Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / August 25, 2024 | The Good Life - A Generous Life

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August 25, 2024 | The Good Life - A Generous Life · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Good to be with you.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um something in store this morning, a little bit for our Methodist brothers and sisters.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um I grew up Methodist, okay, so we can we can start out that way.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: So uh John Wesley, who basically founded Methodism, he uh he once said, Do all the good you can by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, and all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Sounds exhausting, doesn't it?
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but John Wesley had a point, you know, and and really this is going to be the focus of our message this morning.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: See, he was not speaking from uh the perspective of this would be good to do, but rather it is um this is good that it has already been done.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: He lived a life that was filled with generosity and and far beyond just the financial sense.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: He was a generous person, and he was somebody who was motivated by the gospel of Christ.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: And uh what I want to kind of push on this morning as we finish out our good life series is that uh the generous life is the good life.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um and you might say, well, it you know, our culture in many ways, particularly American culture, we would often describe it as being very, at least financially generous.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: We give lots of money to lots of things.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: We have so many nonprofits, and they continue to um cr more are born and created and funded and doing wonderful things.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but what I kind of want to press on is the idea that when you go upstream a little bit in the Christian life and you look at why we are supposed to be generous people, that the reasoning changes because we don't do it for certainly for the sake of recognition.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we don't do it even just because it helps other people, um, but we do it because we have been given a generous gift by Christ.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that when we are uh motivated and modeled by the gospel, which is how we should be living our whole life, when we are motivated and modeled by the gospel, generosity takes on a different kind of meaning to us.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: It is more than just giving something, but rather it is given, giving because we have been given by Jesus.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's what we're going to look at this morning.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: And there are a couple details that we'll sort of look at here, but really the root of the message is based on the gospel itself.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um this is the gospel message, right?
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: We are sinners in need of a savior, and Jesus is the only savior.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: He died on the cross for our sins, so that we might be able to have new life with God, a restored relationship, and that we would be forgiven of our sins.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that by trusting in that, through faith, we can be saved.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's the gospel message.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: But the gospel is only possible, or you could think of it as the cross and Jesus' sacrifice is only possible because of God's generosity.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Really, in two particular ways, this comes out.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: The first is that the generosity of God was displayed in the gospel through pure motives, and that God did it through love, and then second of all, that generosity was displayed through the gospel in the high cost.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: In the first sense, John 3, 16 through 17 says, For God loved the world in this way, right?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: The first thing to point out, which we will then attempt to recreate and emulate in our own lives, is that God had pure motives for his work on the cross.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: God loved the world.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: There was nothing that God received as benefit from this, though we do now have a restored relationship with God, which pleases him.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: There was nothing that he entirely gained from dying on the cross for our sins.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: It was an act of love for his creation and his sinful creation, right?
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so what God did on the cross, his motivation for it, it was not that he was expecting something in return that now, you know, just as we try and do good works as saved people, um, that we are somehow paying back this debt.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: Or furthermore, that it was some kind of quid pro quo, like, you know, he did this and now we do this, and we're sort of going back and forth.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: We can never repay the gift of Christ's death on the cross, and God knew that going into it, and yet he still chose to do it.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: The only reason that you and I are saved is because God loves us.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's not because we've done good things, and it's not because we have something to offer him.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: God's motives were revealed at the cross.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: He did it because of his love.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, in many ways, this contrasts how things that we sort of say are generous in our world are really communicated.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: And that many times giving can still be done as a transaction.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Giving can be done with an expectation of receiving other things.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um yesterday we uh we had Dan's second birthday party, it was a train party, and we rode the Gage Park train, okay?
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, seats very tiny for big people, okay?
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: But rode the Gage Park train, and as we as we were going around, we were going around the like pond area, and uh the uh tour guide, train guide, I don't really know what you call him, was kind of giving a little commentary about Gage Park.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things he said as we were going by the pond is he goes, This was so-and-so from a hundred years ago, who was very wealthy and gave money so that they could make the pond and do the rock garden.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: And his conclusion was so if you want to live on in posterity, if you want people to remember you, you need to give a lot of money to things, right?
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that is not too far off from the way that we think of a lot of generous things in the world, right?
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's a it could be a PR bump, it could be uh for tax purposes, it could be uh so that we're recognized as somebody who is generous.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: But there are a lot of motivations that go behind why we might give to something, give of ourselves to something.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: But God died on the cross because of his love for us.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: The second thing that we'll pull out this morning from the gospel is the high cost.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that having died to sins, we might live for righteousness.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: By his wounds you have been healed.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: I love the way that Peter just draws these things so closely together.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: By his wounds you have been healed.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: It is by the high cost, in fact, the death of the Son, and the gift of the Father of His Son for death, that we are actually saved.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um the penalty for sin is death, and it was the only price that could be paid so that we could be forgiven of our sins by God.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so when we look at the cross, we have to understand that as Jesus, and this is why that moment in the garden when the Son is speaking to the Father and saying, you know, if basically if there's any other way that this could happen, let it be so.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: But if not, your will be done.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: And we understand as we're reading through this passage how the son is, I I think you could say struggling would be appropriate.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he is he is anxious, he is is sweating blood, he is he is struggling with the idea that he is about to give up his life, even though he is doing it out of love for us.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: It is a high, high cost that he is bearing.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so when we look at generosity in this way, he himself bore our sins on his body on the tree.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Generosity from a gospel perspective is not something that is given out of margin or surplus.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: It is a sacrifice.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that is, and if we are motivated and modeling our lives after the gospel, that is going to be how generosity looks in our lives as well.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can think of this if you're sitting next to somebody on the couch and they ask you to hand them the remote, right?
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: Or if you're at a dining room table and you ask somebody to pass you the salt, like these things they are giving, uh, but these things have no cost associated with them.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: They don't require any sort of sacrifice.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so we need to understand that the gospel generosity that God calls us to is one that ultimately does bring us to a point of cost and high cost.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: So, what's the point behind all this?
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and these these are going to be the two things that we uh look at for the rest of this morning.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: But furthermore, I want you to see that uh being motivated and modeled after the gospel with generosity is not just something that describes like one section of your life.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: You are a generous giver.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: You are generous with your time, but rather that generosity is what would describe us as people of God.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: That we are just known for generosity in all of its pursuits, and that we are not just thinking of how we might benefit others in one area, but rather how, like John Wesley, we can be generous to all because Christ was generous to us, and in fact is generous to us.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: Generosity is a way of life rather than a quality that only describes certain parts of it.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: So this morning, we're, like I said, we're going to look at these two things, and the first one is right motives.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: If we're going to be motivated and modeled after the gospel, we need to have the right motives in our giving.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: The generosity of the gospel is shown through both the love and sacrifice of God and sending Jesus to die for our sins.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: That was the summary that I forgot about as a slide, but nevertheless, that's okay.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: Matthew 6, 1 through 4.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others, to be seen by them.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise you have no reward with your Father in heaven.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: So whenever you give to the poor, don't sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be applauded by people.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Truly I tell you, they have their reward.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: But when you give to the poor, don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret, and your father who sees in secret will reward you.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: So we're roughly a third of the way through the Sermon on the Mount by this point, and Jesus is explaining in many different ways what it looks like to be a member of his kingdom, and rather what it looks like to be obedient to the king.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so he goes through all these different categories and areas, and he's explaining in many ways how the kingdom of God sort of flips the kingdom of this world upside down.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: And there are a lot of expectations that we have for God's kingdom that are subverted.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: And the way that Jesus calls us into a deeper sort of gospel way of living lifts up the low and brings down the high and sort of pushes back on the way that the world often operates.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that he criticizes is the way that the religious leaders at the time were being generous.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because what is true is they were giving goods and services and gifts to the poor, but everything that they were doing, or at least their motives for it, was for personal gain.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so, even though they were benefiting from people looking at them and going, oh my goodness, can you, wow, all of this, what a gift, how generous of you.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: You are you are standing up for them, you are an advocate for the poor, you are so on and so forth, they were eating it up.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: And they were loving every moment of that, because that was ultimately their goal was to be known as these people who were generous.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: But Jesus knows their heart.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, Yeah, but they did not do it out of love for them.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't do it because they cared for the poor and the vulnerable.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: They did it because they wanted something in return.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so he is frustrated because they have made generosity into a transaction.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: They are buying the love, the affection, uh, the good will of the people, even though it is has the mask of generosity and charity.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: If uh about 14 years ago, 15 years ago, you might remember when uh there was the BP oil spill, the deep water horizon down in the Gulf of Mexico, and it was all over the news, right?
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: And for like two months or however long, there was just that camera feed of oil spilling into the Gulf.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: And um afterwards, BP went on a huge PR campaign and in fact spent a lot more money in advertising in certain areas than they did in restoring the coast or the tourism in the places that were affected.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so, as you're looking at the commercials, particularly if you lived in the Southeast at that time, and you know you see the turtles and you see the seagulls being washed, and you, you know, everybody's going out and collecting all of these things, even though they were giving money to help clean up, even though they had given, in fact, millions and millions of dollars to try and restore the problem that had been done, the main reason that all of that money was given, far more generous than any one person would ever do, is because they were restoring an image.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you're a skeptic, you might look at that and you say, particularly if uh being motivated by the gospel doesn't mean anything, you would look at that and go, well, I mean, at least some benefit came from it, right?
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like at least hundreds of millions of dollars were put back in to try and fix the problem.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: But the question that we're looking at this morning is not the like total sum benefits of a nonprofit campaign.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: The question is, what does it mean to be generous the way that Christ is generous?
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: And when it comes to that question, motives matter a lot.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: In this passage, he offers up really this contrast.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: He says, for those who were doing all of these things to receive the praise of the world around them, he says, they've already received their reward.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: They got what they wanted.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: But he says, if, though, if somebody has proper motives, if somebody is doing it out of love, out of care, out of concern, if they are giving of themselves because they want to see the other person benefit truly, he says, well, now then we've moved into a different category.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: They can now expect a different kind of reward.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: A reward that comes from Father in heaven.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: It is not a reward that is easily seen in this world, but it is one that is present in the world to come.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: And the Bible, sometimes we get a little shaky when the idea of rewards come up because we naturally push back so hard against the idea of, you know, good works and making us good people and the fact that God rewards us for being good people, right?
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: We need to have a healthy understanding of this.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: But over and over again in Scripture, God does sort of lift up this idea that we can expect rewards in the future if we are giving up the rewards in this life.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that that is something that we can use as motivation.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so you say, okay, well, then what does it mean to have the right motives?
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: First and foremost, that we love, because that is the reason that Jesus died on the cross for us.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: But coming in behind that, Jesus says it's appropriate to understand that you are basically putting forward in your giving something that will be returned to you later hundredfold, thousandfold, but you cannot expect to see those rewards here and now.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then Jesus has the difficult claim at the very end of this passage.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: He says, You need to make sure that your giving is done in secret.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: This seems to be a condition of the Father rewarding us.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: But earlier on in chapter 5, Jesus had made a pretty specific point in the Sermon on the Mount that it is a good thing for Christians to let their light shine before other people so that those who don't know Christ can see them and glorify God ultimately.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: So the point in this passage then cannot be that every single good work that we would do, every act of generosity is truly done in the shadows, because then others are not able to see it, witness it, and glorify God.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: The point that comes out when you balance the two is that if you are able to do, that we should be able to do things in the public eye with proper motives, and that this is what God wants to see from us.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: He wants people to be able to look on and say, that person knows God.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: They are motivated by God.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: Even if they don't personally, the person watching doesn't know God, they can see the actions of those who are being generous and say, Wow, that is somebody who is living out their faith, but yet on the inside of the person who is being generous, Jesus looks and wants to see somebody who is doing it out of pure motives, who says, I'm doing this because I have been given, and therefore I want to give.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: As we see an application this morning, seek out opportunities for generosity that require your heart to grow.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm kind of pushing this into two categories here.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, really, that that is the application, is that we need to have a heart that is faithful to God's command.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but that there are kind of two ways this can spin.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: On the one hand, if you give and struggle with pride, right?
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: If if if the motivations and the praise of the world around you is something that's pretty captivating, what that might mean for you is you do pursue more of those kind of background works.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, serve on the soup line, do the giving in secret, do the like pursue the activities that are not going to put you in an environment where you're going to receive praise from other people, right?
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: But on the other hand, there are some of us who actually need to step out just a little bit more in our generosity so that the Lord might be praised by those who are watching.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: And the danger there is simply that we have danger, that's not the opportunity, is that we are going to be placed in an area that causes many to stumble.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: And the question is, can we continue to have a faithful heart to God while still being somebody who might go up on stage and accept an award for philanthropy or whatever the recognition is, and yet truthfully be able to go, I'm just doing this because God has done it for me first.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's the goal.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so wherever you're at, and your heart and your right motives, you should be pursuing one of these things.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you need to pull back, maybe you need to push forward, but wherever it is, we are seeking to be those who are honoring God with our motivations for generous living.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: To be very specific, what does that look like?
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: When our son was born, uh it was the end of summer, and one of the things that I was not concerned about was the height of my grass in my yard, okay?
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: And my neighbor came over, this was in one of the like weeks where we were barely lucid, and came over and mowed our yard, okay?
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't get a text from him.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't ask him to do it.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't, you know, because I do this all the time.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'll like, I don't know, unload the dishwasher or something, and then Hannah will come home.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, what were you doing?
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, well, I unloaded the dishwasher, and then like there's there's a need for us, even when we're just explaining, to sort of receive that recognition.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: He never did that.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: I never got a text from him.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I was I was kind of curious who mowed my yard.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was I was asking a few people and ended up finding out it was him.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: And now when I asked him if he did it, he wasn't so secretive that he was like, that wasn't me.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: It was some mysterious person.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like he said, yes, you know, that was me.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: We're happy to do it.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: We know that you guys are, you know, going have some more important things going on right now.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but he also wasn't seeking that recognition.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: To me, my neighbor in there, that is a great representation of what Christ is talking about here in Matthew 6.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: He is balancing these two things between each other.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: The second area, though, that I want to look at this morning is what it means.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: If the gospel is motivating us and we are modeling our generosity after it, how we might follow after the high cost that was represented through the cross of Jesus.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: First Timothy six, seventeen through nineteen says this Instruct those who are rich in the present age not to be arrogant or to set their hope on the uncertainty of wealth, but on God, who richly provides us with all things to enjoy.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: Instruct them to do what is good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and willing to share.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of what is truly life.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: I think those who maybe don't know the Bible very well think that God dislikes wealthy people.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: That is not the case at all.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: God gave them wealth.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: But God does have high expectations for those who have wealth.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: And furthermore, as we're talking about generosity, I'm not, this morning, my focus is not on your checkbook, right?
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about wealth.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about how the Lord has gifted us and the ways in which we can be generous.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's very possible for you to be generous, even if you don't make a six-figure salary, right?
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so even though Paul's focus here in this particular passage in context is those who have a high net worth in Timothy's environment, the same principle applies every single place that we look at it.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: God has high expectations for those who have wealth.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that expectation is that it should be used for good.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: And furthermore, that really when we have excess, when we have sort of an abundance in any number of areas, it could be skill, it could be time, it could be financial, it could be sort of a spiritual gift that the Lord has given us for patience or mercy, whatever it is that is sort of flowing over our cup in our lives, that is something that God sees as a way to further his kingdom.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: And when we choose to then harness, sort of latch on to that area and become very generous in the same place that the Lord has gifted us most greatly, it is a magnifying effort for the good work of the gospel message.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: People are then using the areas in when they are where they are particularly gifted to further God's kingdom the most.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: There's a beautiful image of generosity here, and it just so happens that one of the easiest examples to pick up on is those who have wealth because it is clearly understood.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: This is why you see Jesus having so many conversations with wealthy folks, and by that again I mean financial, is because all of us, when we have an excess or surplus of anything, our natural tendency is to hoard it.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: We all do that in our own ways.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: It is not just the wealthy in this world who have lots of money.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: It is when we have lots of time, we like to hoard that time.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: When we have um when we are fantastic at making casseroles, we say, this is a recipe only my family is able to enjoy, right?
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: This is, you've met those people.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: I know you have.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: Your family's mind does too, have some secret cookbooks, okay?
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: This cuts across everybody.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's human nature, right?
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: We we are in part, not designed by God, but we are motivated by our world to hoard the things that we have in surplus.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: And what God wants to see is for us to let them go and to benefit his kingdom, right?
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now, one of the things that this passage brings up that's so helpful is much like the first passage in Matthew 6, remember where Jesus says, okay, there's two sort of rewards going on here.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: There's the reward of the world, or there's the reward of the Father, and you don't get both of them at the same time, you get one or the other.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: Here, Paul is sort of highlighting the certainty of following God and his kingdom and the uncertainty of hoarding everything that we have.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: And furthermore, he kind of gives this idea that there's two currencies and there's an exchange rate.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so, on the one hand, there's the currency of the world, and it can buy any number of things.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: It can buy a big mansion, it can buy a fast sports car, it can buy an Olympic-sized swimming pool, it can buy a closet full of designer clothes.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: And those things are not evil in and of themselves.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: We don't demonize the fact that God gives some people wealth to use and to enjoy.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's an Ecclesiastes.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: However, those things do not have eternal value, and ultimately they will become worthless over time.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: The house can catch fire, the car is going to get miles, the clothes are going to go out of style or go out of fashion, the swimming pool needs its foundation repaired.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: These things do not last.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: The exchange rate, though, that Paul is highlighting is there's a way to transform that currency, and again, I extend this to any place where we are wealthy in this world.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: God has given us things greatly in so many areas.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: We need to, as Christians, expand that beyond our bank account.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: Anywhere that we are wealthy, then there's this exchange rate.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul says, yes, but then you can use those things, exchange that wealth, and use it for God's kingdom.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: And the things you purchase with this new kind of currency and this new kind of wealth, he goes, they look a lot different.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's like you are supporting a missionary who's going overseas.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: You are maybe funding a Bible translation or giving your time because you know a certain language and you are pouring it in.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: You are taking extra time to make a triple batch of whatever it is so that you can give it to somebody who had surgery.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: You are giving uh piano lessons to those who don't have the money to do.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's easy to come up with these examples.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: But what Paul is hitting on here is he goes, man, there's a way that we can spend that wealth that actually does last and has eternal value.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're looking for a rationale here beyond just like Jesus did at first, okay, notice the very end.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: Paul says, man, they may take hold of what is truly life.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: That the greatest satisfaction that we are going to find is when we give and give and give and give.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm always a little shaky around adults, and I haven't met too many, where they're more excited about the Christmas gifts they receive than the ones that they give to little children.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's some kind of database for people who are so focused on what they receive.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think for the majority of people who have ever put decent thought into what it takes to make a six-year-old happy, right, and given some kind of gift, they know that the great blessing of giving is found when you see somebody else receiving, not when you're receiving yourself.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is a biblical thing that we can find, is that we are more blessed when we give than when we receive.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: So let me press on one other area here, though, because when we ask the question of what does it mean then, because I know we're all asking the question, what does it mean then to be generous?
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: We want a calculation, right?
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: Let me tabulate, let me like pull the zero over, do my long division so I can figure out exactly how much I need to give so that I might be considered generous, and that it might be low enough, maybe I'm just speaking from my heart, so that it's low enough so that having pure motives is much easier, right?
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because there's a direct relationship, the higher the cost, the higher, or the more difficult it is to have those pure motives.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: We all know that.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: The easier the gift is, the easier it is to be like, oh, ps, happy to give it.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so as Jesus draws us deeper into generosity, we understand that these two things become actually harder to live out, even though that is the gospel message.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: But the heart of the difficulty in giving you that answer is that generosity operates naturally out of a place that defies expectations, right?
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: There was no, um, like we've said, there was no transaction that Jesus was seeking to achieve for personal gain when he died on the cross.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, we are the beneficiaries of his death, but we received that, not him.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so when we try and go, well, what is the exact amount?
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: What is the what is the appropriate level of generosity?
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: The question that we need to ask is, what is costly?
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: What is a high cost?
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I have a final passage I want to sort of look at that with.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: Luke 21, verses 1 through 4.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus looked up and saw the rich dropping their offerings into the temple treasury.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: He also saw a poor widow dropping in two tiny coins.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: Truly I tell you, he said, this poor widow is put in more than all of them, for all these people have put in gifts out of their surplus, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: The teaching of this passage is not that every person needs to go and empty their bank account, okay?
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but rather what we do need to see is that Jesus is moved by watching this poor widow give proportionally more than the rich, though numerically the rich man gave far more than she did.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus sees her gift as generous, not the rich man's.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where we begin, if we haven't already, we sort of separate ourselves from how our culture defines generosity.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: Our culture is more impressed by the size of a gift.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: And again, I include that in all different categories.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: We are just impressed by the scale of something.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: Man, they gave, you know, however many volunteer hours over the last year, and that becomes like the most important metric for us.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: But when we look at the gospel, what becomes most important in terms of generosity is man, was there sacrifice involved in that gift?
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: And this goes all the way back.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: The New Testament and the Old Testament talk about giving gifts slightly differently, right?
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: Where I have the perspective that we are not required to tithe as New Testament people under the New Covenant.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's a whole nother conversation.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: But my point is, in the Old Covenant, anytime you look at the sacrifices that Israel was supposed to bring to the temple, there is always an element of sacrifice present in them.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: It was not from the surplus, it was not from the margin.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: Rather, it was the very first thing that they would do was give to the temple and give to the priests and ultimately offer sacrifices to God.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: And that same principle extends into our life today.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: And we have to ask ourselves if we are always giving from our margin or surplus, if we're always waiting for our cup to overflow, if we're always waiting for its convenient, if there is never any loss, if there's never any sacrifice, if there's never any expense or disadvantage, then is our gift truly generous?
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I submit to you that it is not.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: That it requires sacrifice in order for it to be a truly generous gift of any sort.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: So the second application this morning is that we would ask what a gift of high cost would look like in the places where God has uniquely gifted you.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then I'll talk about this in a second, think about using this as an opportunity for discipleship.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: So, if um, here's where I'm I'm at is I believe that God has gifted every single one of us in different ways.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: I believe that's the the focus of 1 Corinthians 12, where it talks about all of us are different parts of the body.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think that some of it is financial, but much of it isn't.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that God has given us different areas of our life where we can be truly advantageous to the furthering of his kingdom.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: And what I would hope to see is that wherever that is, that God has placed that in your heart, and there's so many different ways, is that you would then ask the question, what is a gift of high cost look like?
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: What is a gift that is truly sacrificial here?
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then how can I give that?
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the part about discipleship I think is really important.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: And this is this is, I think, particularly true if you have kids in and or around you, whether you have children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, any of those kinds of things.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: But take decisions like this and recognize the opportunity that it presents to help share the gospel with those who are younger, even though they are unable to make this kind of decision themselves.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: So, for instance, if you are at the store and maybe you go shopping with your kids and you are you are getting your groceries, make it an active part of your conversation that you are intentionally buying more, you are adding to your grocery list or whatever it is, so that when you go home, you might be able to cook more or give more, or you get where I'm going with this, but involve those who are younger in that kind of decision.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: Or if you're in a discipleship relationship with an adult, um let them in on these processes, though the conversation might naturally look a little bit different.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: But don't skip over the places where God has given us great opportunity to share his goodness and his mercy.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, let them in on these decisions so that they can understand, man, my parents made that decision.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: We couldn't go to this event because we went to this event instead.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: We spent more time in the kitchen making this, we spent more time sowing this, we spent more time, you know, uh going to our neighbor's house and we mowing their grass, whatever it is, so that they would see the love of God.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: If you pursue this generosity, briefly I want to share with you a number of things that are going to happen.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: If you are modeling your generosity after the gospel and if you are motivated by Christ, first is that it's gonna become easier over time.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: You might think it's hard right now.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: I promise you, the further you step into it, the easier it's gonna get.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because you're gonna re-well, now I'm getting ahead of myself, but you're gonna realize how much fun it is and all the rewards that come from it.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: Second is it's gonna be exciting.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: The more you invest in somebody or something that is furthering God's kingdom, you become a part of it.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then you start seeing the advances and the growth and the beauty of that ministry or that person's ministry or whatever it is, you begin to get excited for them.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: You get excited when they grow and they advance, even though you were sort of behind them, just encouraging them.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: Number three, it's fulfilling.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: It is.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: We were designed this way.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: There's a reason why both the world who knows Christ and the world who doesn't know Christ have recognized that when we give to other people, it's actually a really fulfilling thing.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's just that when you sort of step into the world of Jesus and you go upstream a little bit, you go, Oh, it is because we are living out the gospel message.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: It is because we were designed by God this way, it is because it is natural that we would be fulfilled when we are carrying out God's will to the best of our abilities.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: That is where true life is found.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: Fourth, you're gonna see that it expands.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_00: Not only will it become easier, but you're going to see that your generosity starts to spread into other areas of your life.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: And where it just occupies maybe one area right now, it's going to start to grow like a wildfire, right?
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: And as it begins to spread, you're going to see and hear, and you probably have already those words of John Wesley, when he's going like to all people in all circumstances, as much as you can for as long as you can, and you're like, that is a guy who knows what it is like to live out the gospel of generosity, and he's like, I can't get enough.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: Fifth is gratitude.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: The more you are generous, the more you seek to have a pure heart, pure motives, and live with a high cost and sacrificial giving, the closer it's going to draw you to Jesus because the better you're going to be able to understand his death, his sacrifice on the cross for you.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: You are going to understand more about what it meant that you are saved simply because he loves you, not with ulterior motives.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_00: And you are going to understand more about the costs that he paid as you give up parts of your life that you once thought were critical and necessary.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: Sixth and finally, said it is rewarding.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: And when I say rewarding in that sense, I mean heavenly rewarding, right?
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: There are rewards that God gives us to experience in this world, but both of the main passages that we looked at this morning said that God is rewarding people in heaven for their generosity if they are able to do it with pure motives.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so as we look at all of these things, in conclusion, you might be at a point where you say, you know what, that sounds great, but that's not for me.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: That sounds like too high of a cost.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't sound like it would be worth it.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that's your decision to make, certainly.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody can force you to be generous.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's one of the beautiful things about generosity.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody can force you to do this.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: But I want you to keep in mind one thing.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_00: No matter the decisions that you make, God is already generous to you.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: You have uh He has died on the cross for your sins, and He has given up His life so that you may have it.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: Whether or not you choose to be personally generous, God is generous to you.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: And the only thing that you need to do to accept that gift of salvation is trust in it.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_00: Have faith in it, believe in it.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's it.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to do anything because it's a generous gift.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: If it wasn't a generous gift, we might expect that there was a cost associated with it.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_00: But the cost that God asks of us is not a repayment for the cross.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a repayment for the blood of the Son.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: The cost that Jesus talks about is the cost of following Him and the cost of what it means to live out the gospel message so that other people might see it.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it is to that cost that Jesus says, anyone who finds his life will lose it, and anyone who loses his life because of me will find it.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: The generous life is the good life.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_00: And what I want you to do is I want you to accept the generous gift of Christ's death and resurrection, and I want you to live the good life, and to do that by living the generous life.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we come before you and we thank you for the generous gift of your Son.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: That you sent him to die on the cross for our sins because you love us.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: Not because we're good, not because we're we're wealthy, not because we have something to give back, but Lord, because you love us.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: You saved us, and we thank you for that.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, we thank you for Jesus as he gave up his life, paid the cost, so that we might live again.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, I um I know that for me and for many people, being truly generous and the way that the gospel defines it is hard.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: It requires a lot and it takes uh near constant effort to make sure that our heart is in the right place.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: But Lord, I also know that you have, that you bless us greatly as we do it.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_00: As you say, Lord, uh, we will reap what we sow.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: And God, I pray that your spirit, which empowers us to be able to carry out this and any other thing that you've asked us to do, um, that it would draw us deeper into the gospel message so that we would be motivated by it and want to model our own lives after it.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, we thank you for these things and what it means to live the good life in your kingdom.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's in Jesus' name we pray.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.