A Wealth of Generosity

Se Young Park is the singles pastor at Briarwood.

He's married to Miyong Choi, and he's a very gifted communicator and preacher.

We're um we're happy that you're here, Sey Young, and thankful uh to God be the glory.

Thank you for being here.

Good morning.

As introduced, my name is Sei Young Park, and I am a singles ministry pastor over at Briarwood Presbyterian Church.

Briarwood, by the way, sends her greetings.

And she says, I hope you're happy with yourselves for stealing one of our best teachers and preachers.

In all seriousness, we are thrilled for Olin.

We are thrilled for Cahaba Park.

Uh, and we pray that this will be a happy union that results in much fruit for the kingdom of God.

You know, this is actually the second time that I've been here at Cahaba.

More than a year ago, we had a joint young adult event here with Dr.

Doriani as our speaker.

And I had the opportunity back then to work alongside Lee when he was here, and Anna, who I believe is still here.

Anna Hughes is still here, right?

Um, so um I can actually say it is good to be back.

Well, if you have your Bibles with you, please open to 2nd Corinthians chapter 8.

We'll be looking at the first 15 verses.

That's 2 Corinthians chapter 8.

2 Corinthians 8 · chapter mention

Verses 1 through 15.

Receive now God's word.

We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been among 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 favor 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 urged Titus that as he had started, so he should complete among you this act of grace.

But as you excel in everything in faith and speech and 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 your 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 supply their need, so that their abundance may supply 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.

This is the word of the Lord.

Allow me to open my reading for you a quote from Fred Mitchell, who was the director of the China Inland Mission for a time.

He wrote, I quote, Nothing offers so practical a test of our love for Christ or for others as does our attitude to money and possessions.

Nor does anything so test our claim to be delivered from this present evil world.

The world asks how much we own.

Christ asks how we use it.

The world thinks more of getting, Christ speaks more of giving.

The world asks what we give, Christ asks how we give.

The former thinks of the amount, the latter of the motive.

To the unconverted, money is a means of gratification, to the converted, a means of grace.

To the one, an opportunity of comfort, to the other, an opportunity of consecration.

I was asked to preach on the topic of giving, and I can't think of a better place to turn to in all of Scripture than 2 Corinthians chapters eight and nine.

In these chapters, Paul gives the Corinthians instructions regarding the collection fund for the church in Jerusalem.

And in so doing, he provides us with one of the most extensive and nuanced treatments on the topic of money.

While we won't have time to look at all of chapters eight and nine, obviously, we will look at the first 15 verses of chapter 8, and I'm going to be jumping around in those verses, and so if you have your Bibles open in front of you, that'll be helpful.

But from this text, I'd like to share with you five principles of giving.

I'll tell you what they are as we go along, but five principles of giving that helps us understand how it is that we as Christians ought to think about stewarding our money.

But before we begin, allow me to pray one more time.

Gracious Heavenly Father, we come before you to worship you.

We come before you confessing that the whole earth and everything in it belongs to you.

It's a confession that we readily make with our lips, but that we are slow to follow with our actions and with our giving.

Lord, I know that this is a sensitive topic, if for no other reason than the fact that we hold our money near and dear to our hearts.

Indeed, for many of us, it is an idol.

And so I ask that you would soften our hearts even as we take a look at your word and what it has to say.

Pierce our hearts as needed.

And more than that, Lord, I ask that you would help us fix our eyes on Jesus Christ through this word.

We pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Well, before I get to the first principle, let me provide you with the background for this collection fund.

From its birth, the church in Jerusalem had to face the challenge of severe poverty.

This church wasn't a white, suburban, upper middle class church composed of highly educated members with established careers and with too much money to know what to do with.

No, it was an impoverished church, and there were several reasons why.

One of the reasons was due to the demographics of its congregation.

You will remember how the church was born from the book of Acts on the day of Pentecost.

There were thousands and thousands.

I just got distracted because Olin's sitting right there.

I wasn't aware that Olin was going to be here.

Thousands and thousands of Jews from all over the Mediterranean who had left their homes and possessions in order to make this pilgrimage to the Holy City.

And in Acts 2, we read about the outpouring of the promised Holy Spirit upon the disciples.

And on that first day of Pentecost alone, Luke reports that about 3,000 souls were converted in response to Peter's sermon.

And amongst these pilgrims, who do you suppose would have been the ones who chose to remain in Jerusalem rather than returning home?

Probably the ones who didn't have much of a home to go back to, probably the ones who didn't own vast estates and have large, extended families.

In other words, the widows and the poor.

Initially, these new converts and new residents of Jerusalem would have stayed at inns until their money ran out, and then perhaps with other believers until their money ran out.

And so it quickly became financially impossible for the early church in Jerusalem to support herself and to support the wonderful works of God, the bountiful harvest that he was reaping in the city.

Added on top of this categorically unique once-in-a-redemptive history event, Pentecost, the church in Jerusalem was also persecuted.

They were persecuted first and foremost by their own blood, by the Jews, who considered this new Christian movement to be a corrupted sect of Judaism.

Think about Saul of Tarsus before he was converted.

And second, they were persecuted by the Romans, who stripped them of everything they had by imposing that dreaded thing called taxes.

And if all of this wasn't bad enough in Acts chapter 11, verse 27, we read that a prophet by the name of Agabus, who we're told was filled with the Holy Spirit, foretold that there would be a great famine that would strike all over the world, including Jerusalem.

Acts 11:27

That was the last straw that compelled the disciples to begin collecting funds in order to provide relief for the brothers and sisters in Jerusalem.

And this task, this mission, this urgent task, fell upon Barnabas and Paul.

When Paul talks about the relief of the saints or the collection in chapters 8 and 9, that's what he's talking about.

The church in Judea was the mother church.

It was the church from which all other churches were born, but presently she was struggling mightily to survive.

They needed as much help as they could get, and they especially needed the help of a church like the Corinthians.

Now to get us started, look with me at verse 10.

2 Corinthians chapter 8, verse 10, we read, And then in this matter I give my judgment.

2 Corinthians 8:10

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.

Paul essentially says to the Corinthians, finish what you started.

But asking the people of God to give is always a delicate matter.

And not necessarily because there are always sensitive people who will be offended, but because giving is not just a matter of the hands, it's a matter of the heart.

It's not something that you can coerce without spoiling entirely.

Paul is not just concerned that the Corinthians give, he's concerned about how they give.

And so, starting in chapter 8, Paul provides the Corinthians with an example of how a church is to give.

So, having provided you with that long preface, look with me at verse 1.

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.

Here's the first principle for you.

Christian giving has nothing to do with circumstance.

Christian giving has nothing to do with your circumstance.

It has nothing to do with how much or how little you have.

How many times have you said to yourself, I don't have any extra money right now, so I can't afford to give?

Now that might be true.

You might literally have zero dollars in your checking account.

But don't worry, I'm not going to ask you to raise your hand.

But what I am going to ask you to do is to compare that kind of an attitude with that of the Macedonians.

For in a severe test of affliction, their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity.

That is a superbly paradoxical statement that can only be unlocked by the gospel.

We talked a little bit about the church in Jerusalem.

Now we have to talk a little bit about the churches in Macedonia.

Paul holds up the Macedonians as the model of Christian giving, the prime example that we are to imitate.

But unexpectedly, this is not because the Macedonians gave such a large amount, as it turns out, they couldn't.

Macedonia was the province that consisted of northern Greece, and the three primary cities it included were Philippi, Thessalonica, and Berea.

As a matter of fact, the Macedonians were the next door neighbors of the Corinthians, but although they were close in proximity, their situations couldn't have been any more different.

Corinth was a trade post and enjoyed an extremely advantageous geographical position.

All the land routes going from north to south and all the sea routes, going from east to west, from Asia to Rome, had to pass through Corinth.

Consequently, it was a wealthy city.

In contrast, the primary source of wealth in Macedonia was their gold and silver, which sounds good, but Rome left all the hard work, the mining and smelting, for the Macedonians to do, but the actual gold and silver was extracted and pumped into the empire and especially into their military machine.

And we can glean from the letter of Philippians that there was evidently some form of physical persecution that was inflicting the churches there as well.

In other words, the Macedonians were basically in the same situation as the Judeans.

The phrase extreme poverty in the Greek of verse 2 more literally says, according to the depths of destitution.

Paul describes the Macedonians as not just being poor, but as being destitute.

It's a word that often describes the conditions of people who are beggarly.

For example, it's the word that Luke often uses in his gospel to describe the crippled, the blind, and the lame.

And yet, verse 2, again, their extreme poverty overflowed in a wealth of generosity.

Christian giving has nothing to do with your circumstances.

When the Macedonians were in a severe pinch, they didn't turn inwards.

They didn't say, Poor me, look at how little I have.

I'd really like to give, but I can't because I don't have anything.

That was not their attitude.

Regardless of their circumstance, they remained God-centered and others-centered.

Verse 5, they gave themselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God to us.

That should remind you of the great commandment.

Love God and love your neighbor.

In other words, they were living out the great commandment in the way that they gave.

If you tell yourself, I would give more only if I had more, you are deceiving yourself.

And let's just say that you did have more, and so you did give more.

The thing is, if you gave only because of your abundance, your giving would still fall short of what Paul is demanding.

Because that's not Christian giving, that's giving out of convenience.

Now I'm well aware that most of you are not poor.

And so if you're thinking that the first principle is primarily for poor people, you are sorely mistaken.

As it turns out, most any survey reveals that it's actually not the poor that need encouragement to give, it's the rich.

It has consistently been the case for as long as I've been alive, statistically speaking, that church members of the lowest income bracket outgive members of the highest income bracket in terms of percentage of their income.

That has always been the case.

A recent survey shows that families earning under$20,000.

Under$20,000 is really poor.

Give as much as 11%, but that percentage drops to a mere 2.9% for families earning over$100,000.

Something's not right.

And if your response is, yeah, but that's because 11% of$20,000 is not that much, I would say clearly you have never been poor.

When you're living from paycheck to paycheck, giving even a dollar of your income is a sacrifice.

The richer you are, the more you can give, not just in the aggregate, but as a percentage of your income without your giving affecting your day-to-day living.

In other words, the richer you are, the higher the percentage you need to give in order for that to be sacrificial.

The Macedonians were poor, and yet they were generous.

Notice that in verse 2, Paul writes that their extreme poverty overflowed in a wealth of generosity.

Paul does not mention how much money this church gave.

In fact, he never does in any of his letters when he's talking about giving.

He says they overflowed in a wealth, not of money, but of generosity.

That is not descriptive of an amount, it's an attitude.

Paul is teaching the Corinthians something about the disposition of your heart.

That's his concern here.

So that's the first principle.

Giving has nothing to do with your circumstances.

Now here's the second.

Giving is to be done out of contentment with what you have, out of contentment with what you have.

Take a look at verse 3.

For they gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means of their own accord.

And now skip down to verse 12.

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

Readiness or willingness is describing the attitude of generosity that we just talked about.

So if the attitude is right, then your gift is acceptable, and it's acceptable according to your means or according to what you have.

What that phrase presupposes is that you are content with what you have.

And because you are content, you are free to be generous, so that you give even beyond your means.

When you take inventory, so to speak, and look at everything you own, everything you have, whether that's much or little, when you are content with what you have, you're not greedy to get more, rather, you're free to let go.

Because you recognize that you have a father in heaven who owns the cattle on a thousand hills, as Psalm 50 says, which, by the way, is the essence to Christian contentment.

The essence to contentment is knowing that your father is rich.

So that true contentment always overflows in generosity.

Well, how do I know what that phrase means for me?

What is giving according to what I have?

What amount does that mean for me?

Again, Paul is less concerned about the amount and more about the motive.

And you're all wise people, you can ask yourselves questions like this what do we need versus what do we want?

And how can we give without being financially reckless, but at the same time, how can we give in such a way where we're being sacrificial?

And I think when your heart is filled with contentment and generosity, you will end up giving the right amount.

The amount follows the motive.

You know, you can give in such a way where your heart is disposed in the exact opposite direction.

Rather than being an expression of contentment, giving can often be an expression of discontentment.

This is the case.

Anytime you give in order to get something in return, and I'm not talking about money, there are many things far more valuable than money.

You might give because in return you want to receive praise, or perhaps the affections of someone in particular, or respect or status, or simple gratitude.

I think it's safe to say that there's a temptation for all of us to turn our giving into a display of our benevolence to show off how generous we are.

And Jesus addresses this, doesn't he?

He says, in contrast to those hypocrites who sound the trumpet in the streets when they give, Jesus says in Matthew 6, 3, when you give, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret.

Anytime you give in order to get, you are actually giving precisely because you are not content with what you have.

You want more.

And your generosity is a disguise for your greed.

So examine your hearts.

When you give your offerings, you are not just practicing the physical act of placing your checks and your envelopes and the envelopes in a basket.

Little children can do that too.

You are exercising.

A disposition of your heart.

Third principle: Christian giving is out of an abundance of joy and earnest desire to participate in the mission of Christ.

Out of an earnest desire to participate in the mission of Christ.

Verse 4.

The Macedonians gave, begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints.

Yet another remarkable statement about the Macedonians.

Let me break down that sentence for you because when you see what it says, you get a better sense of why the Macedonians derive so much joy from giving and why Paul loved to brag about this church.

The word that is translated earnestly in the English stands in the place of a phrase.

That phrase literally says, with much begging.

So the Macedonians didn't just beg to participate in the release of the saints, they begged with much begging.

It's deliberately redundant.

They were desperate to participate.

The word for favor is chorus, which can also be translated as grace.

So they begged with much begging for the grace of giving to the saints.

They considered it grace for them to participate in this ministry.

To the Macedonians, giving was an undeserved privilege.

I mean, the way that these guys thought about money and the way that these guys gave is almost confusing.

Perhaps if you were there, you would have said to them, hey Macedonians, you do know, right, that when you give to someone, you're the ones doing them a favor.

They should be saying thank you to you.

That's how we think.

But that's not how the Macedonians thought.

The favor was theirs.

And how does this make any sense?

Why did they think this way?

Begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints, taking part, participation.

This is what it was all about for them.

The Macedonians viewed their giving to be the means by which they partook of the fellowship and the mission of Christ.

Philippians chapter 4, verse 16 and 17 further clarifies their theology of giving, bearing in mind that the Philippians were one of the churches in Macedonia.

Philippians 4:16

Paul writes to them, even in Thessalonica, you sent me help for my needs once and again.

Not that I seek the gift, but I seek the fruit that increases to your credit.

This is one of my favorite verses on giving because it is just so crazy.

It's so countercultural.

Not that I seek the gift, but I seek the fruit that increases to your credit.

Paul is saying, when you give towards a ministry and God produces fruit through that ministry, who gets the credit?

Who does God credit?

The ones who gave.

So here's the fourth principle.

Christian giving strives to establish fairness in the wider body of Christ.

The principle of fairness is quite simple and intuitive.

So simple that little children can understand it.

Let me explain.

A child receives two candy bars from his Sunday school, and when he gets home, he sees that his younger brother didn't get any candy bars from his class.

Now, if that boy has been raised properly, if he's a good brother, what will he do?

If he has two candy bars, he will give one to his younger brother.

And why?

What's the principle that the child is acting on?

It's the principle of fairness.

Kids understand what is and is not fair.

At the most basic level, this is what Paul is saying.

Just as there is fairness within your family, there is also to be fairness within the family of God.

There are some people in the church who have more than they need, and there are others who have less than they need.

So as a matter of fairness, he's asking the Corinthians to use their abundance to supply the needs of their brothers in Jerusalem.

Now, I don't want you to miss this rather obvious point.

Within the context of family or friends, fairness does not arise out of compulsion.

You don't complain to your spouse, that's not fair.

You have more than me.

That's ridiculous.

Fairness arises out of love, doesn't it?

You are more than happy to provide for a friend or family in need, so fairness naturally results within a community that is bound by love.

And the rest of verses 13 through 15, Paul provides us with the reason underlying this principle.

He explains why we should strive for this type of balance within the wider body of Christ.

I want you to think about this.

Think with me.

Why might the Corinthians, or why might you, say to Paul, well, wait a minute, you're talking about fairness, but that doesn't really seem fair to me.

I work hard for my money, I work my tail off to get to where I am, I have the right to spend my money how I choose.

Why should I give it away to someone else?

Why might someone think like that?

Well, because they don't recognize that everything they own has been given to them by God.

By the way, Olin, do you struggle as much with this earpiece as I am right now?

I make a lot of money because I work really hard.

Yes, but it's God who provided you with that job.

No, I got this job because I studied really hard in school.

Yes, but it's God who provided you with that education.

No, I got into this school because I'm really smart.

Yeah, but it's God who gave you that intellect.

No, I'm really smart because my parents put me through tutoring.

Yeah, but it's God who provided you with your parents and so on and so forth.

You get the point, right?

There is nothing in your possession that you are entitled to.

Nothing.

Everything is from God.

Returning to the previous illustration, why is that child willing to give one of his candy bars to his brother?

Because he knows that it wasn't his to begin with.

Someone gave it to him first.

Continuing on in verse 15.

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

Paul is quoting from Exodus 16 there.

You can turn there if you want, but this is a story that I think most of you will be very familiar with, and it illustrates Paul's point perfectly.

In Exodus 16, God had delivered the Israelites out of Egypt, and now they were wandering in the wilderness, and one of the first challenges they faced was not enough food.

That was the problem.

So in Exodus 16, what does God do?

He provides.

In the evenings, quail came up and covered the camp.

In the mornings, there was this fine, flake-like substance left on the ground, which the Israelites called manna.

When that heavenly bread appeared, Moses gave the Israelites some instructions.

He said, Each person is to gather as much as he can eat.

Then you shall each take one omer, that's about two quarts or liters, of this heavenly bread per person in their tents.

And in Exodus 16, verse 17, this is what we read.

Exodus 16:17

And the people of Israel did so.

They gathered some more, some less.

Now, why did some gather more and some less?

Well, because some people were younger, stronger, and could simply gather more, while other people were older, weaker, and weren't able to gather as much.

But notice what happened in verse 18.

This is what Paul quotes in our passage.

But when they measured it with an omer, whoever gathered much had nothing left, and whoever gathered little had no lack.

Each person gathered as much as he could, and yet at the end of the day, each tent took one omer per person.

Do you see what principle God established?

It was the principle of fairness.

He didn't say, all the strong and able-bodied members of Israel, all the talented people, you guys gather as much as you can and keep that for yourselves and all of you old people.

Sorry if you can't gather as much, that's just too bad for you.

That's not what God said.

Regardless of one's strengths or abilities, he designated one omer per person.

The strong man could not say to God, wait a minute, that's not fair.

I have to work harder than everyone else, gather more than everyone else, and for longer than everyone else, but at the end of the day I get the same amount as everyone else?

That's not fair.

He could not say that.

And why?

Because all the manna came from God in the first place.

So, as Christians, what is the underlying reason for why we ought to strive for fairness?

It's the acknowledgement that all things have been provided by the generous hand of God.

It's the acknowledgement that there is nothing that I have that I can lay claim to.

All of it belongs to God.

Really and truly.

Do you believe in that?

This brings us to our fifth and final principle, and we don't have to spend a lot of time here because I am now simply making explicit what has been implicit thus far.

Principle number five.

The source of Christian giving is the gift of Christ.

Source of Christian giving is the gift of Christ.

Let me turn your attention back to the very first verse of our chapter, 2 Corinthians chapter 8, verse 1.

2 Corinthians 8:1

We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia.

Before Paul goes on to describe how generous the Macedonians were, he says, we want you to know about the grace that has been given them.

You see, the Macedonians are not the first ones to give in this passage.

God is.

You don't give out of the kindness of your own heart.

Strictly speaking, you don't even give out of your heart of generosity.

The source of Christian giving is not your heart, it's the heart of Christ.

And so after holding up the Macedonians as the model to imitate and instructing the Corinthians to excel in this act of grace also, Paul provides the fount or the source of it all.

Verse 9, for you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.

When Paul writes that Christ was rich, he's not saying that Christ had lots of money, obviously.

He's saying that prior to his incarnation, the Son of God, being God Himself, had everything.

And yet for your sake, Paul continues, Christ became poor.

Or as he puts it in Philippians 2, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God, a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being humbled, by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross.

That's what Paul means when he says Christ became poor.

At the end of the day, it is really as simple as this.

We give because Christ gave first.

And we give generously, sacrificially, joyfully, because we understand that we cannot possibly outgive God.

No matter how much we give, it doesn't even come close to what God gave us.

And not just that, but it doesn't even come close to what God continues to give us and what God will give us in the life to come.

It is as simple as this.

We give because we first received.

And if you don't love giving, if you don't love giving, it might just be that you have never received.

Cahaba Park Church family, far be it from me to relegate you to mere statistics.

I pray that you be a church that loves to give and that loves to outgive everyone else out of the overflow of Christ's generous heart that beats inside of you.

Let me pray for you.

We point to your graciousness, and yet I think we can take that for granted.

You have given us indeed everything that we have.

Everything good comes from your hand.

We confess that in our sinful hearts we complain and we are entitled.

We think that it belongs to us.

We think that we worked for it.

Forgive us such blindness.

I ask that you would soften all of our hearts so that we might have a desire to participate in fellowship with you and in your mission.

Produce in each one of us eager and joyful hearts who love to give, and may you use our giving to advance your kingdom.

We pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

At the invocation, we gave thanks for the means of grace, and we mentioned those even within this hour being preaching prayer for supper.