The Genius of Generosity - How Does God Measure Generosity?, Part 2

God blesses generous people.

Let me repeat that. It's an absolute principle from Scripture. God blesses. He causes His favor, His blessing to be upon people that are generous.

Now here's the problem. We often think we're generous, but He measures it different than we do. Today, learn how God measures generosity.

You don't want to miss it. Thanks for joining us for this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Chip's our Bible teacher for this international discipleship ministry focused on helping Christians live like Christians. Well, in just a minute, we're going to wrap up our series, The Genius of Generosity. We hope you've learned a lot over the past several programs, so to help others learn as you have, would you take a minute after this message and share it with a friend or loved one?

You can do that either through the Chip Ingram app or by sending them the free MP3. You'll find it livingontheedge.org. Today, Chip's going to reveal an incredible example of God's generosity toward us in the Christmas story. Now, you may be thinking, well, it's not Christmas anymore, so why are we talking about it? Well, for that answer, let's join Chip for the second half of his message, How Does God Measure Generosity? Well, what's so good and wonderful that is is that my question would be, how are you doing in your growth of generosity of giving your time?

I want you to know money is the training wheels. When you begin to say, God, I want to give you the best of my time. I don't know what that looks like for you. It's the early morning for me. I want to give you the best of my time, and if you're like me, you're going to get a call from someone, and it shows up on your phone, and I have about three people in my life. When their name comes up, it's like, this is not a short conversation. It's never a short conversation. In fact, it's a conversation where I can ask one or two questions, and 45 minutes later, I'm not sure.

If I hung up, they wouldn't know it. But you know what I've realized is, Jesus loves unlovely people. Jesus made time for people that most of us don't want to make time for. And what I'm really saying, see, what generosity is, it breaks your pride.

Generosity says, this person where this dysfunction with this conversation, with this baggage, matters to God, so they matter to me, because he lives inside of me, and giving my money is a pretty high control. I can do it on my terms. I give my time, it gets messy.

The shepherds left work. It's one thing to write a check, but I mean to leave work, to not work so much, to give time to family, or a friend, or to minister, or to open your home in a small group. Oh, but I'd have to leave work early, and other people get ahead. Well, I, yeah. Takes faith, doesn't it?

You're starting to see, time is way more valuable. But it goes beyond that. The Christmas story then introduces a new character, and we get Joseph who's engaged. And as you read this engagement period in the Jewish culture is, you know, the families would be involved, and the families would agree, this is the right man, this is the right girl, and in this culture, it would be a semi-arranged marriage, and then there would be what's called a betrothal, and so you would get engaged, and then you'd have up to sometimes a year, and the man would then get the house ready, and get financially responsible, and where they're gonna live, and the betrothal period was very official. I mean, it wasn't like today when you're engaged, and say, hey, you know, I'm not sure this is really right. Let's break the engagement.

The only way to break an engagement then was to have a divorce. Now listen to Joseph's story, and think of what it would be like, especially guys. Think of this as your girlfriend, and you hear this story about her. Matthew chapter one, beginning at verse 18, it says, The angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, and said, Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home with your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son. You will give him his name, Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins. And all this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet. The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Emmanuel, which means God. God is with us.

When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him, and he took Mary home to be his wife. Now just, you talk about your reputation, alright guys? Those of you that think about way, way back, for some of you when you were engaged, and your girlfriend comes to you and says, hey, I just want you to know, I've never been with another man, but I'm pregnant. And you say, well, how can this be? And she says, well, it's God.

Oh really? Yeah, it's God. Angel told me. Yeah, okay, so let's get now, you have an angelic visit. And this angel, literally, I mean in the middle of the night, you have this dream, and he speaks to you and says it's okay, and then he says, this is the savior of the world, the Messiah's coming, Mary told you the truth, this is the real deal, I want you to do it. Now sometimes we read these Bible stories like Joseph, some wind-up religious robot, oh yes, God said it, I will do it, God said it, I will do it. He's a guy!

He's thinking, now wait a second. I mean this is when the sexual mores were way different than they are now. I mean you could get stoned for adultery. You don't have babies out of wedlock. So now Joseph is going to marry a girl that's pregnant? What are the guys down at the bar gonna say? Joseph you fool, Joseph you idiot, can you believe that?

I mean all of his life, the suspect, the suspicion, how in the world could any man marry some woman who's pregnant with someone else's kid? In that day, his reputation, gone. Let me ask you, when you start thinking about money or time or reputation, what's the most valuable, what's the hardest to give? I'm gonna guess that group this size, we have people that probably give your money faithfully.

And I bet there's people in this room that actually are pretty willing to give your time. But I bet there's some of us that as relatives come in or when a topic comes up at work and it's one of those black and white issues and you know the Bible says this and it's really clear and your personal convictions are here, but you know if you would fly your flag and verbalize that, they would think you're one of those Bible-thumping, anti-intellectual, evangelical weirdos and you know what you do? You don't say anything. Because what people think of you matters more than what God thinks of you and how you appear and it might impact your career and it might impact the future, right? You tell people you go to church here and they look at you like, so you're just not smart or what? You're not a thinking person?

You're not an intellectual? Are you willing to give God your reputation? Are you willing to kind of go out there on the limb and say, you know Lord, and by the way I don't mean be stupid, I don't mean be argumentative. I mean there's a lot of Christians that please, you know, act in ways that actually hurt God's reputation. I'm talking about you know those areas when the Spirit of God is prompting you to step up and verbalize and model what you really believe and all this pressure that you're so afraid of what people think.

Generous people. Joseph gave his reputation. For Mary, it was beyond her reputation.

I mean her reputation was ruined, but she gave her future. We pick the story up in Luke chapter one. It's in the sixth month. God sent the, now notice the angel, Gabriel, he's the great messenger of God who announces the greatest announcements in scripture. Gabriel goes to Nazareth to a town of Galilee to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, the descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary and the angel went to her and said, greetings, you're highly favored, the Lord is with you. I mean I just, I don't know how or where this happened but I just picture it had to be in a private place and you know maybe Mary was just getting ready for bed or maybe she couldn't sleep that night and all of a sudden an angel's in the room.

I mean light emanating out of him, he starts to speak to her responses. Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be, wouldn't you? But the angel said, do not be afraid Mary, you found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son and you're to give him his name Jesus. This is really good because at least Joseph gets a dream that says Jesus is the name and Mary gets a visit that says Jesus is the name so when they talk together they're on the same page. Then notice, he will be great and be called the son of the most high.

The Lord God will give him the throne of David and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever and his kingdom will never end. Mary understood what was going on here. The throne of David, his kingdom. Later in the same book she has this prayer, this magnificent prayer and she talks about how God is faithful to the humble and she quotes 12 to 15 different parts of Old Testament passages. This young girl was godly, maybe 15, 16 years old, knew God, loved God, found favor. Those words, the throne of David, he'll be called the son of God. She understood the long awaited Messiah, God visiting the earth, fully God, fully man is going to take up residence inside my body and I will give physical birth to the son of God and I will be the mother of the Messiah. But she sort of had a methodology question and so her response is, how can this be since I'm a virgin?

And the angel said the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the most high will overshadow you so that the holy one to be born will be called the son of God. And then almost as though, can you imagine a little 15, 16 year old girl trying to take all this in and it's like the angel said, you know, by the way, let me give you a little touch of reality. You know Elizabeth, your aunt? Yeah. You know the old lady who can't have kids? Yeah. I mean way past childbearing?

Yeah. Right now, she's six months pregnant. And what we find is after this, Mary goes and visits her and I think it was a great encouragement to her faith, especially when she walked in the room and John the Baptist would leap inside of Elizabeth in recognition of this is the mother, the savior of the world.

And he says for nothing is impossible with God. And then I love her response because now I want to talk to you ladies and I don't know much about this except I have one daughter and one wife. And I talked to my wife a lot about the dream she had someday and what the wedding would look like and this guy that she was going to marry and the kind of person he would be and maybe, you know, two or three kids or. You know, when you're a young girl, don't you have dreams about your future and what it's going to look like and who he might be and, you know, where are you going to live? And, you know, back then, I don't think they had white picket fences, but, you know, Mary gave her future away.

Her life was never normal. And her response was, I am the servant of the Lord. Be it unto me according to your word.

Here's what you got to grab. God who actually made all that there is wants to do things in you and through you beyond your wildest imagination. But he doesn't have your heart and can't start to guide you until you can demonstrate you trust him and you say, Lord, I'll trust you with the training wheels of my money.

And then you begin to say, I'll give you the best of my time and then it's your reputation and then here's a lot of people get there and what they say is, now God, here's what I want you to know. Inside this box for my future, as long as I work at this kind of job, marry this kind of person, never get geographically beyond where I am. You know, I just want you to know inside this box, you could do whatever you want with my life. And you know what God does with most people's lives? He does exactly what you let him do inside that little box and you can go to church and you can write your first check to the Lord and you can read your Bible and you can go to a little Bible study now and then and even share your faith now and then and feel like, but God's been tapping on your shoulder and say, what about your future? What about your future?

You're willing to go anywhere? 80% of all the people in America have a job they hate, but they won't leave it because the economic income is greater than doing what they were made to do. See, I mean it's a scary, you're starting to get generous when you say, God, I want to do with your future anything you want done in my future. And that usually requires some sort of step of faith and then people that we interview or people that you know that have the sort of winsome, attractive love for God that oozes out of them and it's the kind of Christians we all someday kind of want to be. I will tell you what, they've given their future to God and they're doing some things and experiencing things they never dreamed would ever happen.

They thought it only happened to quote really spiritual people or really smart people, really holy people and what I will tell you is the Bible is filled with only ordinary people through whom God does extraordinary things and the prerequisite isn't gift or talent or smarts or heritage or background. The prerequisite is trust and availability and that's why the Christmas story is a graduate level in generosity because it's unlikely people who God does improbable, impossible, amazing things as increasing levels of generosity. And she gives her future and then Jesus does what? He gives his life. Mark 10 45 for even the son of man came not to be served but to serve and give his life for many.

The word for there means in the place of as a substitute for and you can kind of see I sort of picture, you know, down here they see a star, a little bit of revelation, they respond to it. They get an angelic visit. Over here, wow, he gets a dream with an angel of the Lord.

She gets a visit from Gabriel. Jesus before the foundations of the earth looks through the portals of time and the eternal now and who for the joy, not reluctantly, who for the joy, was it hard? Yes. Did he anguish in his soul? Yes. Was it in the garden? Was it a struggle?

Completely. I like that because it is for me too. But when he gave his life, it wasn't a reluctant, it was who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, offering himself so he could pay for you and you and me and you and you and whosoever would believe in him. The father goes beyond that. The father gave his son and that window and that moment of time when Jesus hung upon the cross for the first time in eternity, the father would turn away from the son and the just wrath of God, your sin and my sin and the sins of all people of all time would be placed on him as a sin offering and so he would cry, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And he would take on your sin and mine and the father would give. And for some of us, as you learn to become generous and God uses you, there's an Isaac in your life. That's why that picture is in the Old Testament. There's been times when one of my kids has been an idol in my life and God, are you willing to let him loose and go away and pursue this career that I thought he's never going to make any money, he's never going to have a life and it's probably not going to work out.

And it's a long way from here. Yes, Lord. Or letting your kid go to a mission field. There's another time in my life when my wife was an idol and she would tell you now, that's one of the hardest, most difficult times, but what God did in and then through. What precious possession, what are you hanging on to that God just wants to pry your little fingers off of so he could let you experience his love? Last night at the end of the service, there was a guy waiting around for quite a while and he, I thought, what's up? And he said, I just came here to thank you.

I said, what for? He said, well, I've been kind of involved in ministry and 29 years old, I'm in a graduate program now and I do some teaching in my church and I've told people all kinds of stuff for lots of years, but in the last two weeks, three of the biggest things happened that just shattered my life. And he said, you know something, there were two or three things that I've always held back, even though I was involved in ministry and read the Bible, two or three things that were just, God, I'm not trusting you with those. And I, for the first time in my life, told God, I'm all in. And I surrendered my life. I mean, I've been a Christian for years, but I surrendered all that I am, all that I have, God, I want you to know, I'm afraid, but I believe that you're good and you're kind, you're a son and a shield, you give grace and glory, you won't withhold any good thing. But now I'm taking that step. And he said, I just can't tell you what's happened in my life and my heart. I've been a Christian most all my life, but the power and the experience of God and the love of God that I've heard about but never experienced came because I gave.

Why? What's the scripture teach? Give and be given good measure, pressed down, shaken together, run over back into your lap. But it's not about money.

Money's the training wheels. Yeah, when you give, yeah, but time, same. Reputation, future, life, precious possession. There's three little things I want you to fill in. I've shared these, but I want you to just jot down three observations about the Christmas story and graduate level generosity. Number one, generosity is not so much a virtuous act as it is a virtuous response.

Each time it was God, God put the star, God sent the angels, God was in the dream, God appeared to Mary. He loves you, he's reaching, he's drawing you. So generosity isn't something great you do, you respond. Second, God doesn't measure generosity by the size of your gift but the size of your sacrifice.

And I would just ask you to begin to ponder what would it look like to go from the step that I'm on to the next step on this journey. There's a sacrifice but not as some legalistic I've earned God's favor but I want to respond to God's love at a deeper level of love. And finally, increasing levels of generosity bring increasing levels of reward and blessing. I mean each time the blessing is greater and greater and greater and greater and greater. Because you give and God always gives back.

You know before we do anything I want to stop right now and I want you to think about what you've heard. I mean the scripture completely redefines generosity. I mean there's the training wheels of money but reputation, future, life and then God is the most generous being in the universe.

He gave his son. And as you listen today I'm sure you had the lens of generosity but have you ever received the most generous gift that a human being could ever receive? The forgiveness of your sins. Not based on your merit, not working to sort of gain God's approval but to realize that Jesus hung upon the cross to pay for your sin in your place and that all you need to do is turn from your sin with the empty hands of faith and cry out, Oh God I have fallen short. I have sinned.

I need you. I believe today that Jesus died to pay for my sin. I ask you Lord Jesus come into my life.

Forgive me. Cleanse me. Make me your son. Make me your daughter. I believe you paid the price and you rose from the dead and I want to follow you. I want to receive your gift. If you've never done that do it right now.

And for many of you who are thinking to yourself, you know I remember when I did that. Could I ask you are you generous the way Jesus is? Have you given him your future?

Have you given him your reputation? Does your time and your finances reflect that you're surrendered, that you're all in? Give all that you have to God that he might take it, turn it around, and give back to you the life that's really life. Or by visiting LivingOnTheEdge.org, then clicking on the New Believers button.

That's LivingOnTheEdge.org or call 888-333-6003. Let us help you get started in your faith journey. Well Chip's still with me in studio and Chip before we wrap up this series, a talk one more time about the subtle lie many Christians have bought into when it comes to generosity. Why is it dangerous to think if I'm generous I won't have enough? And what can we do to combat this lie?

Well Dave, let me tell you. I think that lie has kept people from experiencing God's fullness and his grace and his power in their life. But behind that lie really is that God isn't generous, that he doesn't want to bless, that if I give of my time or if I give of my money or even if I give of my friendship and my energy, there won't be enough left over for me.

And the fact of the matter is that's the law of the flesh, not the law of the kingdom. Our God is good and kind. He's a son and a shield. He gives grace and glory. No good thing will he withhold from those who walk uprightly. And what I've learned is that this kingdom principle, that as we give, as we are more and more like him and as we release and give and share, he just keeps filling up our life and our heart and even our bank accounts so that we can give to others. Now it's never a give to get, and it doesn't mean your life is going to work out just perfect, but I can tell you this, that when people are generous, when you begin to have your antenna up looking for opportunities to love and to care and to share, it can be as simple as buying a cup of coffee for the person behind you or seeing the homeless person and instead of feeling guilty, you walk in the restaurant, you don't give him money, you're not sure where it's going to go, and you buy him a hamburger or buy him one of those little breakfast sandwiches and you walk out and sit next to him and you give it to him and sit with five or ten minutes. And I will tell you what, your heart and your life absolutely changes, and this little book, The Genius of Generosity, that I've had the privilege of writing, is short, only a hundred pages. It's only five by seven with a beautiful little leatherette cover, and what it allows you to do is get your mind and your heart thinking the way God thinks about generosity. And what you begin to grasp is that God has unlimited, unlimited resource, money, energy, time, and he's just looking for a man or a woman like you that he could pour it through.

That's a great point, Chip. And to help all of you better understand what it means to be generous in God's eyes, we'd like to give you two of these books, one for you and one for someone else at no cost. Just go to the Special Offers tab at LivingOnTheEdge.org or the Chip Ingram app. Our hope is that you and your spouse or a close friend will read this book together and then put these principles of generosity into practice. To request your two copies of The Genius of Generosity, visit the Special Offers tab at LivingOnTheEdge.org or the Chip Ingram app.

Now, this is a limited time offer, one order per customer while supplies last. Hey, before we go, I want to remind you of an easy way to listen to our extended teaching podcast. Hear Chip anytime on Amazon's Alexa Echo or Echo Dot. Just say, Alexa, open Living on the Edge, and you'll hear that day's extended teaching anytime you want. Well, until next time, this is Dave Druey saying thanks for joining us for this Edition of Living on the Edge.