your conversion.

So it makes sense to distinguish between saving faith and sanctifying faith.

You grow in your faith in sanctification throughout your spiritual life.

Without saving faith, there is no spiritual life, but saving faith is not the end of spiritual life, but the start of it.

What does it mean to grow in faith?

It means to grow in your confidence in God.

When Paul says the Corinthians are growing in faith, it means they're growing in their confidence in God.

Confidence that his word is true.

Confidence that his promises are true.

Confidence that heaven is real.

Confidence that Christ is worth following, no matter what the cost is.

That's how you're growing in faith.

The Bible often pairs faith with hope.

Hebrews chapter 11 says that faith is the assurance of things unseen, the hope or the confidence in things hoped for.

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

You can't come to God unless you have faith.

It's obvious to say, but in order to come to God, you must first believe that he exists.

That's your faith.

And faith doesn't end there.

The second part is you must believe that he rewards those who search for him.

That's faith.

That you believe God exists and that he is worth it, that he rewards me when I pursue him with my life.

That's faith.

That's why Abraham left his family, left his life in err to go to a foreign place where he didn't know anybody, he didn't know what was there, except that God promised something good there.

And so he went.

That's saving faith.

And that faith grows in the sense of sanctification.

Think of Moses in Pharaoh's household.

He had everything, treated as Pharaoh's son, and yet he considered the riches of Pharaoh's household nothing compared to the blessing of being persecuted with God's people.

Moses is sizing things up right here.

Yes, he believes that God exists, but he gets to the point in his spiritual maturity where he believes with all of his heart that it is better to be persecuted with the people of making mud without straw, bricks without straw, than it is to be numbered among Pharaoh's own family.

That's saving faith.

And you grow in that faith throughout your lifetime as you become more aware of God's promises and you treasure them more and more.

This is the kind of faith that drives John to leave Galilee and go to Patmos, where he'll die a martyr's death, basically.

This is the kind of faith that compels martyrs.

And to bring it to our world, it is the kind of faith that lets you stop compromising in your life, that tells you it is worth it to be obedient to God rather than to get whatever gains it are that you're following through sinful means.

And you grow in that throughout your life.

Man, it's encouraging as a pastor to hear somebody who's been a Christian a short period of time to say, hey, now that I'm a Christian, I feel like maybe I should stop stealing from my work.

Like, yeah, praise God.

That's a good conviction to arrive at.

Excited for that.

You know, it'd be odd if you were a Christian for 20 years and you said that, but a new Christian, that's a great thing to arrive at that conviction about, isn't it?

You know, and you come to the conviction because the eighth commandment is there, stealing is wrong.

But the more mature reason, the reason it's working in your heart is you become convinced that obedience to God is a better reward than whatever you were stealing.

This is a kind of faith that you say, I need to break up with that ungodly girlfriend or boyfriend I have, or I need to create distance between me and these ungodly friends because the knowledge of God and the blessings of holiness are more pleasurable, bring me more joy, more reward than these sinful actions and sinful conduct.

That's this kind of sanctifying faith.

And as faith grows, your resolve grows with it.

The longer you're a Christian, the stronger your confidence in God should be because you've seen more of his faithfulness.

You know his word better, you've watched him keep his promises.

You have doubts have less of a grip on you the longer you're a Christian.

There's some people that are always plagued by doubts, and that's true.

Nevertheless, you notice the longer you're following the Lord, the darkness of doubts seems to be less and less.

The grip that those doubts or that sin once held you in seems to get loosened.

The Christian who has walked with Christ for decades should have a stronger faith and should trust him more deeply than the one who has just begun.

That's what Paul means in verse 7 that you excel in everything.

You're growing in faith.

Secondly, your spiritual growth is seen in the realm of faith and also in the realm of speech.

That's the second area of spiritual growth, the measure of spiritual growth that Paul gives.

And speech is probably the realm where your spiritual maturity is most evident to others.

It's so clear how spiritually mature somebody is based upon their speech.

And that's because your speech is an overflow of your heart.

Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.

And so it's just a window into how mature the person's heart is.

Now, first of all, the word for speech here is the word logos, the Greek word logos, the word.

It is the word that is used in John chapter 1 to describe the Son of God.

John 1 · chapter mention

The eternal Son of God is the Lagos of the Father.

Whatever is in the Father, is the Son.

All that God is, the Son is.

The speaker has a word, the word is Lagos, the word is the Son.

That same principle applies to us.

What is in our heart, who we are, is what is in our speech.

It comes out, not perfectly, of course, with the Father, everything that is in the Father is perfectly in the Son.

With us, we have measures of self-control and filters and ramblingness and all that.

So it's not a one-to-one correlation, but generally it is true that your speech reveals who you are.

Speech generally reveals at least three things about a person.

It shows you what is in their heart, of course.

It shows you what's in their mind, what they're thinking about, and it shows you the level of self-control they have.

Because as you grow in self-control, you learn not to say everything that's going in your mind.

Little kids don't have that self-control, right?

If a little kid thinks it, they say it.

Some kids are just like rambling 24-7.

They they talk in their sleep.

They're just always talking.

They have no unarticulated thoughts.

And that's cute in a little kid for a while, right?

It's cool.

Even as they get maybe, you know, 10 or 12, it's cool to know what's going on in their hearts and in their minds because they're always telling you that's great.

Paul says, when I was a child, I talked like a child.

That's wonderful.

But when I grew up, I put childish ways behind me.

So people develop a level of self-control to regulate their speech.

Just because you have it on the inside doesn't mean you need to say it on the outside.

And I have some had somebody non-ironically tell me, I don't want to filter my speech because that's hypocrisy.

That's like saying, I don't want to wear clothes because I want everybody to know who I really am.

No, brother, go ahead and put on clothes.

And go ahead and rein in your speech, okay?

It's a favor to all of us.

That's your self-control.

As you mature in Christ, your self-control grows, and your speech gets more and more controlled.

I've heard people try to justify profanity by saying, hey, it's just it's just me being authentic.

You know, this world is raw, yo.

The world is raw.

And I just gotta speak what's in me, and all the something bad happens and it's all in my heart, and it's just gotta it's gotta come out.

That's authentic speech right there.

That's who it's it's just reflecting the raw emotion of what I am.

I mean that that may be true, but it is very immature.

Because a mature person demonstrates self-control over their emotions, and as they become more mature, their speech becomes more mature.

Like I said, you can see this with children.

If it's in, it comes out.

But as adults, as you grow into adulthood, you regulate your speech.

That is true spiritually as well.

I'm talking like at a you know, an educational psychology level about kids, of course, but Paul's bigger point is spiritually, this is true.

As you grow spiritually, you learn to speak things that are true.

There's a self-control that you've developed.

And you think about the way stages of speech, and I'm drawing this in 1 John, where John in one, John talks about children in the faith, teenagers in the faith, immature people in the faith.

The same principle applies to speech.

You know, a child in the faith, you would say, don't use profanity because it's unwholesome speech.

It's bad as an honor of the Lord, and get some self-control with your emotions, okay?

That's what you would tell a child, and that that works for a child.

You know, you tell the child, don't say those words, those words are bad.

That's how you would teach a child.

A teenager has grown a little bit beyond the list of naughty words, though.

For a teenager, John tells the teenagers, speak with confidence, speak with conviction.

Talk about things that are true and reflect your faith.

And then for a mature person, you've gone into the Ephesians 5 world where there's no filthiness coming out of your mouth, but rather thanksgiving.

A more mature saint, it's not that they're not saying certain words, and it's not that they're only saying things that are convictionally true.

It's beyond that, even for a mature saint, they are saying things that are praiseworthy.

They're giving thanks.

You know, so you're you're in a car accident, you know, somebody crunches the back of your car.

The first Words that are inclined to come out of your mouth are probably not godly.

And so you use self-control to keep them in.

A mature saint has a self-control, but has on top of that, praise God for this opportunity to grow me in patience with my insurance company this week.

Lord, I'm so thankful for this accident because I will be so patient at the end of this week.

Now, I'm speaking a little jokingly, of course, because it's helping you understand the point.

The more mature you are, the less of a joke that is.

It's always going to be a little funny, but the less of a joke it will be.

An immature person is like, oh, those words I said when I got rear-ended were bad.

The more mature a person has self-control, and the senior saint knows how to give thanks in any situation.

As grace changes your heart, it changes your mouth.

And you can grow in it.

It is worth yourself asking.

What does your speech show about your own spiritual maturity?

As a Christian grows, his heart is sanctified, his mind is renewed, his self-control is strengthened.

Thirdly, you see spiritual growth in the world of knowledge.

Knowledge.

Then the Corinthians placed a high value on knowledge.

I'm not saying they had knowledge, they placed a high value on knowledge.

Paul in 1 Corinthians chapter 13, verse 2, I would say is being sarcastic to them.

1 Corinthians 13:2

When you read it and you don't know if it's sarcastic, but when you hear it out loud, it's obviously sarcastic.

He tells the Corinthians, you excel in all knowledge and all mysteries.

I mean, that's sarcastic, right?

Corinthians, you know all things.

At the very least, it shows that they valued knowledge.

They valued it.

There's a literal, a legitimate sense in which spiritual maturity should produce greater spiritual understanding.

The Bible contains deep truths, it contains complex doctrines, it contains paradoxes.

And as a Christian matures, you should grow in your understanding of those things.

Now you never reach the point where you say, I have God figured out.

Of course not.

The more you know God in some ways, the more you recognize how far beyond you He is, but you also recognize the more you know God, the more you're growing in knowledge of Him.

You know, a new Christian, sometimes people will ask, do you have to believe in the virgin birth, or do you have to understand the Trinity?

Or do you have to believe in this or the other thing in order to be saved?

And the answer is going to be no to all of those questions, basically.

To be saved, you have to believe whatever you know.

Whatever's confronted to you, whatever you're confronted with about Christ, you have to believe that to be saved.

Not that you believe all things, because you don't know all things, but you believe all things that you know.

And then you grow in godliness as you're growing in knowledge and you are continuing to believe all that you know.

Do you need to believe in a global flood to be saved?

No, of course not.

But once you read about it in the Bible, you need to believe it.

Does that make sense?

Do you need to believe the Trinity to be saved?

No.

But once you understand that the scripture says that God is three and one, you need to believe that.

And this is where those deep doctrines come in.

You'll have a new believer that says, okay, you tell me that there's one God, but that Jesus is God and He's not the Father, and the Father is God, and I'm not good at math, but one plus one is not one.

So what do you tell the new believer?

You say you just have to believe that.

That's what the Bible teaches, the Trinity.

You just have to believe it, even if you don't understand it.

That is a great answer for a new believer.

But as you grow in your understanding of God, you grow in your understanding of a doctrine like that.

You recognize, well, wait a minute, God is one being, but in three persons.

You start to make those kind of distinctions.

As you grow even more, you make other distinctions along that line.

And you grow in your understanding of the Trinity.

God's sovereignty and man's responsibility is another example.

A new believer says, Well, if God is sovereign over who can be saved, how come people also choose to follow Christ?

How can they both be true?

And you just tell the new believer, like, they're both true.

Deal with it.

But as you grow in maturity, you start to see how God's providence and his sovereignty superintends our decisions.

Here's a great example at hand.

Who wrote the book of 2 Corinthians?

Did Paul write it or did God write it?

You tell a new believer both, and just deal with it.

But as you grow in godliness, you learn about providence and that God is superintending every action in Paul's life, everything that happens to Paul to shape Paul exactly into the person who would write this book.

The Spirit inspires him and superintends every word that Paul writes so that it's inspired and inerrance.

That is more mature doctrine.

And not that you ever reach the point where you say, I have now solved the mysteries of the Trinity.

I now fully understand the relationship of God's sovereignty and man's responsibility and the way the Spirit works in inspiration.

No, you will never get to those points, but you should be growing in your knowledge of those things throughout your life.

Throughout your life.

And I harp on this point just because I've heard people say that knowledge of God or doctrine or theology stunts maturity, does not help spiritual growth, almost view it as an enemy of spiritual growth.

Those people tend to elevate experiences and tone down knowledge.

But you notice on this list, Paul does not say as you've grown in your experiences of God.

He says, as you've grown in your knowledge of Him.

Maturity does not mean refusing to think.

Your doctrine should get better the longer you walk with Jesus.

Doctrine is not the enemy of spiritual growth, it's rather one of its evidences, which leads to number four.

The realm of earnestness.

Spiritual maturity is seen in earnestness, and this is a really cool word.

Not a word we use a lot.

I can't remember the only, I can't remember using this word outside of the Bible.

But it's a fun word.

Earnestness can mean zeal or energy.

I'll define it this way on the screen.

Wholehearted enthusiasm.

That's the lexical definition of it.

The Greek dictionary would define it that way.

Wholehearted enthusiasm, and it gives a synonym as zealous or zeal.

It's energy.

It's being excited about something.

That's what earnestness means.

You're stoked about it.

The more mature you grow in Christ, the more excited you are about the things of God.

It's not simply having an enthusiastic personality like every Christian needs to be a T-I-Doubleger Ur bouncing off the walls for Jesus kind of thing.

But it does mean that you should be growing in your enthusiasm for the things of God.

You know, if you're an e or a Christian, you should grow through that over the course of your life.

Some people are naturally excitable, and some people are naturally reserved.

But Paul's talking about something deeper, a growing eagerness for the things of God.

As you mature as a Christian, spiritual things should mean more to you, not less.

You should have an increasing eagerness when you think about serving Jesus, an increasing enthusiasm for ministry, an increasing willingness to extend yourself for things that have eternal value.

And this is one of the key ways you see maturity go in people's lives.

You know, when you're immature, you can spend so much time on things that don't matter.

And as you grow in maturity, you st what matters in eternity starts to get clarified for you as you grow up.

I mean, I think it's some of the things kids kids spend half of their time in an imaginary world.

Which is fine, it's adorable when they're kids.

But you grow out of that.

I mean, here's just a practical example of this, and I know that I will get a few emails from people who don't like this example, but I use it every now and then, and it's the then right now.

You know, when you're a kid, you can spend hours and hours playing video games that just suck the life out of you.

But you should grow out of that.

You know, when the older person is throwing their life away with video games, it's a sign of sadness, not a sign, not of virtue.

You have to grow through that.

And maturity is growing up to appreciate what matters.

And I'm not just trying to pick on other people's hobbies, but all of my hobbies are completely sanctified.

There's a part of maturity where you get clarity on those kind of things and you grow in them.

They recognize that with Jesus, didn't they?

When he overturns the temples, the crowd confronts him, and they realize that the scripture said, zeal for his father's house will consume him.

And that is the model for us to be consumed about God's things.

And the more you mature, the more your zeal gains depth.

You become more eager to serve, more diligent in prayer, more serious about holiness, more invested in eternal things.

More concerned about salvation and spiritual knowledge and growth than the kind of other things.

And you can tell what somebody is concerned and eager and zealous about by, again, what they talk about.

It just, you know, what a person cares about is all over them.

As you grow in earnestness, the things of God become less peripheral and more central.

I love that Paul pairs this with knowledge.

Because knowledge without earnestness or knowledge without zeal is dead and dry.

Knowledge without zeal is a thousand-page theology book that nobody will ever crack.

Knowledge paired with zeal becomes a potent demonstration of maturity.

Which leads to the final example here.

There's one more word before we get to the fifth point in verse 7.

He says, and in our love for you, just a quick reference to that.

It's more obvious in Greek than English.

In Greek, it's very clear that Paul's saying the Corinthians are growing in Paul's love for them, not their own love for Paul.

Because remember, in 2 Corinthians, they're not really stoked about Paul right now.

And Paul is fighting the battle in his own heart.

He said it back in chapter 6, I'm trying to still love you guys.

In chapter 7, verse 2, he says, Make room in your hearts for us too.

I want you in my heart.

So he tells them here, it's a very clever way of wording it.

He's not telling them, I know you love me more than you did yesterday, because it might not even be true.

I mean, there's a reason he's sending Titus to get the money and not himself.

But he does tell them, I want you to know you're growing in these areas, and because of that, I'm growing in my love for you, even if it's unrequited.

Very clever way of putting it.

But it sets up his fifth point.

The fifth way you see spiritual growth is in giving.

Because you're growing in this way, keep giving.

See that you excel in this act of grace also.

We don't always think of giving as an area of sanctification.

But notice Paul's logic.

If you're growing in faith, speech, knowledge, and earnestness, also excel in giving.

Your giving should grow throughout your Christian life.

Now, a quick point here.

I've heard it said sometimes people are supposed to give a tithe, and I've even heard it said your tithe grows because your income grows as you get older.

That may be kind of anachronistic, like a Western way of thinking, but it's not true.

In the Old Testament, you weren't commanded to tithe as your worship to God.

The Old Testament commanded tithing, of course, but it was more close to taxation.

They paid a tithe for the maintenance of the Levites, they paid a tithe for the temple festivals, that's 20% of your keeping track at home.

They paid a tithe every three years for the ministry to the widows and the poor and the orphans.

That's about 3%.

They didn't do the corners of their fields, so throw in another one or two percent.

So you're looking at basically a tax rate in the Old Testament of 25%.

That's what the Israelites are paying in tax.

That is not necessarily their worship.

They had, we looked at this verse last week, a free will offering on top of that.

So it's a little bit, I think, errant to describe the Old Testament Israelites as tithing for their worship.

No, they tithed for their taxes and they gave free will offerings for their worship.

In the New Testament, the word tithing isn't used.

I mean, there's it's used twice and it's kind of sarcastic.

It's the Pharisee who goes into the temple and is like beating his breast and says, I thank you, God, I'm not like that tax collector over there because I tithe.

That's the New Testament use of tithing.

And it's going to come up in Matthew 23, where Jesus says, You Pharisees, you tithe the mint in the cumin.

He doesn't mean that as a compliment.

The New Testament doesn't teach tithing, it teaches generous giving.

You give as the Lord works in your heart.

You're commanded to give to your church, and 1 Timothy 5 says that you're supposed to give your church here, is defined by where you're hearing the word preached.

So you give to the church you go to for worship.

You give to the person and the ministry that is preaching over your soul.

That's the command.

But the amount isn't given.

And that's because your giving reflects your heart.

Do you see how all these are the same?

You're giving, like your speech reflects your heart.

And so as you mature in your knowledge and love of the Lord, your speech matures.

As what you know reflects what you're spending your time studying, as you know more about the Lord, your knowledge grows.

Your faith, the longer you walk with Jesus, the more your faith grows out of the overflow of your heart.

That's the point about giving.

The longer you walk with the Lord, the more generous you are.

Where your treasure is, your heart will be also, Jesus says.

And that's why what we looked at last week, Paul's use of the Macedonians is very insightful, because those people were poor.

The Corinthians were not poor.

The Macedonians, which is the Thessalonians, the Philippians, the Bereans, they were poor.

And do you remember what they were doing?

Begging God through Paul to let them give their money.

The Corinthians tried to give to Paul for his ministry, and Paul said, No, thank you.

Keep your filthy lucre.

The Thessalonians, meanwhile, are just grabbing his coat, saying, Please, brother, let us give.

They hardly had anything.

So now Paul's telling the Corinthians, here's your chance, guys.

If you're growing in godliness, now give generously.

The longer you know Christ, the more eager you should become to give.

And so, like I asked you about your speech.

Let me ask you this.

Can you measure your own spiritual maturity by your giving?

And by the way, it works in both directions.

What you love in your heart is what you end up giving to.

You know, your neighbor's abandoned derelict car in his front yard is an eyesore to you.

You can't stand it.

You wouldn't pay a penny for it.

But then you get it.

He gives it to you, or maybe you did pay a penny for it.

And now you start working to fix it up and you start buying things for it and investing in it, and it suddenly becomes a treasure to you that you can't even imagine how your other neighbors would roll their eyes at it.

They don't they know how special this car is?

That's a little illustration of what giving in the church is like.

The world wouldn't understand why you would give to gospel ministry, but it's your gospel ministry.

It's the people preaching the word to you, it's the missionaries your church sends out, it's the congregation you're part of.

And as you give to it, you grow in your love for it.

And like I said, it works in both directions.

What you love is going to be what you give to.

You can go backwards and say, What am I giving to you?

That's gonna reveal what you love.

Growing Christians should become growing givers.

Not merely giving more dollars because their income goes up over their life, but giving more generously and sacrificially and instinctively and willingly as they grow up over their life.

You know, at the very least, give some money.

I had a high school student between services say, you know, I make$55 doing two hours of lifeguarding a week.

What are you asking me to give?

And I told him, and there's a lot of you around, so you've probably heard this car, many of you heard the conversation, give them a dollar, throw a dollar in the offering box.

You know, as a as a little kid, put a dollar in, and that's gonna start the pattern of growing in your life, of giving in your life, so that as you're getting more money and you're you're you're gonna grow more generous over time.

You know, and a student might roll his eyes and say a dollar.

I mean, that's weak sauce.

I'm not gonna give a dollar.

That's embarrassing.

Okay.

Fine, I'm glad you said it, not me.

The giving indicates your growing love for the Lord.

And that's what Paul means in verse 8.

I say this not as a command.

So you are missing the point if you say, the pastor just said I have to give a dollar next week.

I am not saying this as a command, but I'm saying this to prove your earnestness and to demonstrate that your love is genuine.

If the New Testament just said give 10%, that verse would make no sense.

The New Testament doesn't say what percentage to give, it says to give generously and sacrificially and joyfully, by the way.

Because it's a reflection of your genuine love, as it is with all these things.

And so, a quick closing point with that list on the board.

You want to grow in spiritual maturity.

You can do practical things to grow in those areas, sure.

But growing in those areas is not the end in and of themselves.

Like make a list of four words you want to stop saying, okay?

I mean, you can do something like that.

Get a Bible reading regimen in your life, set an alarm, and read the Bible in the morning.

You can do something like that.

You know, when the offering plates are passed next week, put a few dollars in.

You can do something like that.

Those little practical things will help you grow in godliness for sure.

But those practical things are almost, they can come very close to stapling fruit on the tree.

You know what I mean?

Don't confuse fruit with the root.

The root here is your love for Jesus.

As your love for Jesus grows, those other things happen more naturally.

As your love for Christ grows, you maybe don't have to have the list of words anymore, you know?

You just have a love for Jesus, and that becomes compelling enough.

This is what Paul means when he tells the Ephesians the law is good if you use it lawfully.

Don't use the law to boost up your own godliness.

Use the law to give you guidelines as an overflow of your love for Christ.

That's the Christian life.

We stumble, we lose grounds, there are moments when we go backwards, but God's grace keeps carrying us up.

Like the man on the escalator, our Christian life, we fall and we get up and we fall again, and somehow, supernaturally and providentially, we grow in maturity despite ourselves.

And one of the places where that growth should become increasingly visible is in our giving.

I pray that God would make us a generous congregation.

Lord, we are grateful for your gospel that you gave to us.

You gave your son when we were yet sinners.

You gave your righteousness when we hadn't a righteousness of our own.

You gave mercy when we deserved wrath, you ultimately will give heaven when we deserve hell.

You give yourself and not what we deserve.

We're grateful that because we have received much, we too can be generous.

We're thankful for the areas of growth we've seen in our own life and in our congregation.

You have made this a blessed and mature congregation.

We're thankful to be part of it.

We give you thanks for this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

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

If you live in the Washington, D.C.

area, we'd love to see you at one of our own worship services at Emmanuel Bible.

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