Welcome to Delight in Grace, the teaching ministry of Rich Powell, pastor of Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. Generosity is the result of a grateful heart. The grace of God shifts our focus away from building our own kingdoms and calls us to lives of stewardship. All we have becomes a gift from the Lord to invest for the Lord. Let's listen to this message titled, Liberality That Abounds, from 2 Corinthians 8, 1-7. This is the third part of a message first preached on June 22, 2014 at Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. To hear the whole message and other messages from the series, you can visit www.delightingrace.com. You have stuff, you have to protect it, right?
Such as the problem with wealth. My dad was the pastor of a church down there, and there was a family in the church. They were actually a couple. They were empty nesters.
They were living by themselves, probably at that time in their early to mid 50s, and I will never forget it. They lived in a little shack down by a stream. It was a small river, a stream. It got pretty deep in some places. They actually called it the Jordan. I, by the way, was baptized in that river, so I can honestly say I was baptized in the Jordan.
Okay. But they lived on the banks of that little stream. What they lived in was whatever they could find to make walls with.
Flattened out tin cans, cardboard, other discarded building materials, whatever they could put together to live in. This family was materially very poor, but they had a wealth that was unforgettable. As poor as they were, they invited my family, mom and dad and four boys. They invited us to dinner. He got his gun out, went out rabbit hunting, shot rabbits, and they invited us to a dinner called Arroz con Coco y Conejo. Rice with coconut rabbit. And the plates they served on were banana leaves. I will never forget that dinner. I felt so unworthy. Their joy was unmistakable. Their gratitude was clear. What does this?
What does this? We think that the wealthy people are the generous ones. Did you know that statistics show that that's really not true?
In fact, almost the opposite is true. But why is it that people can be generous like this, even going through poverty and adversity? Because look what it says in verse five. I think this is the key. Not only as we had hoped, but they first gave themselves to the Lord.
It's a good phrase, isn't it? They first gave themselves to the Lord. What does that mean? You go back to Jerusalem and materially they were all out. But when it comes to the churches at Macedonia, they first gave themselves to the Lord.
What does that mean? They were all in. Spiritually, materially, they were all in. They belonged to Jesus Christ and everything about them. You see, commitment to Christ makes a huge difference in people's lives. And the grace of God changes one's perspective toward material things specifically, but about life in general.
Here's an example of that. Sam Houston, does that name ring a bell to some of you? I don't know, some of you might have known him.
It was a long time ago. LBJ, Lyndon Baines Johnson, while he was president, on his wall in the office was a framed letter written by General Sam Houston over a hundred years ago to Johnson's, what was it, great grandfather, Baines. Baines had led Sam Houston to Jesus Christ. And Houston was a changed man, no longer a coarse and belligerent man, but peaceful and content. And the day came when Houston was to be baptized, an incredible event for those who knew him. After his baptism, Houston offered to pay half of the local minister's salary. When someone asked him why, he said, my pocketbook was baptized too. What does that mean? Just like the Macedonians, he's all in.
He's all in. You see, under the grace of God, we recognize, and this is a work that God's grace does in us, it transforms our perspective. And through the grace of God, under the grace of God, we recognize life as a stewardship, that all that we have is entrusted to us by God. It's not ours, it's entrusted to us to be stewards of it. And it is ultimately his, so we point to him, we draw people's attention to him with his stuff. That's what stewardship is.
That's what grace does in transforming our perspective. In his writing, God's money managers letting go of what isn't mine, Randy Alcorn gives this excellent example of stewardship. Suppose you have an important package to send to someone, someone who needs it, and you take it to an overnight delivery service. In the early service I was picking on Bill Bean because he works for FedEx. You take it to someone, to an overnight delivery service. What would you think of it instead of delivering the package, the driver took it home? And then you confront him and he says, if you didn't want me to keep it, why did you give it to me in the first place? You say, I'm going to go visit Bill Bean and see if you've got any packages in his home. If you did this and he had the package, you'd say the package doesn't belong to you, it's your job to deliver it to the person who needs it. True. And just because God puts money in your hands doesn't mean he intends for you to keep it.
That's stewardship. So the next question then, in the outline, is what's going on in you? And this is the question that Paul is asking the church at Corinth.
What's going on in you? The members of the Corinthian church were not facing persecution nor were they in desperate financial straits. In that sense they were okay. And for that reason they ought to be contributing willingly and generously, even more so. And they ought to, as he points out here, as Titus started the collection, the contribution. The last time he was there, remember, Titus was Paul's messenger to the Corinthian church. And then he went back to Paul and he told him this is what's going on at the Corinthian church. And that's why Paul goes into doxology there in 2 Corinthians 2 verse 14. He says, let's resume that collection that Titus started.
You have made the necessary moves. We remember the Corinthian church is an example of problems in the church. But as we learned last week in chapter 7, the Corinthian church is also an example of dealing with those problems accurately and biblically. They humbled themselves.
They submitted themselves to biblical authority. And they made the necessary changes and corrections in the church. And now that the church has moved beyond that, Paul says, alright, let's get on with your generosity. I've given you an example of the gracious generosity of the church at Macedonia, even though they're poor and they're undergoing adversities.
Show your true love. Let's move beyond the distractions of the church now. And he says, complete this grace in you. I love his use of the word grace in this text. It really helps us understand what grace is. In verse 7, he says, see that you abound in this grace also.
See that you abound in this giving. That's his use of the word grace. Giving out of gratitude.
Gracious giving. That's what grace is. That's what God's grace is to us. It is his gracious giving. And so we see then that generous giving is God's grace at work in the life of the believer.
It is an outflow of the wealth of spirit. The word grace in these two chapters appears 10 times. Grace can be translated gift, kindness, enablement, thanks, goodwill. All of those are accurate translations of the word caris.
And the best translation is dependent on the context, of course. By God's grace, by his gift, by his enablement, the Macedonians freely gave beyond their ability. And the depth of their poverty was exceeded by the wealth of their spirit. That's God's grace at work. And so generous giving is God's grace at work. Generous giving to God's purposes is evidence that God has been working in people's hearts and minds. Generosity is an outflow of grace. It is a spiritual virtue to be cultivated and in which to excel. And that is the message of the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians chapter 8. And because it is the inspired word of the living God, it is God's message to us today. Generosity is an outflow of grace.
It is a spiritual virtue to be cultivated and in which to excel. The Lord Jesus spoke to this as we read from Proverbs before. Now here's some verses from the New Testament as we read Jesus' words, give and it will be given to you. Read that verse in Luke sometime, Luke 6 38.
Shaken, shaken, pressed down, overflowing. You know, if you're generous with the verse we read this morning, if you sow, the law of sowing and reaping, next week we're going to look as we continue in this, we're going to look at the, there is a reciprocity in it as well, though that is not our motive for giving. He says, a good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good.
And that's what we saw in the heart and minds of the Macedonian believers. So what does the Apostle Paul say? He says, see that you abound. That word abound means to excel.
Go beyond. See that you abound in this grace, in this gratitude, in this kindness. See that you excel in it as a manifestation of God's grace at work in our hearts and minds. That is God's word to his people this morning. Thanks for joining us here at Delight in Grace. You've been listening to Rich Powell, the lead pastor at Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. The Delight in Grace mission is to help you know that God designed you to realize your highest good and your deepest satisfaction in him. The one who is infinitely good. We hope you'll join us again on weekdays at 10 a.m.
