Generous for the Sake of the Kingdom- Part2

We are into part two of this two part series. This series we've called Generous for the Sake of the Kingdom. And this series is a little bit different for us. If you've been here for a little while, you'd know that normally what we do is we pick a book from scripture or a section of scripture and we work verse by verse through it. This time we've done something a little bit different.

A couple of times a year we take a topic. At the start of the year we looked at tricky questions, hard questions about our faith. And for this two part series, we've come to this tricky topic of generosity and we've taken that topic and we're coming to God's word and saying, what does God's word have to say about this? And so that's what we're going to do today. Last week, Pastor James led us through the Old Testament perspective.

This week I have got the task of leading us through the New Testament perspective. And we'll only just kind of skim the service. But as we do that, why don't we pray together? God, we thank you for your word. We thank you that as we come to it in these next few moments together, Lord, that we pray that you'd speak to us.

Lord, give us hearts that are receptive to hear what you want to say. Not what I want to say, but what you want to say. Lord, that we might know you better, that we might reflect you better in this world. We pray Jesus name. Amen.

In the late 1990s, there was a craze that happened. Now, some of you might remember this. For some of you, it will be before you were born. And that's a scary thought, isn't it? But in the late 1990s, there was a.

The first, probably the first Internet craze was over Beanie Babies. Does anybody remember that? Little teddies, Beanie Babies kind of took the world by storm. If you don't know what I'm talking about, there they are on the screen. They sold for about $5 each.

Somehow, and for some reason, which I think no one really knows the answer to, people started to see them not as toys, but, but as investments. And this was the early days of ebay. And they reckon at the peak of the Beanie babies craze, about 10% of everything sold on eBay was beanie babies. 10% of eBay sales were these stuffed teddies. It became such a thing that some people started to put their life savings into it.

They took the money that they put aside for their retirement or they'd been saving for a house or whatever, and they decided that were going to invest it into Beanie Babies. Now, it became so crazy that there's this famous picture from 1999 where a couple who couldn't agree on how to split their Beanie Babies collection were made by a judge to bring it into the court to pour them out onto the floor. And the judge watched them as they each picked them one by one. It's crazy, isn't it? Perhaps.

Like all Internet crazes, and we've had lots since, eventually this bubble burst. Not long after, the teddies that had been retailing for thousands of dollars were suddenly worth very, very little. And the people who had poured their life savings into it had lost all their money. Now, we might hear that, and we think it's absurd, and it is. It's absolutely absurd.

But it's just the extreme version, perhaps the version I could find of the same type of thing that plays out over and over and over again. Because the people who jumped on the Beanie Baby craze were just doing the thing that this world tells them to do. They had worked hard, they were being independent. They thought they were building financial security. They were storing up treasure.

And yet very quickly, they discovered just how fickle earthly treasure can be. We're coming to this topic of generosity this morning, and I would suggest that there's probably few things as contentious for a minister to stand up and talk about than generosity and money. And I think that's partly because we feel like these things are really private. We feel like it's nobody's business, and it's certainly not the church's business. I think part of the reason, too, is that some of us have come from church backgrounds where it probably wasn't taught faithfully to God's Word, where generosity came with a whole lot of pressure.

There was a whole lot of guilt involved. Some of us on the other side have come from places where it just really wasn't taught at all. But I'd say to you this morning that this is an important topic for us to come to, and it's something that we need to intentionally come to every now and then, because Scripture speaks to it. And not only does Scripture speak to it, Scripture speaks to it over and over and over again. As Pastor James said last week, money is one of the most frequently addressed topics that Jesus speaks about as he ministers in the Gospels.

He speaks about it regularly. Paul, who wrote a fair chunk of the New Testament, he also comes to it as he writes to the early Christians as the early churches. He speaks about generosity. He speaks about finances. So our hope is that we would come away with not Simon's perspective on it, but with an alignment with what Jesus has to say, with what Paul and the Scriptures say to us.

And so that's why last year when we planned our 2026 preaching series, we decided that we wanted to just come to it with this brief window. It's been quite a long time since we last touched on it, and we felt that we should come to it again. So last week, if you missed it, I encourage you, you can catch up online. Pastor James came and gave us some important Old Testament principles from Genesis and Deuteronomy. And this morning we're going to turn to the New Testament and we're going to work through two sections.

We're going to be in Second Corinthians 8. We'll start there. So you can turn there. But we're also going to be in Matthew 6. And as we do that, there's three questions which we're going to try and answer together.

They're up on the screen there. Firstly, where does generosity come from? Secondly, what does generosity reveal? And third, where does generosity lead? Those are our three questions this morning.

So let's turn to 2 Corinthians 8. And we're going to read from verse one. Now, I want you to know, dear brothers and sisters, what God in his kindness has done through the churches in Macedonia. They are being tested by many troubles and they are very poor. But they are also filled with abundant joy, which has overflow in rich generosity.

For I can testify that they gave not only what they could afford, but far more. And they did it of their own free will. They begged us again and again for the privilege of sharing in the gift for the believers in Jerusalem. They even did more than we had hoped for. Their first action was to give themselves to the Lord and to us, just as God wanted them to do.

Paul is writing to the believers in a city, a Greek city called Corinth. This was a church that he'd planted. He'd spent about 18 months ministering and leading the church there. So he knew the people and he knew their context. Corinth was a wealthy city.

It was a city that was a hub of trade. It was also a city that was full of different religions and full of idols. Paul knew that idols and wealth were competing for the attention of the Christians there. And so as we come to chapter eight, Paul says this. He says, look, look at the churches in Macedonia.

I want to tell you what God has been doing in and through them. Paul's drawing the attention of the believers in Corinth to the churches in Philippi, Thessalonica, and Berea. And he says to them, they've been tested by many troubles and they're very poor. Paul uses a specific Greek word here. He says their poverty.

He describes it as potoheia. Ptoheia says that they were completely destitute. In verse two, Paul says again to the wealthy city of Corinth, let me give you the biblical equation that the Macedonian Christians are living out. He says their extreme poverty plus their abundant joy equals an overflow of rich generosity. Now, that equation shouldn't work, because the world tells us that joy comes from having plenty.

The generosity flows out of an abundance. But here, in the midst of great poverty, the Macedonian believers, joy drives them to great generosity. So much so that Paul says that they begged him again and again for the privilege of sharing in the gift for the believers in Jerusalem. Can you imagine that? Paul is saying, the poorest, the people who are completely destitute, they are begging me, please, Paul, please let us give.

Let us share in this gift. Now, I want to say something here, and we don't have time to cover everything this morning. We're really just touching on the surface. But if we stopped reading here and if you stopped listening and now you start thinking about lunch or whatever it is that you've got on this afternoon, you might take from this, that I have to give until I'm destitute. If I want to demonstrate that I have lots of faith, like I need to give until I'm broke, I need to give until I'm in debt, and that will then prove that I am full of faith.

But there's something Paul says later in the chapter, and this is important. Paul says, give according to what you have, not what you don't have. He wants them to be generous, but he wants them to demonstrate wisdom in their generosity. He wants them to demonstrate wisdom. Okay, so we need to know that give according to what you have, not what you don't have, which, amongst other things, means don't go into debt to give.

But there's something more important here that Paul is a point Paul is making. He says that the Macedonian believers begged for the privilege of sharing in the gift. And the word he uses here for sharing is a Greek word, koinonia. Koinonia means to share something in common. It means partnership.

It was often used in the ancient world in the context of business. When two people went in on a venture together. They were in Koinonia. So when they beg for the privilege, they're not asking and saying, paul, would you just let us make a donation? They're actually saying, paul, let us be partners.

Let us share in what God is doing in Jerusalem. It's radical, isn't it? The Gentile churches of Macedonia are saying, we don't want to just watch on as God works amongst the Jews. We want to be a part of it. Paul, would you let us partner in it?

So Paul holds up this example of the Macedonian believers to encourage the Corinthians. But then he gives them an even greater example. In verse nine, he says, you know the generous grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Though he was rich, yet for your sakes, he became poor so that by his poverty he could make you rich. Paul says, first, the Macedonians gave richly out of their poverty.

And here he says, Jesus became poor out of his riches. Paul's drawing their focus now to Christ, who before Bethlehem, before the manger, was sharing in the glory and the riches of heaven itself. And. And he laid all of that down. He stepped into a poor family, into a borrowed stable, and into the deepest poverty of all.

He was stripped, abandoned and hung on a Roman cross. Paul says, jesus did this for your sakes, so that by his poverty he could make you rich in ways that last forever, that you'd be forgiven, that you'd be adopted into his family, that you'd be made heirs of Christ. And that's the answer to our first question this morning. Where does generosity come from? It overflows from the grace that we have received through Christ.

If we go back to verse one, look at how Paul introduces the Macedonian Christians. Notice, he says, now I want you to know, dear brothers and sisters, what God in his kindness has done through the churches in Macedonia. He's saying, their generosity, the way they have lived, ultimately isn't what they have done, it's what God did through them. The grace that was given to them has welled up and overflowed out of them in generosity. So the challenge for us today is if we have experienced the same grace of Christ, if we know what it is to be set free, to be saved, to be made right with God.

We should consider, is that incredible reality overflowing out of my life in Gospel partnership? Let's look at our second question. What does generosity reveal? If we step back to verse six, Paul says to the believers in Corinth, so we have urged you, Titus, who encouraged your giving in the first place, to return to you and encourage you to finish this ministry of giving. Since you excel in so many ways in your faith, your gifted speakers, your knowledge, your enthusiasm and your love from us, I want you to excel also in this gracious act of giving.

Paul says to them, you're not just having a go at Christian community, you're excelling at it. You are excelling in so many ways. You have gifted speakers. You know lots of stuff about God. You're enthusiastic.

You see their serving roster. If they used planning center like we do, the people on team will know that their serving roster was probably full every month. Their fellowship was warm and it was welcoming. Their evangelism and their outreach was firing on all cylinders. It was going well.

Paul says, you're excelling in so many things, but there's another thing which you've taken your eyes off. I want you to excel in your giving too. I wonder if some of the Corinthians heard that and pushed back. I wonder if some of them said, hang on, Paul, like I'm serving. I'm using my gifts to help the church.

I'm being hospitable. I know my Bible, I'm speaking well about Jesus. I'm sharing my faith. And now you're asking for this as well. And I think Paul would say, keep on excelling at that.

But it's not one or the other, excel in those things. And in this gracious act of giving, he continues in verse 8, I'm not commanding you to do this, but I'm testing how genuine your love is by comparing it with the eagerness of the other churches. I wonder if we hear that sentence, that verse, and we feel like there's a bit of a contradiction here, because on one hand Paul says, I'm not commanding you. And then on the other hand he says, this comes down to whether your love is real. It's pretty heavy, isn't it?

I want to work through that tension just for a moment. You see, Paul held up the example of the Macedonian churches as the model of gospel partnership. But back in verse three, he was really careful to say that they gave of their own free will. The Greek word that he uses there means self chosen, spontaneous. Nobody squeezed it out of them.

Nobody hassled them for it, nobody guilted them into it. You see, Paul knows that a commanded gift is no gift at all. A commanded gift is not a gift, it's a tax. We're in tax return season and Cindy and I have completed our tax returns. This is like the earliest we've ever done it.

I'm normally one of those people getting those reminder emails, but this year we're like, we're going well. But I bet you've never read somebody else's tax return or even your own and thought, this person must really love the government. Looking at this tax return, they must love the government because they're giving all this money to them. You see, you can't measure love by compliance. So the freedom that Paul says they have is not Paul going soft on them.

The freedom's the whole point. It's the only thing that makes their gift evidence of anything at all. Paul won't command it because he wants it to mean something from them. But Paul's also not hedging his bets. He's not saying you really should show your love like this, but actually if you don't want to, don't worry about it.

It's all good. Because he says, this is a test. The one thing I learned in high school maths is that tests can be failed.

Paul says this test is a test of your eagerness in generosity. It will show how genuine your love is. Our middle child turns 11 this week and I on our iPad at home, it's got this scrolling thing of the photos and occasionally this baby photo will come up. And the other day a baby photo of him came up and I thought, wow, it's 11 years. It feels like it's just flown by.

But I was reflecting that I always was amazed, and still am of Cindy in those first few years of our kids lives. The law says that you have to feed a baby and keep it safe. But there's no law that required Cindy to sleep a lot of nights on the chair in his room. There's no law that said she had to sleep on the floor of the room where I found her sometimes because she just knew that he would sleep better when she was close by and she just wanted to be close to him. You know, the law didn't require that.

That was above and beyond. And yet she did it even though it cost her.

But that is what love does when love is real. Nobody had to squeeze it out of Cindy like I certainly was. I was saying, come to bed, come to bed. Nobody was saying, you need to lie on the floor, you need to sleep in that chair. It was love that motivated her.

And that's what Paul is saying here. He isn't holding two opposites together. He's saying that generosity is what love looks like in action. The bottom line here, Corinthians and horizon, is this is a heart issue, not a Money issue. Over in Mark 12, Jesus is sitting opposite the temple treasury and he's there with the disciples.

And they see wealthy people come and just pour mounds of coins in. And then this widow comes. And if you know the story we know the widow comes and she just drops in two small coins. And Jesus turns to the disciples and he says to them, I tell you the truth, this poor widow has given more than all the others. Now I wonder if the disciples were thinking like Jesus, is your eyesight going?

Or like what's happening? Because those other people have bought mounds of coins. She only bought two. But Jesus is saying they gave a tiny part of their surplus. But she, poor as she is, has given everything.

It's radical generosity. And this is the measure that Jesus is saying is important. Not the amount, but the fact that her heart and her trust belong to God. And her generosity was a window into that. It's not the first time Jesus has made that point because over in Matthew 6 and you can turn there in the middle of his Sermon on the Mount, which is an incredible section of what it means to follow Jesus.

Jesus says in verse 21, Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be. Jesus says, you don't have to sit and wonder where your heart is. Follow the treasure and you'll find it. So our second question this morning, what does generosity reveal? It reveals the focus and the affection of our hearts.

That's confronting, isn't it? Because Jesus saw the widow's two coins as a window into her heart. Her generosity was a window into a heart that belonged entirely to God. And it's confronting. If we ask ourselves, and I ask myself, what would my generosity be a window into?

Lets turn to question three. Where does generosity lead? There in Matthew 6:19, Jesus says this. Don't store up treasures here on earth where moths eat them and rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in heaven where moths and rust cannot destroy and thieves do not break in and steal.

Jesus gives to the people there, gives them three ways that earthly treasure dies. It's three different ways to cover different things, to cover every aspect of earthly treasure. He says moths come in. They come in and eat things made of cloth. Rust destroys anything that's made of metal and thieves take everything else.

He's making the point that everything here on this earth has a used by date. Every item of material wealth has a used by date. But Jesus says there's another option. There's something that you can invest in. There's a treasure that is greater that doesn't have a used by date.

There's a treasure that won't decay, that won't rust, that won't be eaten by moths, and that can't be stolen by thieves. Jesus illustrates it in another encounter there with his disciples. It's captured for us in Matthew and in Mark. You might know the story. A prominent wealthy man comes running to Jesus and he gets down on his knees in front of Jesus and he asks, what must I do to receive eternal life?

Now if you know that story, you'll know that Jesus responds with something that's going to reveal where the man's heart is. Jesus says, keep the commandments. But what's interesting is that he doesn't start at the beginning of the list. Jesus says to him partway down the list of commandments, you must not murder, you must not commit adultery, you must not steal, you must not testify falsely. Honor your father and mother, love your neighbor as yourself.

See, Jesus lists all the commandments that speak to the way that we treat other people. And this man turns to Jesus and he says, I have done those things. I have done those things. And Mark tells us that Jesus looks at the man and he loves him. And out of that love, Jesus says, go and sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven.

Then come and follow me. What I find remarkable is Jesus doesn't challenge the man on whether he'd actually kept all the commandments all of the time. The truth is, he probably hadn't. Like I've seen 3 year olds not honoring their mother and father. Like, maybe it's just my kids, but I have seen that.

I don't reckon he'd kept them all, all the time. But Jesus knows that there's actually a bigger issue at play. The issue is the commandments that Jesus left off the list. You must have no other gods, no idols. Don't misuse God's name.

Keep the Sabbath holy. Those commandments don't speak to our relationship with others. They speak to our relationship with God. They're about our worship. They're about who sits on the throne of our lives.

Jesus could see that that man already had a master. He already had a master. He was building up and storing up earthly treasure. And that earthly treasure had taken a hold of his life. And so Jesus says, you need to take it off its throne.

You see, Jesus isn't anti wealth. We shouldn't read this passage as Jesus saying, you can't have things. He's saying, you can't be owned by those things.

Look at what Jesus promises and what the man does. Jesus says, you'll store up treasures in heaven. Choose the right master and you'll store up treasures that don't fade. And we read the man leaves downcast, leaves sad, because he can't topple that master. The wealth and the money and the treasure he's built up has such a grip on his life that he can't even trade it for something that is better.

So where does generosity lead? It leads to treasures that last. It leads to not being owned and controlled and under the spell of the things that we have.

It leads to joy in being with Christ for eternity. It leads to the joy we have in seeing our resources in the here and now make an eternal impact, that we might see people there in eternity that we have had the opportunity to invest in. And maybe we see that. Maybe we don't see that right here and now, but we will see it in eternity. You know, our vision at Horizon is three simple words.

It's Jesus for generations. And the whole idea is that we don't want to be a church that is just one generation deep, that just lasts for a moment. We want what God does in and through each one of us, through my life, through your life. We want it to have a ripple far beyond the here and now. You see, ultimately, Jesus for generations is not about us building up treasures that will fade.

It's about living big and generous lives. So my invitation to you this morning at the end of this very short two week series is simply Paul's invitation. He writes to the believers at Corinth, and we have it here for us this morning. Excel in this grace. Excel in this grace.

Excel in this grace of giving, not out of guilt or pressure or obligation, but because your heart has been captured by grace and and is overflowing with rich generosity in gospel partnership for the sake of the kingdom. Let's pray. Oh, God, we thank you for this, Lord. We thank you for this topic, Father, which is so tricky, Lord, it can feel quite confronting. Lord, we thank you, though, that your word isn't silent on us.

In fact, you've ensured it's there for us over and over again because you just know how much those things can take a grip on our heart. Lord, help us to see generosity not as a resources issue, but as a heart issue that we might be so taken by the grace of God at work in our life that that would overflow from us just like it did from those Macedonian believers, that it might overflow out of our lives in rich generosity. That we would not have treasures on earth sitting on the throne of our lives.

They can be so attractive, they can be so demanding. But that we might have you on the throne, that you might shape and guide each part of our life, Lord. That there would be no part that's off limits to you, but that we might come before you and let you, through your Holy Spirit, do a work in us. Lord, we pray that you would help us as a community, as a church, to faithfully steward what you've given us, Father. That we might use those things well, not to build up earthly treasures, but to build up treasures in heaven.

That through the ministry of the people here, through the ministry of the church, through our gospel partnership together, that there might be many, many people, one, many, many people in eternity who might look back and say it was this faithful, rich generosity of those believers there in Canberra. And so, though we pray that that might be the case, help us to do that well, we pray this in Jesus precious name, Amen.