Living A Generous Life
10/26/13 Proverbs 3:1-10 Luke 19:1-10
Today we are in week six of our 40 Days of Community in which we have discovered we are Better Together as we work to build New Life At Calvary. Today we are going to talk about generosity. How many of you think our friend in the video clip was a generous person? I want you to imagine for a moment, that you were able to purchase your dream car. That car was everything you wanted. You were so eager to sign the contract that you did not bother to read it carefully. You were faithful making your payments, you only had four payments left. Then you lost your job. You struggled to find money to make the payments. You missed two of the payments.
You get up one morning, and hear a noise outside. By the time you get out the door, you see your car being briskly towed away by the repo man. You go to your uncle and explain your situation. He offers to give you the money. But the guy at the finance company says He doesn’t want your money. Read the contract. You find the original contract, and clear enough it says, if you miss two straight payments at any time in the contract, they have the right to repossess the car and to sell it. You say” but, I only have four payments left. This is so unfair.” The guy says” tough, we sold the car as we had the right to do. We make our biggest profits off of repo deals.”
How many of you are feeling a little angry and upset over this? How many of you would like to repo the repo man in a back alley. But let’s say you keep your cool. How would you feel if two years later, that guy that ripped you off and laughed in your face all the way to the bank showed up and said, “I know I cheated you out of your car. I’m sorry for that. Here is a certified check for four times the value of the car.” Now what are you thinking? Are you glad? Are you suspicious? Are you grateful are you wondering, “why on earth are you doing this? Or do you grab the check and run.”
What on earth, would turn a selfish, greedy and rich, businessman into a person of compassion and generosity? Person after person was asking this question during the time of Jesus in around around Jerusalem some 2100 years ago, after a notorious, rip off, greedy tax collector by the name of Zaccheus showed up at their door, with bags of money offering to pay them four times the amount he had cheated them out of.
Zaccheus could explain the give away of money it in just three words. “I met Jesus.” Zaccheus had been hiding in a tree waiting to get a glimpse of Jesus as he passed by. Zaccheus understood that when Jesus said, Come down immediately, I must stay at your house today, “Jesus was not just talking about the address where Zaccheus lived on 4959 Rich Man Circle in Jerusalem Heights.” He was talking about, Zaccheus himself. I must stay at your house. Jesus was wanting to enter the man himself.
When the people said, “Jesus has gone to be the guest of a sinner.” Zaccheus, knew the presence of Jesus as a guest in his heart, had changed his heart from being a taker to a giver.” In response to the love that Zaccheus experienced from Jesus, he immediately declared, “Lord, here and now I give half more possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”
Our purpose statement starts out in response to God’s love, our purpose is. Our actions are based not on who we are, but on what God has done for us. Let me ask you something, how many of you have ever tried to bargain with God. God if you just let me past this test. I will….. God if you give me this job. I will…….. God if you let my boss not come in today. I wil…….l. God if I’ m not pregnant I promise, I will……….. God if you heal me or her, then I will.
We all make promises to God in our bargains, and then we don’t keep our end of the deal. We passed the test because we were smart. We got the job because the other person weren’t as qualified as we were. The boss was sick before we prayed. She went out with me, because of my good looks. But the next time we need God, we try to bargain again. How many of you would bargain with a person who has failed to keep their end of the deal time after time?
Now let me tell you something. The fact that you are bargaining with God, already means you have a lot of faith in God. You first of all believe that God exists. You secondly believe that God knows your name. You thirdly believe God knows your circumstances. You fourthly believe God can do something about them. And You fifthly believe that God actually cares. Think about it, you believe the God who controls the universe actually takes time out to listen to you, even though both of your know you can’t be trusted.
You think you can bargain with God, because you believe you have something that God wants or God needs. God I’ll give you a little obedience. I’ll give you a little praise. I’ll give you a little money. The only problem is that God does not have to negotiate. We do not have anything that God needs. As a matter of fact, Christianity is not about what God wants from us, but rather what God wants for us. (Some of thoughts on bargaining with God are from Andy Stanley’s series Part 6 in Starting Point.)
Notice, Jesus did not say, “I have come that you might give God some praise, some money or some service.” He said, I have come that you might have life and have it more abundantly. God is trying to give us something that we do not deserve. In Ephesians after it talks about how we were all dead because of our sins and wrongdoings and were on our way to destruction and punishment after death, in Ephesians 2:4, it says, “But because of His great love for us, God who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ, even though we did not deserve it.”
Why does God take the time to listen to a sinner like me try to negotiate something out of him for my own selfish reasons? It is because God is rich and generous in mercy and God wants something better for my life, than I could ever get on my own. The only way I am going to receive God’s plan for my life, is to allow God to be first in my life. But one of the first steps we have to pass through in following Jesus, is deciding, “am I going to be generous like God or am I going to continue to think God can’t be trusted and I have to take care of my future.”
We like to put people into the categories of either serving God or serving the devil. We even say, you can’t serve God and serve the devil. You have to make up your mind. But Jesus never made that statement. Jesus said, you cannot serve God and serve money. If your money or your possessions mean more to you than God, than they are your God. Jesus says, where your treasure is, your heart will be also. For instance, most of you do not check the paper each day to see the value of Google stock. You don’t give a rip about the price increasing or decreasing. But if someone gave you 10,000 shares of Google stock, you would look at the paper, the computer or the phone each day to see whether your money went up or down. If you were walking past the tv and you heard, “today on Wall Street, Google’s stock” you would stop and listen. Why because your treasure is in Google.
What can slowly happen is that your trust for your future is not in God, but in Google. We do it all the time on a smaller scale. We put our trust in our jobs, our possessions, and pensions. The more we do it, the less generous we become. The less generous we are, the more we rob ourselves of life. Karl Menninger, the famous psychiatrist who founded the famous Menninger Psychiatric clinic said this “Generosity is one of the essential components of mental health. We have found that generous people are rarely mentally ill.” Generous people are rarely mentally ill. Now if you think you are losing your mind, check and see how generous are you. (Karl Menninger information comes from Rick Warren’s series 40 days of Community)
Generosity is a choice. We choose to be generous, because we choose to be like God. We do what we do, in response to God’s love. In response to God’s love, our purpose is to love others. We are not talking about a love feeling where we simply smile and are nice to each other. We are talking about a love, that attempts to meet one another’s needs. In a community, there are going to be times when some of us have emergencies and crisis in our lives and we need help from somebody. New Life At Calvary is a community of believers. You cannot have community without generosity. As I said earlier, where your heart is, there will your treasure also be.
Did you know the word” believe” is used 272 times in the bible. The word pray is used “371” times in the bible. The word love is used “714” times in the bible. But the word give is used “2162 times”. Do you think God may want us to learn to be generous? (Stats from Rick Warren’s 40 Days Of Community)
At some point we have to consider if our heart is going to be at New Life At Calvary. Are we willing to invest ourselves to the ministry here by our giving? Our purpose it to love others. You can give without loving, but you can never love without giving. God does not ask us for an amount, God asks us for a percentage. God says the more you have, the more you should give. Jesus told us that we should at least tithe, which is giving God one dime out of each dollar that we earn. That’s 10% of our income. That’s the starting point for being generous, it’s not the lid.
We cannot be a generous church without being generous as individuals. We give not because we feel sorry, or we feel guilty. We give because God, gave to us first. Our choice to love others, is in response to God’s love for us. Some of us think that if we made more, we would give more. The reality is, if we made more, most of us would get more and become more materialistic rather than more generous. We would raise our standard of living, but we would not be raising our quality of life. Getting more stuff comes with a whole new set of problems.
Most of us are far wealthier than the people that Jesus talked to about giving and tithing. We say that we believe the bible, but is that true? Do we believe the passage that says, whoever only gives a little, will only get a little, but whoever gives a lot, will get a lot. You reap what you sow. The church is the only place where you decide how much what you get is worth, how much you’re going to pay for it, and when you’re going to pay for it. Can you imagine going to a bank and depositing $10 and then getting upset when the bank does not give you $150.00 in your time of need? Do you tell the bank owner I been a customer of this bank for 15 years and I know there are people who have been here a lot less than I have, but you let them take out $150.00
There are people who have a regular income who give $50 a year to the church. Now they genuinely believe if they die, the church should spend $300 to feed their families, $60 for security personnel, $60 in table supplies, $100 in utilities, and that does not cover the cost of the cleanup, the musicians, the pastors, and the countless hours of all the deacons and ushers. But the sad thing is, their family will bring them in in a $4000 coffin because that’s where the insurance money went in their $9000 funeral. Often times, they may not even make a donation to the church for covering all this. But because our goal is to love people, we offer the same services because as a community we are to share our resources.
If everyone gave the 10% from a child to the oldest adult, we could love each other in ways you could not imagine. We would have the money for our deacons fund, our prison ministry, our prescription medicine, our staff, our pastors and our outreach ministries. The question is do we want to become more generous or do we want to keep saying, one day when I make more. There are two kinds of people in the church. There are givers and takers. We all have to answer the question, “ am I going to be generous and expect God to keep His promises to me”, or “will I trust myself to make sure my needs and desires are met.” It’s not the dollar amount that makes you generous, it’s the percentage.
In response to God’s love, our purpose is to love others, to teach the Word of God. How much of the word of God do we want to be taught. The purpose of teaching the Word, is not for us to sit back and say,” I know the bible backwards and forwards.” “I can tell you all 66 books in order.” The purpose of teaching the Word of God is to make disciples who are willing to obey Jesus and his teachings. Jesus told us to serve God, by rejecting the desire to serve possessions. If your goal in life is to be as rich as you can be with material wealth or money, you cannot be a disciple of Jesus Christ. Now it is possible to be a disciple of Jesus Christ and become wealthy, but becoming wealthy should not be the primary goal.
The purpose of being wealthy is to be generous. God knew that some of us would become wealthy and God has a verse to tell us how to handle it in 1 Timothy, 6:17 (NLT) 17 Teach those who are rich in this world not to be proud and not to trust in their money, which is so unreliable. Their trust should be in God, who richly gives us all we need for our enjoyment. 18 Tell them to use their money to do good. They should be rich in good works and generous to those in need, always being ready to share with others. 19 By doing this they will be storing up their treasure as a good foundation for the future so that they may experience true life. God expects some of us to have money, and lots of it.
But if fulfilling this verse is not your goal for your money, then as a disciple, you should ask God to keep you from getting rich or from having too much money. I know that you probably think you are poor, but if you go to the website globalrichlist.com, you can find out how rich you are compared to other people in the world. Young people if you make $25 a week on your job, you are richer than 52% of the people in the world. If you social security check is $600 per month plus you get medical insurance with it, 85% of the people in the world make less than you do. If you earn $30,000 a year, 98.73% of the world’s population earn less than you do. How much does it take to be rich. All you have to do is to have something? What you do, with what you have determines if you’re generous or not.
As a disciple of Jesus Christ, each year you ought to be growing. Each year you ought to be finding ways to become more generous. We find instructions for us who are growing as disciples in verse 8:7 of 2 Corinthians, “But just as you excel in everything, in faith, in speech, in knowledge, and in your love for us—see that you also excel in this grace of giving. For one thing, God loves a cheerful giver. Why do we have a joyful offering song and a reflective one. Because God says for us to give cheerfully, and because God said think about your giving and plan it out in advance. We put both actions into practice.
In response to God’s love, our purpose is to love others, to teach the word of God, and to reach the world for Christ. You know it’s good that we feed and serve those who are hungry in Cleveland and give them the gospel. But Jesus said for us to go into all the world to make disciples. Each month a church leaves from us to go to feed kids in Haiti. Each month a check leaves from us to help an elderly Indian pastors and his wife in the country of India to have a place to call home, because their small church could not afford a manse for them.
Each month a check goes to India to help the pastor’s wife get medicine for a sickness that has left her bedridden after many years of serving the Lord. Each month a check goes to Nigeria, to help orphans know the Love of Christ, to educate them, and to see to it that their physical needs are met. Each day our Roku broadcast and internet ministry touch people in other countries. This past week our services were loaded on the internet on Vimeo in France, Guatemala, Ethiopia, Australia and mainland China.
The only way we can continue to impact people beyond our borders is for us to become people of generosity. One day you will get to heaven and find somebody there, because you at New Life At Calvary, stepped up your giving and chose to become generous. Where do you want to lay up your treasure? We had a wonderful act of generosity take place in last week’s offering.
One of the counter’s came to me with an envelope saying this offering was to go anonymously to a specific member of the church. The person giving the offering could see that the person was having some financial difficulty. The note basically said, “I want you to know that you are appreciated for all that you do. Take this small gift and celebrate with your family.” When I gave the envelope to the person with $300 in it, I wish you could have seen the expression on the person’s face. The response was, “who was it so I can thank the person.” I said the person was anonymous, so you just have to thank God. I said, you have simply been the recipient of grace. There’s nothing you could have done to earn it, and it was prepared in advance for you. All you can do is receive it. I could tell the person wanted desperately to do something out of appreciation.
My friends, we give not out of fear or compulsion but out of appreciation of God’s grace. In response to God’s love, our purpose is to love others, to teach the Word of God, and to reach the world for Christ. You know something, God does not even want us to go broke in giving to the church. God smile when we give because it frees God to do more for us. 1 Corinthians 9:10 says, “2 Corinthians 9:10-11 (NIV) 10 Now God who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. 11 You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us, your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.
God wants to bless us as individuals and as a church, not so we can say “look at us and all that we have”, but rather so that we be generous on all occasions which will lead people to give thanks to God. For it’s not about us. But it’s about Jesus. That’s how we build community. We start and we end with Jesus.
The only reason any of us today are saved, is because of the sheer generosity of God. We love God, because God first loved us. What does our choice in our giving say about our love for God? I want to be transformed out of my selfishness, into the generosity that’s found in God.
