Generous Like Jesus | Becoming a Jesus Church: Week 6

Well, good morning, Grace Church, and good morning to all of you who are joining us online.

If you have a Bible or Bible app, I will encourage you to open up to 2nd Corinthians chapter 8, verses 1 through 15.

That's 2nd Corinthians chapter 8 verses 1 through 15.

I'm going to be preaching through the majority of this text this morning.

So if you have a Bible or Bible app, you can follow along.

The text will also be on the screen behind you.

We are continuing our teaching series called Becoming a Jesus Church.

It's part of our All Church Journey.

And I got to tell you, the last couple of weeks, I've just heard some incredible testimonies from all of our group leaders and the conversations that are happening there, from individuals who are participating in the journey by doing the devotionals week by week.

And I'm just thrilled to see that God is really working in the hearts of so many people here at Grace Church.

I want to encourage you, if you are using the booklet to keep pressing on.

I know that at five, six weeks into the process, you can be tempted to say, I'm good.

I feel like I got it.

Dive deep, dig deeper.

We're near the finish line.

We're gonna do, we're gonna wrap this thing up next Sunday, but it's exciting.

Really, really excited to see what God's doing.

So as we continue this journey of becoming a Jesus church, this morning we are looking at becoming generous like Jesus.

And I understand that the word generosity in the church, for some of you, is a curse word.

The second you hear it, your flesh goes, ah, that church is doing that thing again.

They're gonna start talking about money.

And the church always wants money.

And I am already gonna turn off my ears and my heart to the entire message the pastor's gonna preach because I just don't want to.

Some of you hear the word generosity, and you probably maybe have guilt in your heart.

And you have guilt because there's a little bit of understanding that maybe you're not as generous as you should be, and you recognize that God has called you to greater generosity, but you've been putting it off for some time, and so you kind of already know the drill.

You're gonna hear this message and you're you're gonna feel guilty for a little bit, but I have good news by like noon tomorrow, that guilt goes away.

All right?

So if you just ignore the rest of the message, by noon tomorrow you'll be okay, and you can just jump back into church life as normal.

Some of you are gonna have a little bit of pressure inside your mind and heart as I begin teaching this message, and you're gonna start thinking to yourself, okay, I am certain that the pastor just asked me to give money to a parking lot like months ago.

What in the world is he gonna ask today?

Uh and you're gonna start going through in your mind the various scenarios in which you're gonna be asked to give more money.

And I want to begin this morning by simply saying this.

If you think about money, the second you hear the word generosity, you don't actually have a good understanding of generosity.

Because generosity does not begin with your wallet, generosity begins with the grace that you've received through the person of Jesus Christ.

That's where generosity begins.

And when we look at 2 Corinthians chapter 8, verses 1 through 15, Paul is going to talk about taking an offering, a financial offering, for the churches in Jerusalem who are suffering.

2 Corinthians 8:1–15

They're in deep poverty at the time.

But before he ever talks even a moment about money, the first thing he talks about is grace.

It's a really important concept when we go to understand generosity, is that generosity begins with grace.

Now here's what we got 2 Corinthians chapter 8, verses 1 through 2.

2 Corinthians 8:1–2

Paul writing to the church of Corinth about several churches in Macedonia, Macedonia being northern Greece.

So these are the churches of Philippi, where you get the book of Philippians, these are the churches of Thessalonica, where you get the book of Thessalonians.

So that's the Macedonian churches that you're going to hear about.

Philippi and Thessalonica and Berea.

Paul's writing to the Church of Corinth, because Corinth is neglecting to be generous with their finances, and yet these churches are setting a wonderful example of generosity, and this is where Paul begins, to the Church of Corinth.

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

I don't want to go any further than that.

Go back to that last verse.

I want you to see that.

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

Now that word grace is on the outside of our building, isn't it?

It's the name of our church, Grace Church.

Right?

It's there's a grace involved, which means that there's something that is being given that is undeserved in this moment.

That the churches of Macedonia have been given something by God that is undeserved and it's unique and it's special.

Now, the word grace in its original Greek is the word charis.

That's what it means.

So you could walk to this church and call this charis church litits, but that's the Greek form.

Grace Church is the English translation.

And the word charis shows up as a variety of different words in 2 Corinthians 8, 1 through 15.

Actually, it shows up nine times.

Not always as the word grace, sometimes as the word favor, sometimes as the word gift, because the word charis is about a favor or a gift, or it's it's this undeserved thing that one person is giving to a next.

And it's not talking about the grace of the Macedonian churches towards the church of Jerusalem, but it's talking about the grace of God that's going on in the hearts of the people in the churches of Macedonia.

And what you're going to see over the next couple of verses, that grace is this really this continuous generosity of God towards his people, where God is giving his people exactly what they need to become what he has called them to become and to do what they're being called to do.

So God pours his grace into the Church of Macedonia, and as his grace is poured into the Church of Macedonia, what flows out of these churches is generosity.

Okay, so generosity in the text is always going to be this outward response to the richness of grace that we have received in Christ.

That's what generosity is.

Generosity is always the outward response to the richness of grace that we have received in Jesus Christ.

And so before generosity is ever anything that goes from us, it has to begin with what we receive directly from God to us.

And that's what the rest of this passage is going to walk us through.

That generosity is ultimately about what God has given you, not what he wants from you.

Now let's talk about the character of God.

The character of God is generous by nature.

God is a giver, and God gives what is good.

In fact, the psalmist declares, taste and see that the Lord is good, and that Jesus goes on to teach that God is a good father who knows how to give good gifts.

The Lord is a giver and he gives good things.

Now, when God created the earth, he did not create the earth and humanity because in God's life, God lacked something.

God doesn't lack anything.

He's totally whole and perfect in his own character without the creation of humanity or earth.

And yet there was something inside of him that decided to create human beings.

And when he decided to create you, he also decided to create this thing called the earth.

And on this earth, he created all kinds of things for you to enjoy.

Maybe it's fall and in your house you've already had an apple pie.

Where did those apples come from?

Were they just placed here for no intentional purpose?

Or do you think that God gave us apples for you to explore the wonder that is the apple pie?

Okay, I know it's kind of ridiculous, but it's that intentional when you think about God's desire to give you things that you did not ask for, nor do you deserve?

And God gives us all kinds of things.

And we see that modeled all throughout the Old Testament.

God gives Adam and Eve a garden.

After Adam and Eve sinned, God gives them clothing so they can stand in his presence.

God then promises to redeem the whole world through the tribe of Israel.

Then when Israel's in slavery, God delivers Israel from the land of Egypt and out of their slavery.

Then God gives all people through the nation of Israel the law and the prophets, which is the Old Testament.

By his grace he gave that to us, so that we might know who he is and what he cares about.

Ultimately, he gives us the promise that there is going to be a coming Messiah who could deliver all of us from the bondage of sin that's upon us.

Again, according to his grace, not because he has to, but because God is a giver.

And the most generous verse in the entire Bible is John 3.16.

For God so loved the world that he what?

Gave.

He expressed his gracious generosity upon you through his own son, Jesus Christ, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.

God loves you.

From God's love for you, he gives.

It's generous in how he gives.

He gives you forgiveness.

He gives you redemption.

He gives you his very own spirit.

And God's supreme generosity is not shown to us in the material things that he gives us.

It's shown to us in the fact that he sent his very own son to die on the cross and redeem us from the sins that we so rightfully have played, that so rightfully have caused our own eternal spiritual death.

That is the generosity of God.

Think about that for a moment.

The supreme generosity of God is that he gives you his self through the Holy Spirit and forgives you of your sin through the person of Jesus Christ.

You have not earned it, you do not deserve it.

That's grace.

And it requires that you give.

Now God has always displayed his grace in very concrete terms, not in abstract terms.

So here's what we see as a result of God's generous nature.

Listen to 2 Corinthians chapter 8, verse 9.

2 Corinthians 8:9

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.

Jesus was rich.

I don't think we can comprehend the full richness of the wealth of Jesus Christ, but as the Son of God, as the very person of God dwelling in the heavenly realms, where all of creation, all of all of the angels, all of everything unseen and ever seen rest under his authority.

In him all things were made.

You cannot actually calculate the riches of Christ.

If you take the entire universe's worth of possessions and you put them on a scale, and you put Jesus on the other side of the scale, Jesus outweighs all of it because he's as that rich.

He has far more riches than anyone else who's ever been in existence, and yet he gave up the full equality, all of the richness of his deity to embrace human form.

Though for your sake, while he is the wealthiest and richest and most powerful being in the universe and in the world, for your sake he takes on our very own flesh.

He became poor.

It's the humiliation of Christ.

You can read about it.

He takes on flesh, he comes being a king, but instead he arrives as a servant.

He has a throne, but he ends up in a manger.

This is the absolute setting aside of all things for our own sake.

Jesus began a life of ministry where he walked and roamed around the tombs.

He was essentially homeless for three years.

The Son of Man has no place to rest his head, relying completely on the generosity of the people in the towns at which he would come upon, for even a place to sleep and even the food to eat.

And so the one who possesses everything entered our poverty for one reason, so that you might become rich.

That's why he entered, so that you might become rich, not with the riches of the world, but with the riches of the kingdom of heaven.

That you would be forgiven of all of your sin and reconciled with God the Father, the creator of heaven and earth, who loves you deeply.

That you'd become adopted sons and daughters of God, co-heirs with Christ.

You need to understand the riches of the eternal kingdom that await you.

You know why we grab onto this world so much?

Because this world feels so tangible, and it's all the stuff we possess and all the things we've accumulated, and it makes us feel so good.

And what Jesus is telling you, the riches that you have in Christ far outweigh anything that you'll ever have here on earth.

And it is awaiting for you upon resurrection day.

The full riches of the eternal kingdom of God are yours to possess, given to you by the person of Jesus Christ.

Because he loves you and because he's generous.

And his love for you is shown in his grace for you.

Here's how dependent we are on grace.

Okay?

It's not just that we're so dependent on grace for forgiveness.

You're dependent on God's grace in your life for every single thing.

Paul makes this wild statement in Ephesians chapter 3, verse 8.

Ephesians 3:8

This grace was given me to preach to the Gentiles the boundless riches of Christ.

In other words, God and his favor upon you and me, if we're Gentiles, and I'm a Gentile, because God is gracious towards us.

He gave Paul a special filling of the Holy Spirit and insight by his grace to preach the message of the gospel so that you and I, 2,000 years later, would be here today.

Only by God's grace, working through Paul to preach the boundless riches of Christ, are we even in this room?

By God's grace.

Not just the grace of the message of forgiveness, but by the grace of God, he empowered Paul to even go on the missionary journeys in the first place.

Without God's grace, we have nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

And when you understand the depth of the riches that you have received in Christ, what you begin to realize is that generosity has nothing to do with how much we possess.

Not even a little bit.

See, the Christian life is completely dependent upon the overwhelming riches of God's grace for all things and in all things.

And I really want you to understand that last phrase.

For all things and in all things, there is nothing in your life that you possess that is not the actual grace of God in your life.

The work that you do, the money in your bank account, the clothes you're wearing here in this auditorium, the children that you have, the very expression of physical goods in this world, the breath in your lungs, all of that is by the grace of God upon you.

He just gives it to you because he's a generous, loving, giving God.

And it's impossible to become so accustomed to grace that we forget that we don't deserve it.

It's very possible.

In my house, we have this thing called a snack cabinet.

Does anybody else have a snack cabinet in your house?

It's a really wonderful cabinet.

It's quite a big cabinet, actually, which is explains a lot.

But we have this snack cabinet, and it's filled with chips and pretzels and tasty cakes and all the wonderful things of life, right?

At least the things I deem wonderful.

And every week, Amy will go to the grocery store and Amy will refill the snack cabinet.

And every week that snack cabinet, by the end of the week, becomes empty again.

Now we have uh five wonderful kids, and when our kids go to the snack cabinet to receive the bounty of this earth, I promise you they're not asking these questions.

They're not asking who paid for the pretzels or the chips, they're not asking who went to the store, they're not asking who carried the groceries into the house and refilled the snack cabinet.

When they go to the snack cabinet, they know the answer to all of those things.

It was mom and dad.

But when they go to the snack cabinet, they simply open it up and they receive from it.

And they enjoy the fruit of my wife's and I's generosity in their life.

And sure, some of you with kids know exactly what that's like.

They're fully dependent on you for every good thing they have.

Not just the snack cabinet, but the clothes that are on their backs, the beds that they get to sleep in.

And if you're a young person in this room and you're like, don't appreciate your mom and dad right now, you have no idea how dependent you are on them for everything you have.

It's something you gotta come to terms with.

But in the same way, you are dependent on everything you have from God the Father.

It's the exact same things.

But you know, sometimes you take from the snack cabinet so often and so frequently that you forget that you're not entitled to the snack cabinet.

It's just something you get to go to all the time.

I'm constantly eating from this thing.

It's always full, it's there for me to pull upon.

And one day, if something's missing from the snack cabinet, you go, hey, what gives?

I think I've told the story about my salt and vinegar chips before.

If you know it, you know it.

I oftentimes will leave my chips in that cabinet, and I feel like I'm entitled to it.

But I did put it in the cabinet.

So it is technically communal.

But every now and again you open that cabinet, and the thing you really want is missing, and you're like, come on.

And sometimes we do that with God.

We become so entitled to the things, the good things we enjoy in this life, that when all of a sudden it goes missing, you look at God and you say, What gives?

That's mine.

I I've earned it, I deserve it, I'm entitled to it.

Don't you know that I'm an obedient father?

Like, this is mine to have.

And the father just looks at you and says, No, you have it because of my grace.

There's no other reason that you have it.

So, friends, I have to ask you a question.

Has familiarity begun to, has familiarity with God's grace begun to make you feel like you're entitled to certain aspects of this life?

What have you begun to treat as so normal that you once would have called grace in your life?

You know, when uh Amy and I first fell in love, and it was a wonderful time in Chicago.

I remember there was a day we were holding hands and walking down the street, and we looked in each other's eyes, and we actually said this out loud, and it's so cheesy.

We said to each other, I don't think anyone in the history of humanity has ever been this in love.

And we meant it.

We like we meant it.

I meant I really meant it.

And she really meant it.

And we were like, I know this is the best.

Like, can you believe that God has allowed us to be the most in love people in the entire world, at least for this very moment?

Wow.

And I remember thinking, what wonderful grace God has shown me that I was the most in love person for one day or maybe for 18 years.

Well, I can tell you that now.

I mean, I've been married for 18 years, and yesterday, I mean, you know, I'm kind of taking for granted.

Right?

You can take your spouse for granted, take the one you love for granted, and there's this time you get so accustomed to it that uh if she were to suddenly be gone tomorrow, I would remember how grace-filled my life has been because of what God has given me.

But it's so easy to forget when it's so ordinary and normal.

But everything, from everything you possess to every relationship you have, to every good thing inside your life, comes from God's generosity towards you because he loves you.

So here's what happens when you got full generosity Grace begins to loosen our grip on our possessions.

Listen to 2 Corinthians 8, verses 2 through 3.

2 Corinthians 8:2–3

In the midst of a very severe trial, their overwhelming joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity.

For I testify that they gave as much as they were able, and even beyond their ability.

This church, the Macedonian churches, culturally were in a very economically depressed part of northern Greece.

The Roman Empire had many civil wars and local skirmishes.

On top of that, these churches were now Christians, the minority religion in that area, making trade and commerce rather difficult with their neighbors.

So this was a very, very, very poor church.

In fact, it's a kind of poverty that almost nobody in this room has an experience with.

But in their poverty, in their extreme affliction, they had this joy, and out of their joy, they gave a beyond their ability severe affliction, abundant joy, extreme poverty, and yet rich generosity.

Hardship did not shut down their generosity.

Here's why.

Grace changed where they located their security.

Grace changes where you locate your security.

When everything in this world comes from God and God alone, and you realize that He's just entrusted it to you, then you can feel very comfortable getting rid of those things and giving them away to others because you know that.

Your security, your provision, your health, everything is fully on God.

You're just a steward of the things that He's entrusted to you for a very brief season while you're here on earth.

And so when your security is in Christ and the deep richness of who Christ is, even if your bank account says poverty and your circumstances say affliction, your heart can say generosity.

Because you know that God has you.

And when you're rich in trust, when you're rich in Christ, you can trust the very promises of God.

Listen to Romans 8, 31, 32.

Paul continues to expound this theology.

What then shall we say in response to all of these things?

If God is for us, who can be against us?

Here's the logic.

You ready?

He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?

Do you see the logic there?

Paul's logic is very, very specific in this argument.

If God loves you enough to give you his very own son, what else do you think he would hold back from you?

And the answer is nothing.

God will not hold back anything from you because he deeply loves you.

And that's the logical conclusion for everybody who is a follower of Jesus.

If God did not withhold his own son, and you have been brought into the kingdom of God through Jesus Christ and your faith through him, is there really anything at all that God in his will would withhold from you if it is not good for you?

See, God works through his will to give you both what you need and what you want according to his will based on what's good for you.

I think many of us have a hard time believing that sometimes our poverty is actually good for us.

That sometimes our suffering and our loss is actually good for you.

See, God is far more concerned about making you into the person of Jesus Christ than it is about meeting all the things that you really desire in the flesh.

God wants to grow your heart.

So God will always give you the needs and the wants that are good for you that turn you into the person of Jesus Christ.

And He'll withhold from you things that will keep your flesh full and active and in rebellion.

That's how much God loves you.

So every good and perfect thing comes according to God's will for the purpose of helping you experience the richness of God's grace in your life and making you more like the person of Jesus.

And so, if God's grace is so abundant, if God's grace is in every aspect of everything inside of my life, why is it then that my flesh resists living as generously as Jesus?

If I know it, and I do know it, what is it that's gonna keep my flesh from resisting to be as generous with all the possessions that I have in my life to reflect the very same love and generosity of God in the lives of other people?

It's because we have closed hearts, and with a closed heart, we live with a closed hand.

Do you know the very first closed hand in history is found in Genesis chapter 3?

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

In Genesis chapter 3, Adam and Eve are in the garden, they have access to every single thing that God has ever given humanity, every food, every animal.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

It's a perfect environment.

God simply said, You can't eat from this one tree.

And the first time you see a closed fist is when Eve reached up and took the fruit.

Taking versus receiving.

What an aspect.

They've received everything that God could ever want to give anybody, and yet here we see Eve taking something and having a closed fist, then giving it over to her husband, and he eats of the same fruit, and as a result, sin enters the world, and that is ultimately the posture of sin when it comes to generosity.

Sin grasps and holds on because it doesn't trust God.

Adam and Eve didn't trust God's promises were full in that moment.

They were deceived into believing that God couldn't be trusted.

And so if you don't trust God, even though you know what everything God says about himself, how he works in your life, if you don't trust God, you're going to live this way.

You're going to grab on to everything you have, and you're going to fight every time somebody says or somebody asks you, or the Holy Spirit prompts you to be generous.

Grace does not live with a closed hand.

In fact, the last time I checked, if you look at the depictions of the crucifixion, grace required Jesus to have open hands.

There's an open-handed aspect to God's grace.

And it manifests physically in this world often between people as generosity.

So my question for you is this: what is it that you tend to grasp?

Is it your money?

Or is it your time?

Is it your plans or your possessions?

There's all kinds of things that can end up clasped inside of our clenched fists as we fight God or whether or not we're supposed to really open it up and give it away.

Here's what I'd like you to do this morning.

I want you to put your hand in the air like this and close your fist, because we all have closed fists with something, I promise.

Okay?

And I want you to put it out in front of you like this.

Do you know how you open up a closed fist?

You know how grace opens up a closed fist, the closed fist of the heart?

It begins with remembering and recounting the grace that you have received through the richness of the person of Jesus Christ.

Here's the very first grace you received, ready?

I am forgiven.

I have received the Holy Spirit.

I am a son or daughter of God.

I am a co-heir with Christ.

I will receive an eternal inheritance.

Do you see what just happened in my hand?

My hand is now open.

Grace opens the clenched fist of the heart, but we have to remember the graces that we have received, or we will clench the things of this world.

I'm not sure what you're clenching on to today.

But the richness of the grace of Christ is far more than you can ask for or imagine in the person of Jesus.

And when you've experienced the richness of God's grace, grace leads you to give God your whole life.

Because that's what God wants.

God doesn't want 10%, God doesn't want 2.4% of your money, God wants 100% of who you are fully surrendered over to Him.

Listen to 2 Corinthians verses 8, 3 through 5.

For the Macedonian church gave to their means, but they urgently pleaded with us for the privilege of sharing in the service to the Lord's people.

And they exceeded our expectations.

They gave themselves, first of all, to the Lord, and then by the will of God to us.

Grace opened up the hearts and the wallets of the people of the churches of Macedonia.

It says they had to plead with Paul.

You know what pleading means?

It means that when Paul was on his journey talking about the plight of the Jerusalem church and how he was collecting an offering, he saw the poor condition of the Macedonian churches.

And when the Macedonian churches offered to give him the offering the first time, he probably said no.

Your condition's too bad.

But as they pleaded with him, they begged God, hey, Paul, let us give you this offering.

Take it back to the church of Jerusalem.

They need the offering.

They pleaded to give it over.

That's what generosity did.

In their deep, deep affliction, out of abundance of joy of grace for the gospel they've received, as they look at the suffering of the church of Jerusalem, they feel so moved to generously give from whatever they had to help the church.

But here's why they were able to do that.

Because the first offering that they gave was the offering of themselves fully to God.

And that's what Paul says.

First, they gave themselves to God.

And then when God owns you, God owns all of your stuff at the same time.

All of the things he's given you become his because they're always his to begin with, but now you recognize it.

And so when God has your heart and he has all of you, he has all of your stuff, and when he works inside your heart through his spirit, you live with an open hand with your things.

You begin to realize, man, all the money in my bank account, that's actually God's money.

All the time I have here on earth is actually God's time.

All of my skills that I have and that I've acquired, they're actually all of God's skills.

They're for me to use for the sake of the kingdom of God, to bless others, to expand the kingdom, and to be gracious towards individuals.

When you really understand grace, when you really get it deep down in your heart, your house is yours, the house that is yours becomes God's, the time that is yours becomes God's, your experience becomes God's, and that is the mindset of the Church of Macedonia.

They gave themselves first to God, and they gave themselves over to Paul and to the church in Jerusalem.

What a powerful testimony.

Now, a couple months ago, we began a journey as a church called the Pave the Way Project.

And it was February of 2026 when I made the need known.

I've asked all of us to pray for a month that we would listen to what God is going to put on our hearts in order to give.

And uh, friends, I got really good news.

The grace of God that showed up to the church in Macedonia manifested itself here inside of Grace Church among many of you as you were generous in your hearts and you gave diligently.

And I just want to celebrate with you because next week we've got the parking lot party.

But I don't just watch this fun video of what God did through the grace of generosity here at Grace Church just a few months ago.

So I would love to tell you that we're going into a project for a luxury item.

But the fact of the matter is, parking lots are a necessity, not a luxury.

It's something that we actually have to have in order to make ministry happen here at Christ Church.

We are asking God to do the work.

We are asking God to move in hearts.

This is where your faith, trust, and love really grows when you're on your knees before the Lord, asking to do immeasurably more than you can ask or imagine.

And the Pave the Way Project had a goal.

We needed to raise$494,000 for the Pave the Way Project.

But we also said that if God is generous and he moves in the hearts of his people, we would have opportunities to do more.

And I am so excited to tell you that because of your generosity, we're going to be able to do a lot more.

Because of your generosity, when all the pledges are fulfilled, we will have$797,516 for the Pave the Way Project.

God is blowing me away right now with just how incredibly generous and faithful you have been as a church family.

But the story doesn't end there.

I said that when all pledges were received, we would have 797,000.

But in the last couple of months, the actual money that we've received is$832,000.

It's money on hand.

That by his grace he moved in many of your hearts to be generous with your financial offerings and give to not only a parking lot project, but something that's going to help us beautify other parts of our building, renovate bathrooms for our kids' ministries, fix up the back of the building, and we'll even have enough to put a wonderful playground right outside the cafe.

It's awesome.

It's going to be fun.

That's the grace of giving.

Many of you participated.

Many of you did not.

You're going to enjoy the benefits of what God has been doing in the hearts of other people as he moved.

And so for the rest of us, I want to encourage you with this last verse, 2 Corinthians 8, 6 through 8.

So we urge Titus to go to the church of Corinth, just as he'd earlier, just as he had earlier made a beginning, to bring also to completion this act of grace on your part.

In other words, Titus is being sent to Corinth to encourage them to give.

And so, Church of Corinth, since you excel in everything, they've excelled in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in complete earnestness and love that's been kindled in them.

See also that you excel in this grace of giving.

As much as God wants us to grow in our knowledge of His Word, our love for who he is, our faith and trust in His promises, we are equally encouraged to excel in the grace of giving.

Not because giving is just for giving's sake, but because you understand the richness of the grace that you've received and you live your life with an open hand.

Many of us pride ourselves on our Bible knowledge.

We pride ourselves on our church attendance.

We pride ourselves on so many different ways that we follow God.

And when it comes to this one way, our heart is in complete, utter rebellion.

Because we don't want to give God the very things that we feel like our hands have earned.

And yet this is a grace that we are called to excel in.

Now in 2012, in worship team, you can get ready, because I'm almost done.

If you want to come up here, in 2012, I had to learn how to grow in the grace of giving.

And I am still growing in the grace of giving, by the way.

In 2012, I was giving, and Amy and I were giving$175 a month to our church.

And I was a pastor at the church, and I made$45,000 a year, and Amy didn't work, she was a stay-at-home mom, so I felt like we were, we were, we were really doing it.

I'm like, this is this is what we can give, and so we gave it.

And that's that's fine.

I really felt like that.

Until the Lord spoke to me one day and he revealed something to me.

He said, Dan, you're you're giving me$175 a month.

He's like, but your car payments, your car payments, the thing that depreciates in value, the thing that that you seem to really put a lot of stock in your life in, your car payments are$450 a month.

And if you're a mathematician, you understand that$450 a month is 10% of$45,000 a year.

Now I don't teach tithing.

That's not something that I teach.

I believe that we're to be responsible to the grace that God gives.

I just thought it was a really fascinating conviction of the Holy Spirit that my car payments matched the biblical tithe.

And so I said, All right, Lord, well, what am I supposed to do?

He said, I want you to trust me.

Trust me with your money.

Now we had two children.

Amy was pregnant with our third.

I was making$45,000 a year.

I had a car payment, two car payments, a house payment.

We had three kids that were going to be in diapers, and you know that that's a whole other car payment, right?

And I said, All right, Lord, I trust you.

I trust you enough to do this.

And so Amy and I wrote our first$450 check, and we gave it to the church that following month as a part of our tithe.

We we started to tithe 10%.

And here's what's fascinating: God's never said you're good, you're done.

God's always called me to give more than 10%.

And if you think it's hard to give 2% or 3%, when you get to 10% and God says, Give me more, it's harder than you think.

And then when you're sacrificing on behalf of the Lord, like, Lord, this is insane to me.

Now I've got five kids, they're teenagers, everything's far more expensive, and yet God says, That's okay.

I want you to excel in the grace of giving.

Do you trust me?

Yes, Lord, I trust you.

Do you love me?

Yes, Lord, I love you.

Then be generous to me.

As generous as I've been to you, be generous to me and see if I don't take care of every single need that you have.

And I can tell you, I'm a living testimony among hundreds of other followers of Jesus around this community that when you live generously with an open hand, trusting God in this act of the grace of giving, he meets all your needs.

He just does.

Because he loves you and he cares for you, he's generous, he'll show his love for you and his provision for you.

It's an amazing and wonderful thing.

And we're all to grow and to excel in this very own grace of giving.

So this morning, as we close, I want to ask you one final question.

Where has grace not yet changed your grip?

Somewhere.

And I know it's somewhere in your life because it's somewhere in my life.

As I was preparing for this sermon and I was reading 2 Corinthians, and I came across that verse that they pleaded to give a gift, even in their severe flexion.

They pleaded with Paul to be generous.

The Lord said, Dan, that's your next step in your generosity journey.

I want you to begin pleading with me to find ways to give away your stuff.

But that's my next step.

So, church, as we become generous like Jesus, we have to recognize it's not just about what we give.

That's the expression of it.

A generous church is generous because of what we've received, which is everything from the very grace of who God is.

Let's pray together.

Jesus, we recognize that the fullness of your grace is still not yet even seen or tasted.

And we will not know the fullness of your grace until the day of resurrection.

When we take possession of the inheritance that you've promised us, this eternal life, this new earth, this new heaven, this new kingdom.

And Father, I don't even know what awaits for us because your word says, No eye has seen, no ear has heard.

What awaits those who love the Lord their God.

And so, Father, I look forward to the day when we experience the depth of your riches.

But Father, in this day, would we experience a changing grace so deep in our hearts that the rest of our lives is characterized by an open hand, that we'd be generous with each other, generous with the church, generous with our neighbors, generous with our time, our assets, and our money.

Father, let this church become generous like Jesus because of your grace.

We ask that in your name.

Amen.