2 Corinthians 8:16–9:15

0:00 Welcome, everybody. Glad to have you here at Third Avenue with us. It is good to gather with you and sing praises to the Lord and pray to Him and now open up His Word together. Take a Bible, if you've got one, and turn over to 2 Corinthians. We're going to be in chapter 8 and chapter 9 today, so about a chapter and a half of the letter of 2 Corinthians. If you're using one of these Red Pew Bibles in front of you, like this one right here, You'll be able to find the beginning of our passage today on page 968, really the whole passage, in fact.

0:32 We're going to be starting in 816 there, looking at that big paragraph, and then moving on all the way through chapter 9. I generally have a principle in my life that I do not answer the phone if what shows up on the caller ID is just a number that has no name from my contacts connected to it. Generally have that principle. Maybe some of you share that. Maybe some of you sort of have the opposite principle that you get really excited about what telemarketer is on the other end of that phone call.

1:03 I generally do not get excited about that because I don't like to listen for the three or four minutes that are necessary just to be able to nicely say, I'm sorry, I'm not interested. Click. And I'm just not a mean enough guy to just hit the, you know, the hang up button on them in the middle of their spiel. So I always end up listening. So a long time ago, I made this principle, made this deal with myself. I'm just not going to answer those numbers. Well, one of them slipped through yesterday. It was a charity that shall not be named, a good charity.

1:34 And so I listened to what the guy had to say. And what struck me at the end of the conversation was how telemarketers and charities have actually perfected the art of getting you to give money when you don't really want to. You ever noticed that? I mean, here's how the guy ended his speech about the charity that he was trying to get me to give money to. It was all this good stuff about what the charity does. And then he said, I am so glad that we can count on you. Will it work better for you to give us money at the $10, $25, or $50 level? And I was like, my goodness, I don't even, I don't want to give to this charity. It's a good charity, but I just don't have money to, you know, give away quite like that. But the way he put that question made me want to give when everything in me was saying, don't give. Can we count on you at the $10, $25, or $50 level? What works best for you?

2:34 What's amazing about that question is that you literally have to kind of arrest the whole conversation and say, hold on, I'm sorry, but none of those levels work for me. The level that works for me is zero dollars at this point in time. But you don't feel like you can do that because that would be rude. Well, I managed to do it yesterday, but I've been kind of thinking about it ever since. These telemarketers, these charities, even the good ones, have figured out how to get us to give money even when we don't want to at that particular time. I wonder if you ever feel that way about you're giving to Christian causes, to kingdom causes, to missionaries and maybe even your church.

3:15 That somehow the church has created a structure, somehow Christian organizations have created incentives and ways of talking about things that have just gotten really adept at giving you to give money even when you don't really want to, even when your heart is not in it. Well that's what we're going to be talking about today, the heart that ought to lie behind giving to Christian causes whether that's missionaries or Christian organizations or ministries or even the local church and to do that we're going to be continuing our study of the book of 2nd Corinthians today so if you look down at chapter 8 verse 16 that's where we're going to be starting going all the way down through chapter 9 and I know if you've been here for the last seven or eight weeks you are probably thinking at this point oh great here comes that long thing that Greg does every single week with that whole back story about how, yes, yes, Paul was in this fight with this church in Corinth, and 2 Corinthians is actually 4 Corinthians, and Paul had made this emergency trip to Corinth, which turned out to be a disaster, so he sent a really severe letter

4:18 to them, which kind of worked out and got a majority of the church on his side, and 2 Corinthians is written to celebrate those who repented and continue Paul's defense of his apostolic ministry to those who had not repented, and here Greg goes again. well if you're saying that then my work is done congratulations because I bet seven or eight weeks ago you could not have groused with quite that much education about this book anyway that's all I'm going to say about the background of the book because you have all obviously got it already down pat so congratulations what I will do though is is just take a second because we haven't talked as much about this. I will just remind you of the structure of the letter that Paul has written because today we're really in the very heart of the letter now, right? At the point which is the main reason that Paul wrote the book in the first place. So he's been leading up to something this whole time and what we get to today is like the reason that

5:19 he wrote it in the first place. So the structure of it is basically this. The main line of the letter runs from the very beginning of it all the way through chapter 2 verse 13, so about halfway through chapter 2 and then the main line picks up again at 7 5 chapter 7 verse 5 and runs to the end of the book and in the middle between 2 13 and 7 5 there's this basically four and a half chapter long parenthesis where Paul answers a number of objections that his opponents were making to him now it's not like that parenthesis is completely you know disconnected from the rest of the book. It's not. In order to get the Corinthians to do what he wants them to do, which we're going to talk about today, he needs to defend himself, right? Because these false teachers in the church, these opponents of Paul, were saying, listen, we shouldn't be involved with this Paul guy at all. We shouldn't do anything that he wants us to do because he's a shyster.

6:13 He's ripping us off. He's a fake. He's not impressive as an apostle ought to be. In fact, he just doesn't fit the bill of an apostle at all. So Paul needs to sort of settle all that down. That's what the parenthesis is doing. And then he returns to the main line of the letter and the main ask that he's going to get to today. But it is a parenthesis because you can just tell by the way it breaks that it just sort of occurs to him that he needs to do that in the middle of something else. Well, we're back on the main line of the letter, though. If you're past 7-5, you're back on the main line of the letter.

6:44 And on that main line, though, if you trace it out and sort of skip the parenthesis, the main line of the letter, Paul's goal, had just been basically to start out by bringing the Corinthians up to speed on events that had happened since he last saw them. So he tells them about, for example, the severe letter. He explains why he had sent that severe letter in the first place. He talks about his trip to Troas and then a little bit further north up into Macedonia. Then Titus is coming with the mostly good news about the mostly good effect of the severe letter.

7:16 And Paul just lays all that out for them in the main line of the letter. So he brings them up to speed. He celebrates their repentance. And then he asks them to do a certain thing. He asks them to be a big part of a financial collection that he was taking up that would ultimately become a big financial gift from Gentile Christian churches to the mostly Jewish Christian church in Jerusalem. The Gentile churches were going to give money in order to help the famine-stricken Christians in Jerusalem.

7:50 That was the idea of this whole collection. It actually had a couple more deeply theological things going on too. So Paul didn't just want to help them out in the famine, though there was that very physical need. But he also had the theological reason that he thought that if he could get Gentile churches to open-handedly give a gift that the Jerusalem church would open-handedly receive that it might help to close the potentially widening gap between Gentile Christians and Jewish Christians. So if you've read many of Paul's letters, you know, this is one of the main things on his mind is that this fault line between former Jews and former Gentiles who have now become Christians had the potential to split the church in two right from its very inception. And Paul thought that this gift might help to bridge that gap and pull that fault line together. He also thought that this gift from Gentile churches to Jewish churches similarly would show off the beauty of the new covenant in Jesus Christ.

8:47 As the Jews and the Gentiles involved were all former Jews and former Gentiles and now they're just Christians, right, who help one another, who support one another, who care for one another. And Paul wanted to show off the beauty of the new covenant in that way. So the collection's a big deal. It's something that Paul apparently spent several years of his life working on. It was something that he was determined to pull off. And the thing is, Corinth was especially key in making the whole thing a success. And there were a couple reasons for that. One reason that they were key to this whole thing is that Corinthians were just fabulously wealthy. Like, you know, on average, they were some of the most fabulously wealthy people in the Roman Empire because they sat on one of the richest port cities, port areas in the entire Roman Empire. So there was that. There was also the fact that even before the Corinthians gave the money, even before they had the money sort of in the coffers, Paul had already used them as an example of a church that was eager to help

9:47 out with the collection. In fact, part of the reason that the poorer churches in Macedonia had been so eager to contribute out of their poverty and out of their affliction was because Paul had basically come to them and said guys you ought to see what the Corinthians are doing you ought to see how much money they're giving and the Macedonians were like oh okay well if they're doing that out of their wealth we need to do this out of our poverty and so they did well the problem though for Paul in having said that was that after things went south between that church and Paul the corinthians were no longer jumping on board they were no longer eager the collection had stopped and stalled and nothing was happening so paul's reputation now is really on the line i think you'll see more of why that is as we go along today well in our section today the middle of chapter 8 through chapter 9 paul paul comes right to the heart of it this is this is right at the heart of his letter he tells them essentially that he's sending a three-man delegation to corinth

10:51 in order to organize the collection among them to get this thing finished and done. Then there's a little section where he warns them about the consequences if they don't finish it up like they had promised to. And then at the end, he tries to spur them on by explaining some of the good things that come to those who give cheerfully to others, to help others. So that's where he's going. See if you can pick up on those kind of three ideas as we read it. Look at 2 Corinthians 8, starting in verse 16. Paul writes this, But thanks be to God who put into the heart of Titus the same earnest care I have for you.

11:23 For he not only accepted our appeal, but being himself very earnest, he is going to you of his own accord. With him, we are sending the brother who is famous among all the churches for his preaching of the gospel. And not only that, but he's been appointed by the churches to travel with us as we carry out this act of grace that is being ministered by us. For the glory of the Lord himself and to show our goodwill. We take this course so that no one should blame us about this generous gift that is being administered by us. For we aim at what is honorable not only in the Lord's sight, but also in the sight of man.

11:55 And with them, we are sending our brother, whom we have often tested and found earnest in many matters, but who is now more earnest than ever because of his great confidence in you. As for Titus, he is my partner and fellow worker for your benefit. And as for our brothers, they are messengers of the churches, the glory of Christ. So give proof before the churches of your love and of our boasting about you to these men. Now, it is superfluous for me to write to you about the ministry for the saints, for I know your readiness, of which I boast about you to the people of Macedonia, saying that Achaia has been ready since last year, and your zeal has stirred up most of them.

12:31 But I am sending the brothers so that our boasting about you may not prove empty in this matter, so that you may be ready as I said you would be. Otherwise, if some Macedonians come with me and find that you are not ready, we would be humiliated to say nothing of you for being so confident. So I thought it necessary to urge the brothers to go on ahead to you and arrange in advance for the gift you have promised so that it may be ready as a willing gift and not as an exaction. The point is this. Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.

13:04 Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, For God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work. As it is written, he is distributed freely. He is given to the poor. His righteousness endures forever. He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. you will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God.

13:39 For the ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints, but is also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God. By their approval of this service, they will glorify God because of your submission that comes from your confession of the gospel of Christ and the generosity of your contribution for them and for all others. While they long for you and pray for you because of the surpassing grace of God upon you. Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift. Well, I think if you look at it, you can see the structure of this whole thing pretty easily. It basically breaks down into those three subsections, right?

14:12 If you're looking at the same Bible I am, it's Commendation of Titus, then the Collection for Christians in Jerusalem, then the Cheerful Giver. I'm not sure those are the right, you know, titles for the subtitles. I wouldn't quite put them quite like that. I'll explain, you know, how I would think about these things here in a minute. But those are the breakdowns. So you've got from 8, chapter 8, 16 to 24, Paul basically just introducing this three-man delegation that he's sending to organize the collection and just make sure the thing gets done. I think Archbishop Langton, that we talked about last week, who put the verse divisions and chapter divisions in the Bible, I think he got this wrong again because chapter 9, verses 1 to 5, really belongs stuck up there with the stuff in chapter 8.

14:53 Really, he's just explaining there why it's so important for him to send these guys to help the Corinthians out. It's because if they don't get this collection done, if they don't do what they've promised and Paul shows up with some ragged Macedonian Christians who are carrying all that they could bring in their poverty and they walk into the lavish Corinthian house that the church met in and they see that the Corinthians haven't done anything, it's going to be humiliating for Paul and it's going to be humiliating for the Corinthians as well.

15:24 So that's what's going on in 9, 1 through 5. He's saying, you don't want that to happen, that will be bad, so let's get this thing done, and these three guys are coming to help you with it. And then in 9, 6 through 15, he just encourages them to give generously, basically by listing out some of the benefits that are going to come from that. So the main idea through all of that is this. Overflowing grace leads to disciplined generosity, and disciplined generosity to the glorification of God. So it's kind of a two-step move, right?

15:56 Overflowing grace, which Paul had talked about up in the first part of chapter 8. That overflowing grace to us from Jesus Christ leads to disciplined generosity. And disciplined generosity leads to the glorification of God. So two points to the sermon. Looking first at really the whole of 8.16 all the way down through 9.5. Because all of that goes together. And then 9.6 to the end. Two points, each corresponding. Taking that main idea apart. Number one, overflowing grace leads to disciplined generosity. And then number two, disciplined generosity leads to the glorification of God.

16:27 So that's where we're going in the sermon this morning. So point number one, overflowing grace leads to disciplined generosity. Now, before I even get going at looking at the details in the text, I want to address and clear up what will inevitably be a misunderstanding in all of our fallen human hearts at some point deep down there about what I mean by this point title, Overflowing Grace Leads to Disciplined Generosity.

16:58 Because deep down, somewhere in your heart, and I know this is going to be true for you, because it's true for me too, and I'm just assuming that you are no less fallen than I am. Somewhere deep down in your heart, you are going to try to take sinful comfort in the phrase disciplined generosity. Because here's what at least part of your heart is going to think. Part of what your heart is going to think this. You're going to say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

17:29 I like that phrase. Disciplined generosity. That's what it's about. This preacher gets it. Overflowing grace doesn't lead to overflowing generosity. It leads to disciplined generosity. Not too much generosity. Not too little generosity. Goldilocks generosity. just enough of it generosity with a governor on it be generous but don't go overboard with it be disciplined in your generosity that's what your heart somewhere deep down is going to be tempted to think i mean by that and it is not at all what i mean by that it's not what paul means either when he's talking about this Because what Paul is calling the Corinthians to is, without a doubt, overflowing generosity.

18:25 It's what he called up in chapter 8, verse 2, an overflowing, in fact, wealth of generosity. So what I mean, therefore, by a disciplined generosity is not being disciplined so that you don't accidentally wind up being too generous. Rather, what I mean is almost exactly the opposite. It's being disciplined so that your overflowing generosity becomes a normal and lifelong pattern for you. So that you don't slow down and give up in your generosity, which is exactly what your fallen human heart is going to want to do.

18:59 Your fallen human heart is going to want to be generous, generous, generous in an overflowing way, like Paul is talking about. But over time, just get tired and pull back and want to stop running. That's what your heart is going to want to do. When I was in high school, I played high school football. Well, I didn't play, I was on the team, but I was on the team. We were called the Lyndon Kildare Tigers, and so because I was on the team, and even though I didn't get to play, we had this thing in the off-season that I was forced to participate in, which our coach called Tiger Maker, which meant that they were just going to run your tail off until you became a tiger.

19:39 And so for the two years that I played football, I did Tiger Maker, which amounted, at least in my memory, to pretty much nothing except running around the high school track 1,051 times until you laid down and puked. That's what we did. What made it Tiger Maker, though, and not just running, is that the coach would get on a bicycle as we were running around the track, and he would follow us on a bicycle with an air horn. And if anybody flagged or got left behind by the group or, you know, like I would just lay down flat on the ground like this, he would get up in your ear and blow that air horn in your ear and say, get up, tiger, keep running.

20:19 It was horrible. But it was effective. I mean, nobody wanted to lay there on the ground or take a knee with an air horn blowing in your ear and the coach yelling at you, get up and run, tiger. So you would get up, tiger, and you would run. Well, that's what Paul's trying to do to the Corinthians in this first section. He's trying to create a system of discipline and accountability not to slow down their generosity and keep it from going too far, but to speed the thing up and speed it on. So let's see how he does it.

20:51 How he does it, essentially, is by sending three guys to blow an air horn in their ears. And in 8, 16 to 24, he introduces them. The first one, and the leader of the whole thing, is Titus, who is Paul's close friend and companion in the ministry. You can see him introduced there in 16 and 17. We've already read that. But you see that in 16, 17? All this back and forth in 16 and 17. If you look at, let's see. Yeah, it's 16 and 17. 16 and 17, he introduces Titus as this friend of his in the ministry, his companion in the ministry.

21:23 And this isn't all that Paul has said about Titus. Throughout the book, he's been saying little things about this guy Titus. But this is where he really introduces him. And Titus and the Corinthians had come to know each other too. So you look there in 1617, you can see how Titus had already delivered this severe letter to them. He traveled up to Macedonia to give Paul the good news. And now he's about to be back with this letter. And there in 1617, Paul says that what all that activity had done, all that back and forth and all that interaction had done, is that it had created in Titus' heart a deep concern for the Corinthians that is just like Paul's.

21:57 See that? Thanks be to God who put into the heart of Titus the same earnest care that I have for you. For he not only accepted our appeal to go to you, but being himself very earnest, he's going to you of his own accord. It's his decision to go back to the Corinthians because he loves them. He has this intense care for them. So you see the point here. He's not just interested, Titus. Titus is not just interested in doing a job. He's not just interested in getting the collection done for the collection's sake. That's not the point. He cares for these people in the church in Corinth.

22:30 Because through good and bad, through thick and thin, through even a big fight with Paul, he's gotten to know them. And so his heart is as full for them as Paul's is. The second and third guys on the mission are unnamed. You can see the second one introduced there in verses 18 and 19. Then the third guy in verse 22. They're unnamed. We don't know who they are because there have been a lot of guesses given. The good news is we basically narrowed it down. Let me tell you who the good guesses are for who it might be.

23:02 It's just a few. Could be Luke. Could be Apollos. Could be Mark or Erastus or Silas or Sopater or Aristarchus or Secundus or Gaius or Timothy or Tychicus or Trofimus or every other Christian man alive at the time. We have no idea. We do know they're guys. That's basically all we've narrowed it down to. Anyway, the second guy is introduced in 18 and 19. There's a couple of things said about him. For one thing, it's said there that he's famous among the churches for his preaching of the gospel. Now, that's a little bit of an over-translation because the word preaching there isn't really there in the Greek.

23:38 All it really says in that verse is that he is famous in the gospel among the churches. He's famous in the gospel among the churches. Now, that might be preaching. That might be sharing the gospel. It may just be some other kind of service. It may just be that this guy was famous for being a kind of gospel man. Somebody whose entire life was so marked by being transformed by the gospel of Jesus Christ and serving people because of the gospel that he became famous, not just in his own church even, but in all the churches of the region for that reality.

24:11 He was known as a gospel man. I mean, you think about it, that's a wonderful thing, isn't it? I mean, if nothing else could be written on your tombstone except he was a gospel man. She was a gospel woman. That would be an incredible legacy for you to pass down to the next generation. Friends, strive in your heart to be that kind of a person. Not somebody who's a money man. Not somebody who's a business man. Not somebody who's this kind of man or that kind of man. But a gospel man. That's what every one of us should strive to be.

24:43 We don't know who this guy is. Don't know who he was. Don't know his name. But I promise you. Because he was in fact a gospel man. I promise you, his name is known in heaven right now. The third guy there is introduced in 22, and he's mostly marked by what Paul calls earnestness. It's just a kind of deep sense of responsibility to carry out duties quickly and well. So Paul knew this guy. He knew what his gifts were. This guy's earnest. This guy will get a duty done well. And so he says, let me give you a duty. And he sends him off to Corinth with this duty to finish up the collection, knowing that he'll put everything in his power into it.

25:18 23, 24 there, he wraps them all up together, tells the Corinthians basically that these guys are messengers of the churches in Macedonia. Tells the Corinthians then in 24, once they arrive at you, get on with it, right? Prove that your Christian love is real and make good on all of these boasts that I've made about you. That's what he says to them in 24. So that's the delegation Paul sends. He sends Timothy, the leader of the whole thing, and then these two other guys. But why does he send them? Why does Paul send this delegation ahead of his own self, right?

25:51 Well, there are two main reasons that he does so. The first of those reasons is explained in verses 20 and 21. Look at those. He says there just straight up. He couldn't really say it any clearer. We take this course. We're doing this thing. We're sending this delegation so that no one should blame us about this generous gift that is being administered by us. For we aim at what is honorable. Not only in the Lord's sight, but also in the sight of man. You see what he's saying there? You see what he's saying about the reason he's sending this delegation?

26:24 He's sending them to make sure that he doesn't get blamed for having anything bad to do with this collection. And that's not a slacking of responsibility on Paul's part. On the contrary, he's just making sure that nobody can say of him, and believe me, they were saying it in the city of Corinth. You can see it in chapter 12. they were saying, well, yeah, the reason this Paul fellow won't let us pay him a little bit directly is because he's clearly skimming some off the top of this collection that he's putting together.

26:56 He's a shyster. He's embezzling some off the top of it. So to avoid that charge, Paul just puts some distance, like several hundred miles between himself and the day-to-day operation of the collection. He wants the money in a place where he can't even be accused of getting at it. And so he lets these three guys handle it instead. I mean, you notice also there that he mentions a couple of times, 19 and 23, verse 19 and 23. He says that these other two men are appointed by the churches. And they're messengers of the churches.

27:27 But probably what he means there is the church is not of the whole world, but of the region of Macedonia. Which is fascinating. Because if these guys are appointed by messengers of, official delegates of, the churches in Macedonia, how did they make that decision? I mean, did they get together somehow and raise their hands to vote on making these two guys their delegates? That's what that word appointed means. It literally means to raise the hand at somebody.

27:58 So, you know, probably in the earliest times it meant like the emperor raising his finger to point it at you and appoint you to something. In later times, you know, it became a raising of the hand, literally, to vote. So how did the Macedonian churches do that? I mean, do you have a picture here of, like, the Macedonian Baptist Convention? I mean, you laugh, but really, this is interesting historical evidence that churches were officially working together in some capacity. Maybe conventions, maybe associations. We don't really know, but even in its very earliest days, the churches seemed to be doing this.

28:35 Anyway, what Paul's saying there is, look, these guys are not just my personal representatives. It's not like I'm paying them a little bit to skim some off the top and bring it to me. That's not what's going on. These guys are officially appointed by the churches of Macedonia to go do this job. They are here to make sure everything is done right and above board. Okay, so what can we learn from that? What can we learn from Paul's action here of sending these guys to keep his own hands off the money? Well, this isn't exactly going to be the most soaring section of a sermon. And it may seem obvious to you, but part of what we can learn is that making sure there's accountability and discipline in financial matters, even in a church, is a good and necessary thing.

29:18 And I doubt anybody here would disagree with that, but I just preach what I'm given in the Bible, and that's what we're looking at today. It's a good and necessary thing. And what we see here in this passage is that Paul is incredibly careful about how money is handled. He's incredibly careful about whose hands touch it, where it goes, and what happens to it. It's a good and wise thing for him to do. And, you know, I'm really glad to be able to stand up here today and tell you that we try to implement that kind of carefulness here at Third Avenue Baptist Church in the way we handle money.

29:49 Now, I'm definitely not going to go into detail of it all here. It would just take too long for me to tell you all the structures and systems and mechanisms that we have for caring for the money that you give. I'm not going to do that. But, man, I do want to say that you guys, as a church, are incredibly well served in this area by men like Mike Carnicella, the pastor for administration, and the deacon of finance, Jeff Norton, and the deacon of the treasury, David Richardson, whose job it is given by you to keep an eye on the church's money. Hey, look, I've heard story after story of churches being split wide open by financial scandal because they didn't have enough independent eyes on the money.

30:29 So I can't tell you how grateful I am to those people for their work. It's incredibly important, and it's not just financial administrative work. It's kingdom work. It protects the unity of this church. And as I am grateful to them, so you ought to be grateful to them too. I also want to say just almost as a kind of parenthesis that part of our financial accountability here at 3rd Avenue has to do with what I myself as the senior pastor have knowledge and control of when it comes to our money. So believe it or not, this may just be, you know, brand new information for most of you, but it's important, I think.

31:04 Believe it or not, I actually do not have, as the senior pastor, I do not have unilateral control over even a single cent of our church's budget. There's not a single account, there's not a single line item in the budget where I can just say, without accountability, go spend this money there. Now, there's a little line item of money that I can use for things like coffees with you or meals with you or buying books to prepare sermons or that kind of thing. But even that thing is called accountable reimbursables, which means that it's governed by certain rules that say how I can and can't spend it.

31:40 And it's reviewable by literally all kinds of people. But there's no pot of money. There's no line item that I can just say without accountability, go spend this there. And it gets spent. And friends, I like that. I'm not complaining at all about that. That is a good thing. It's a wise structure to have set up. I remember way back I was traveling with a certain person and we were having a conversation with the pastor of an extremely large church, kind of in the middle of the country. And the pastor asked the person that I was traveling with, hey, brother, how much discretionary money does your church give you on an annual basis that is just yours to spend however you want to?

32:20 How much discretionary money does your church give you to spend on whatever you want to? And the guy that I was traveling with told, you know, a number. He kind of, not fudged it, but like obscured it a little bit. He didn't give him a specific number, but you could tell that it was a modest amount. And the guy says, I can't believe that. He said, my church, listen to this. He said, my church gives me $250,000 every single year to just do whatever I want to with it, to bless people. He said, I've bought people cars with that money.

32:55 And I cannot tell you, I cannot tell you how glad I am that we don't do that or anything like that. Because that is the kind of thing that will inevitably, eventually curdle into disaster. And for that matter, just another little thing that you may or may not know, and you should if you don't already, is that I, as the senior pastor, don't get any kind of giving report from our church with individual names on it. I have no idea how much or how often any member of this church gives money.

33:28 And neither does any other elder except Mike Carnicella. I think he has to see some of that information to do his job. But for all the other elders, we don't get any kind of report. I don't get any kind of report. I don't know what any of you gives or how often you give it. And that's a good thing that I don't know that. I mean, you know, yeah, sure, just living life with you, I may be able to guess who some of the generous givers are because I just kind of see patterns of generosity in people. But not knowing that information, not having it at our fingertips at every elders meeting, not even having it at our fingertips if we were to ask Mike for it, not knowing that information frees us to shepherd and lead and exhort this church with faithfulness to the Bible and not with fear of what rich Uncle Pennybags over there is going to say about it. It's a good thing. That kind of accountability is a good thing.

34:25 And it's one reason that Paul is sending this delegation. He's creating some discipline and accountability for himself in this matter. And that's a very good thing. But there's another reason in chapter 9, 1 through 5. And that's to hold not just Paul himself accountable, but to hold the Corinthians accountable to be generous. He's sending them in order to hold the Corinthians accountable to be generous. So in verses 1 to 2, he talks about how, Look, I've already boasted to the Macedonians about your readiness to give.

35:02 In fact, I've been doing that for the last year, he says. Apparently that boasting had even been part of why the Macedonians had been so eager to join in. So he gets to the heart of it then. Knowing all that, he gets to the heart of it in 3 through 5. Look at those verses. He says, so I'm sending the brothers, these three brothers, so that our boasting about you to the Macedonians may not prove empty in this matter, so that you may be ready just as I said you would be. Otherwise, think about it. If some Macedonians come with me with their raggedy old clothes and their tiny little bit of money that they've given out of their poverty and find that you are not ready, we would be humiliated for being so confident in you and you would be even worse humiliated.

35:39 So I thought it necessary to urge the brothers to go on ahead to you and arrange in advance for the gift you promised so that it may be ready as a willing gift and not as an exaction. Now that last word, exaction, that's probably not exactly right. It's not terrible, but it's not exactly right. The underlying word, if you look down in the footnote next to that word, it means greed. That's what the word means. It's just the noun, greed. So probably what Paul means there is something more like so that it may be ready as a willing gift and not obviously a thing of greed, a greed thing.

36:16 That's probably what he means. In other words, we don't want your gift to be some paltry, pathetic thing that was obviously given unwillingness, unwillingly, because of your greed to hold on to what's yours. That's probably what that means. But that aside, you see his point, right? I'm sending these guys to you to provide accountability to you to get the job done. They're going to be blowing an air horn in your ear to get this thing done. We're not just going to leave this to your whims. We're going to set up a system to make sure that it's done right.

36:50 Well, what kind of system? Well, actually, Paul had already told them what system he wanted back at the end of 1 Corinthians. If you flip back there, you don't have to. But let me read you the system that he set up for them. He said this at the beginning of 1 Corinthians 16. Now, concerning the collection for the saints, as I directed the churches of Galatia, so you also are to do. And then here's the system. On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up as he may prosper so that there will not have to be collecting when I come.

37:21 It's a good system, right? I mean, rather than just coming to the very end of it and on a whim deciding to give a certain amount of money, he says, no, no, no, no, based on how the Lord prospers you throughout each week, put a little bit on the side so that when the end comes, you're not just acting on a whim, but you're acting on generosity that's been there for a very long time, week in and week out. That's what he tells them to do. So here's the question. Is your giving to the work of the gospel, whether that's to the church, to missionaries, to other organizations, is your giving to the work of the gospel something that you just do on a whim?

38:00 As it occurs to you, as the wind blows, or is it something that you've made a discipline of in your life? When we do membership interviews here, remember those, all of you have done them if you're a member of the church. Remember those five pieces of information and advice that we'll give you about life at Third Avenue, right? The fourth of those is make it a discipline in your life to give regularly and generously to the work of the church, right? It just takes money to do what we do. The key word in that little phrase there is make it a discipline. Don't just do it on a whim.

38:31 Don't just do it when you think about it. Don't just do it when the wind blows exactly the right way. Set up a system. Why is that important? Well, it's important because giving to whatever cause it is, is generally something we do, like running, only if there's some accountability and structure to it. So, friends, just make sure that's true of your life. Don't just leave it to whims. How can you do that? Well, real practically, use online tools to do that. Or set up some kind of trigger in your sort of daily Sunday schedule.

39:03 I'm not going to walk out that front door until I've written the check of whatever I want to give to the work of the church today. you know there's several minutes we just experienced it a few minutes ago there's several minutes during our offertory that you could use to give the reason we have that offertory i mean i know you guys use it for all kinds of things right uh you use it to take a bathroom break use it to you know it's like intermission you go to the concession stand you know there's there's all kinds of things you use it to have a conversation there's all kinds of things going on during that intermission but that's the point it's not an intermission it's part of what we do as a church to give you an opportunity to install discipline in your life for giving. And it would be 100% appropriate for you to just pull out your phone during that instrumental music and give to the church. Just make that your discipline. Every week at the offertory, I pull out my phone and I give what I'm going to give. And Paul says the amount's up to you. He says the amount's up to you. It's got to be your decision, not under compulsion, not reluctantly. God loves a cheerful

40:03 giver it's up to you but the discipline needs to be there install that into your life the point there is that if you don't have some discipline and structure in your life of giving you will stop doing it hence to go back to the beginning of the point the need not just for generosity but for disciplined generosity generosity that's backed up and ensured by discipline. Paul knew that, and so he decided to help the Corinthians get it in place in their own lives. That's what he's doing in that first section. Second though, point two, discipline's generosity leads to the glorification of God. Discipline to generosity leads to the glorification of God. So look down at 9, 6, chapter 9, verse 6. Right there at 9, 6, and going on down through the end of the chapter, there's a critical turn in Paul's argument. Because down through 9.5, what he's been doing is talking about accountability, to give generously. He's been talking about,

41:07 you know, if you don't do this, then you're going to be embarrassed when I and the Macedonians come, and we're going to just be embarrassed by this paltry little gift that you finally put together. Don't let it be like that, Corinthians. Well, in 9.6, he changes, and the whole thing becomes much brighter because Paul starts talking about the benefits of giving generously and cheerfully and it is bracing stuff let's read a little bit of it look at verse six the point is this whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully each one must give as he has decided in his heart not reluctantly or under compulsion for God loves a cheerful giver and God is able to make all grace abound to you so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times including money you may abound in every good work as it is written he has distributed that's not God that's the giver the giver has distributed freely he has given to the poor his righteousness the giver's righteousness endures forever

42:08 ten God who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and will increase the harvest of your righteousness you will be enriched in every way bracing stuff and if you're like me your mind is already starting to take all kinds of evasive action to qualify and nuance what Paul is saying there you're all like Tom Cruise in a jet fighter right now evading missiles you know it's like it's like the alarms are going off right watch out bank left nuance that qualify that he doesn't say that stop stop stop abort right you can't say that paul that's prosperity gospel stuff because we all know that god isn't just a vending machine that you can put a quarter into and get out a dollar.

43:04 Right? Well, yeah, that's absolutely true. And Paul knew it was true. You know how he knows it's true? You notice all of the language he uses here is agricultural language? It's all agricultural language. You sow your seed, right, and then the rains fall, and God causes the crop to grow. And if you sow a lot of seed, you get a lot of crop. And if you sow a little seed, you get a little crop. It's all agricultural language. It's not mechanical, and Paul knew that sometimes the harvests don't come.

43:37 He knew that was a possibility, and yet he used this language anyway. Sometimes you sow generously, and drought hits, or locusts come, and you reap nothing. Paul knew that. Sometimes that happens, and Paul would never, ever deny that. But his point is that those times are the exception to the rule, not the rule itself. They're the qualification that has to be made to the general principle, not the general principle itself.

44:11 The point, the general principle, is that usually the way God works is that seed turns into crop. So it pays to be generous in the seed that you sow. Yeah, sure, sometimes the crop doesn't grow, and you deal with that. But usually the crop grows. And that's the analogy that he's wanting to draw between crops and generous giving. Usually, God rewards generosity and the generous heart behind that generosity by giving the generous person even more to be generous with.

44:45 That's the rule. And friends, it seems to be that way all over Scripture. Listen, just for a minute. Proverbs 11, 24 and 25. One gives freely and grows all the richer. Another withholds what he should give and only suffers want. Whoever brings blessing will be enriched, and one who waters will himself be watered. Proverbs 22. The generous will themselves be blessed, for they share their food with the poor. Galatians chapter 6. Now we're in the New Testament. Do not be deceived. God is not mocked.

45:16 For whatever one sows, that will he also reap. And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap if we do not give up. Malachi chapter 3, bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need. Luke chapter 6, give and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap.

45:49 For with the measure you use with others, so it will be measured back to you. Look, in one way or another, all of those verses are at least talking about money. They're talking about other stuff. Paul is talking about other stuff. But they're talking at least about money. And look, I know, I know all the qualifications and nuances to these verses. I've got them all. And they're ready to be fired at these verses at a moment's notice. Sometimes that doesn't happen. It depends on God's will. Sometimes God says no. Sometimes you get spiritual blessing instead of material blessing.

46:21 God's not a vending machine. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. All of that is true. But here's my question. If the Bible says all of that that it says right there, if it says all that it says over and over again, if it seems to be telling you that God's general and usual pattern is to give even more stuff to a generous person so that that generous person can be even more generous, why on earth would you want to spend your life living in the qualifications and nuances rather than in the general principle?

47:00 Why would you do that? Why would you hoard yourself, your stuff to yourself and say, but there are nuances. Rather than saying, this seems to be how God generally acts. So I'm going to give generously in light of that. That's Paul's point here. God is generous to the generous. He's generous spiritually. That's part of what Paul means there. You can see that in verse 8. And he's generous materially too.

47:31 You can see that in verse 8 too. And it becomes even clearer in the first part of 11. You will be enriched in every way. And brothers and sisters, if that's Paul's point, then you and I need to be people who live in the light of God's promise that he will be generous to those who are generous. Now, of course, there are times when he'll decide not to be, right? The nuances, the qualifications, there are times when he'll decide not to be. This is not an ironclad promise in the sense that, say, John 3.16 is an ironclad promise.

48:05 But it is a promise in the sense that, for example, every proverb is a promise. it's generally the way the world works. But be really careful how you understand it. Be really careful how you understand it. Don't think of this as a return on investment thing. So you start out with a little, you give, God gives it back, and you walk away even richer. Now look at verse 8. Do you notice that Paul's point there isn't that you should give as an investment so that when the return comes, you'll have more than you had at the start?

48:42 That's not what he says. God is not a get-rich-quick scheme like that. Look at 11. It's even clearer there. You will be enriched so that you can be generous. So here's my question to you. How much would your life change if you really took this to heart? That the whole point of God giving you wealth, Whether it's a lot of it or a little of it, the whole thing, Macedonians and Corinthians, right? It's not different for the two of them.

49:13 The whole point of God giving you wealth, however much of it or little of it you have, is for you to be generous with what he's given to you. And then when he gives you more of it, which is generally what God says his pattern is in the world, it's not so you can take it away and be richer. It's so that you can be even more generous. with what he's given. Friends, if that's the way of God's world, if that's the way God works in the world, if that's the way God has determined usually to work in the world, then it is worth giving some thought to because it ought to pattern our Christian lives.

49:52 Well, from there, finally, Paul lists two great benefits that will come from this kind of pattern of disciplined generosity. One is just kind of an aside, honestly, at the beginning of verse 12. the needs of the saints will be met, right? What does he mean by that? The needs of the saints will be supplied or met. Well, it's just that the Christians in Jerusalem will be relieved from the grinding pain of the famine. I mean, some of the money that you give here at Third Avenue is used for the relief of grinding needs in people's lives. If you come to a member's meeting, look at the financial report.

50:26 You'll be able to see one line in the designated accounts called the Benevolence Fund. I mean, frankly, it's getting low at this point. If you want to take this sermon and think about that. But one of the things we use money for is that benevolence fund, which is meant to supply the needs of the saints. When people have needs, they ask us if we can help out of that benevolence fund. And we do over and over again, which is why that fund keeps going down, down, down, down, down. It's a good thing for us to do. But even here in verse 12, it's just an aside. The needs of the saints will be supplied.

50:58 Look at the main thing Paul says here will happen. Verse 12, for the ministry of this service, it's not only supplying the needs of the saints, it is doing that, but that's not the main deal. It's also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God. By the Corinthians approval, or by the, sorry, Jerusalem church's approval of this service that you're about to make, the Jerusalem church will glorify God because of your obedience that comes from your confession of the gospel and the generosity of your contribution for them, for all the others, and they will long for you and they will pray for you because of the surpassing grace of God upon you.

51:34 You see what he's saying there? When you give generously, the result of that is thanksgiving and glory to God. That's how you should think about your gifts. Not just administrative, not just turning the lights and the air conditioner on. Not that. But creating thankfulness and glory to God. I remember reading a article or something that was describing a farmer who reached into his sowing corn, right, and he was just marveling at the fact that these kernels were going to turn into entire stalks of corn, and he held them up to the sun, and he saw the light of the sun blazing through these kernels, and he said they just, they looked alive, they looked like they had a light inside them that was just aching to burst forth into life.

52:24 That's how you ought to think about your gifts. Little seeds that are glowing with the light of eternity and just shaking with a desire to burst forth into kingdom growth. Well, I'll leave you where Paul leaves us in verse 15. He says, thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift. Well, what's the gift? What's his inexpressible gift? I don't think it's that hard. Just look right back up into verse 14. The surpassing grace of God upon You The inexpressible gift of God Is that he has given you the grace Of Jesus Christ Of forgiveness of your sins And of all the blessings of eternity And now in light of that We are to give thanks to him Through every minute and every moment of our lives Including What we do with our money Let's pray Our Lord, we thank you that you are a good and a gracious and a generous God.

53:32 Lord, you have given everything because of your love for us. You gave your only son so that we might be saved. Our Father, we pray that your generosity and your grace overflowing to us might cause our hearts to open up and be generous people. Not just for a day, not just for a week, not just through some emphasis or program, But every single day of our lives, Lord, make us be people who show an overflowing wealth of generosity in all the patterns of our lives. Lord, help us to be like that.

54:02 Help us to be those kinds of people because we're trying to be like our Savior, Jesus Christ. We ask that in his name and always to his honor and glory. Amen.