Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. Farmers know it's really pretty simple. No seeds, no plants, no plants, no vegetables, no vegetables, no harvest. They know all about the laws of sowing and reaping, laws God set in motion a long time ago. Today, we'll explore what Paul wrote about this to the church at Corinth.
From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Wind with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, few among us is a farmer these days, and so the image of sowing and reaping may not have a lot of meaning. Well Dave, I think that you know this, but I was actually raised on a farm in Canada, so I know quite a bit about sowing and reaping.
As a matter of fact, I used to go into my father's field, and I would take a head of wheat, and I would thresh it in my hand, and I would count perhaps 25 or 30 kernels. And whatever you sow, you reap. If you sow oats, you get oats. If you sow wheat, you get wheat. Now, it's very important for us to know that biblically, what God is trying to tell us is this, that if we sow properly, there will be a harvest. But I have another puzzle I'd like to share, since we're talking about sowing and reaping. Let me change the metaphor a little bit and ask this, is it possible to have petals without flowers?
Is it possible to have fruit without trees? You say, well Pastor Lutzer, why is that relevant? Well, at the end of this broadcast, I'll tell you exactly why it is relevant, but for now, I want you to listen to God's Word. Today, I'm speaking on the topic of giving, giving as in offerings. And the minute I say that, I know that there are several responses that are going through your minds.
Let me see if I'm right. First of all, there are those of you who brought visitors today. Your friends are here and you say to yourself, oh no, the very day that I invite them to Moody Church, what's he doing? He's talking about money. Then there are those of you who say, this is one message I'm going to sit out because I lost my job recently and I have nothing to give.
Thank you very much. I hope others listen. And then there are those of you who give faithfully and regularly and you're saying, yeah, it's about time that he preached on giving because I'm giving faithfully and it's about time other people started to give faithfully too. Because there are some people who don't give it all and it's about time they started.
Well, to begin with, I want to set you at ease and let you know that this is not going to be a harangue about we have needs, therefore you ought to give. This is not that kind of a message. As a matter of fact, the purpose of the message in no way is to rob you, but to enrich you, to lead you to life abundantly.
That's where we're headed. You know, I need to tell you as a pastor who's preached many messages that my messages do me a lot more good than they could possibly do you good, because after all, I have to live with the text. I have to pray about it.
I have to figure out how to organize what I'm going to say. And so in the process, God cuts me open and then sews me back together. My sermons always affect me.
I hope from time to time they affect you. But as I was writing this out Friday morning, I couldn't put the words down fast enough. The ideas were coming and I just said, Lord, give me these ideas a little more slowly so that I can write them down. Now, of course, it's not because what I'm going to say to you today is profound. It's really just the text of scripture that I was meditating on for most of the week.
But it is amazing, amazing. You are going to learn today things that hopefully will revolutionize your understanding of giving. And you'll understand at the end of the message why it is that Rebecca and I spent some time last night talking about how we can give more this year than we did last. Let me set the context of Second Corinthians, Chapter nine, Second Corinthians, Chapter nine. The Apostle Paul is writing this and it's on page 968. If you just happen to forget your Bible, and there are those that are there in the seats in front of you, 968. The Apostle Paul is writing to the church at Corinth.
Let me give you the context. The people at Corinth decided that they the people at Corinth decided that they were going to get an offering together to give to the needy Jewish believers in Jerusalem. In Jerusalem, there was a famine.
Things were tight. And so what these believers did is they said, we want to help saints that we will never meet, but we want to be generous in helping them as well. And then there was another church called the Macedonian Church. They had given, Paul says, out of their poverty, and they have come up with an offering. And so Paul is saying to the people at Corinth, you need to come up with an offering as well.
And he used that to motivate them. Now it was the Corinthian idea to come up with the offering. And what Paul does in chapters eight and nine is he discusses how the offering is going to be delivered with a delegation.
So nobody thinks that somebody is pilfering the funds. Paul explains that. And he also explains how that the two churches together are making this gift and what a blessing it is going to be to the Jewish believers in Jerusalem.
So that's the context. So Paul has been talking about the gift that the Corinthians want to give, and he says it should be a willing gift. That's in verse five of chapter nine. But now notice in verse six, the point is, whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.
Just that far for a moment. What Paul is saying is that giving is actually sowing. Now there are some people who don't give because they say the minute I give, that money is gone.
The apostle Paul says, no, it's not gone. You may not see it for a while, just like a farmer who puts seed in the ground, but the seed is gone after a manner of speaking. But because the farmer believes in the harvest, he knows that he will see it again.
He'll see it in another form. And if you sow sparingly, you'll reap sparingly. Being brought up on a farm in Canada, I remember that we used to plant wheat, and I think it was about a bushel per acre. That's the way we would seed. And then we'd get maybe 25 or 30 bushels in the fall per acre as we harvest it.
So every kernel multiplied itself 25 or 30 times. But let's suppose we didn't use a full bushel. Let's suppose we used a half bushel.
Then we'd only get 15 bushels in response to our half bushel. So the apostle Paul is saying, now look, when it comes to giving and he's talking about giving, if you sow sparingly, you will reap sparingly. If you want a great harvest, then you sow bountifully and you will reap bountifully. You say, well, how much should I give?
How much should I sow? Paul answers that. He says this, each one, and notice everybody should be involved. This is verse seven. Each one must give as he has made up his mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. He says we should give as we have made up our mind. He's saying that we should get on our knees and say, Lord, what is it that you want me to give? And once we decide what God wants us to give, we should follow through consistently. Now, there are many Christians who don't do that. And the way in which we know that they don't do that is here at the church.
We know, for example, that during the summer we have less income. Our offerings go down. Now, why should that happen? It's because there are some Christians who, when their presence say, well, you know, I've got 20 bucks or I've got 100 bucks, I'll give this week. But next week I'm gone.
So out of sight, out of mind. It shouldn't be that way. When my wife and I bought a house and we signed a lease and had a mortgage, we didn't say to the mortgage company, well, what we're going to do is we're going to skip July and August because that summer we're on vacation and we'll pick up the payments later on when we come back in the fall in September. No, no, we are committed to it. We've purposed in our mind. This is what we're going to contribute.
This is what the mortgage says. And we follow through. Paul says that we should give as we purpose in our hearts, in accordance with our blessing, a portion of God's blessing toward us. That's the way in which we should give. And how should we give? He says we should give not out of compulsion or reluctantly. Notice that there in verse seven, God loves a cheerful giver.
How can I illustrate this? I would say that most of us, when we pay our taxes, we pay them reluctantly and under compulsion. Isn't that true? What we do is we say every dime that I can save, I'm going to save. Every law that I can faithfully keep, I'm going to use to my advantage because every tax man will tell you, you never pay the government more than you absolutely have to. In fact, we pay people to help us to pay as little as we can to the government, right?
Isn't that what the tax brokers are all about? We pay them reluctantly and under compulsion. You know, as a farm boy, after I pay my taxes, thinking back to the farm, now I think I'm beginning to understand how a cow feels after she's been milked, okay?
That's the way we feel when we paid our taxes. But that's not the way we're supposed to give. We're supposed to give cheerfully. No reluctance, no compulsion.
Why is cheerfulness so important to God? It's because, you see, money was not made to be given away. Money was made to save.
And by the way, it is wise to save a portion of your money. It is wise it was made to save. It was made also to buy things so that we can exist.
That was the purpose of money. To give money away is so counter to our nature. It is so contrary to who we are as people that when it happens, and when it happens cheerfully, that is a mark of the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Joy in giving can only be the fruit of the Spirit. And God loves a cheerful giver. Now, if you're not a cheerful giver, let me tell you something about you. First of all, I would think that you probably have some low-grade anger. You may have anger against the church, against God, resentment of rich people, resentment because of the hand that you have been dealt. You may have a spirit of greed.
Any one of those things may apply. And so you can't give cheerfully. You may even give, but it's because of guilt or because of necessity. You do not give cheerfully, hilariously.
We like to emphasize that because that's the root word here. That doesn't mean that you hold your head back and you laugh. It means simply that you're glad to give and wish that you could give more and have such a sense of freedom when it comes to giving. That's what it means to give cheerfully.
And if you're in that category where you can't do that, I have a good assignment for you. Get on your knees and just let it all out before God. Confess how you feel. Confess how you feel about money, about how you feel about life, how you feel about your past, past experiences which have hampered you and get it all out there and leave it before the Lord because God loves cheerful givers. You say, well, Pastor Luther, all right, you said that giving is sowing, but where do we get the seed?
Well, I'm glad you asked. As in most instances, you'll notice that the Bible always has answers to questions that we ask. Notice what it says in verse 10. He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing.
You get it from God. And when you get paid at the end of two week period or the end of the month, that is a gift of God that God has supplied. Remember, giving is sowing.
You will see it again. Well, then the Apostle Paul goes on to talk about the fact that there will be a harvest. There's going to be reaping.
Now, I need to say some things here to clear the decks and to clarify. If you've ever watched much television, you know that there are TV evangelists who teach something like this, that you are to sow a seed and the way in which you sow a seed is to send money to them. And then what will happen is God will give it all back to you. And then they have story after story about a person who gave $100 and within two weeks, God gave him $1000 and on and on these stories go. That's manipulative and it's intended to simply be a high octane to fund raising phenomenon.
And it is my friend. They have taken an excellent principle, but they've hijacked it. And let me explain to you why in the Bible, there is no guarantee that there is a one to one correspondence, a tight connection between what you give and what God is going to give back to you in financial return. Years ago, I read a book entitled How to Give Your Way to Prosperity.
And I say, if you're talking about material prosperity, no, no, no, no. These evangelists, they don't believe what they themselves are saying. Can you imagine that if it wasn't a guarantee that if you give money to their organization, it's all going to come back to you.
They would be mortgaging their houses to invest in their own organization, knowing knowing then that they'd have tons of money back. But they don't do that, do they? And they don't tell you the stories of the people who give $1000 or $100 who never get any of it back. And so that is deception. But they do have a principle that is biblical. And the biblical principle is that there is not a tight connection between I give $10 and now God owes me $100.
That's not the connection. But there is a connection between sowing and reaping. And the harvest, according to this passage, is nothing less than abounding, abundant grace poured upon your life if you are a cheerful giver. Now your Bible is open because this promise is so wonderful. You have to see it in the text with your own eyes.
Notice it says this. God loves a cheerful giver, verse eight, 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. Let's look at it phrase by phrase. And God is able, that shows you the power of it, to make all grace abound. That's the measure of it toward you. That's the direction of it. So that having all sufficiency in all things at all times is the extent of it that you may abound in every good work.
That's the ministry of it. You are a cheerful giver. God is going to get back to you. And the harvest will be this abounding grace that is promised here in the text that may include money. Sometimes it remarkably includes money.
Sometimes it doesn't. But the grace of God will be upon your life. I noticed it just this morning in rereading the text.
It's amazing how you see things. It says God is able to make all grace abound, verse eight, and you'll notice at the end of the verse and that you may abound. So God abounds in our lives in grace and we in turn abound. It's all about abounding and a plentiful harvest. Now the question is exactly what does this mean so far as the text is concerned? What does it look like to receive this very special harvest?
Well, let's look at the text. It says, first of all, that we will receive righteousness. It says in verse nine, as it is written, he has distributed freely. He has given to the poor. By the way, in the Psalms, this is a description of a generous man.
He has distributed freely. He has given to the poor. His righteousness endures forever.
And now here's the promise. Verse 10. 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. One of the fruits that you will receive is the harvest of righteousness. This is not the righteousness of God, which is received by faith. This isn't a matter of saying that this is the way we're saved. It is through giving.
No, that's not the way it happens. It comes through faith in Jesus Christ. The righteousness referred to here is right living. So that you see, as you have a generous heart, as you take all that God has given to you and to me and as we lift it up to God with open hands so that we say, God, this truly is yours.
Now give me wisdom as to what to do with it. When we do that, there is a righteous kind of living with an open heart that is permeates all of our lives. And I wouldn't doubt, but that part of the bountiful harvest that is talked about is the impact in the lives of our children, in the lives of our grandchildren, in the lives of our relatives, in the impact in the church, because God says, I will give you the harvest of righteousness. I'll give you the harvest of right living. And then there's another harvest that is coming, and that is glory to God. Now here I'm going to have to read the text. Remember, he's going to be talking about the saints that live in Jerusalem and how glad they are going to be at this very special gift given by these two churches.
And now let's look at it very carefully. You'll notice it says you will be enriched in every way, verse 11, for all of your generosity, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. My friend, isn't it wonderful that God is faithful and when we are generous, the promise is that we shall reap righteousness. It's the way in which God's harvest works. Now at the beginning of this program, I asked you a question. I changed the metaphor and I said, is it possible to have fruit without trees?
Is it possible to have petals without flowers? The reason I mentioned that is in my new book entitled The Eclipse of God, I show why it is absolutely necessary to believe in God in order to have morality. You cannot have morality as an atheist.
Now, of course, there are atheists who are moral because they are created in the image of God, but logically, God is absolutely necessary for any kind of morality. In this book, which I, of course, emphasize the need to get back to God, it's also an apologetic showing our desperate need for God in society. Hope that you have a pen or pencil handy. Here's what you can do. Go to rtwoffer.com. That's rtwoffer.com or pick up the phone and call us at 1-888-218-9337. For a gift of any amount, this resource will be yours.
Go to rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. It's time now for another chance for you to ask Pastor Lutzer a question about the Bible or the Christian life. Jennifer is a regular Running to Win listener who asks, during Christ's three days in the tomb, did he descend below the earth?
What was happening at that time? Well, Jennifer, I'm going to give you a quick answer to your question, a very good question, by the way, and that is that if Jesus did go to hell after he died on the cross, he wasn't there for very long because he said to the thief, today you will be with me in paradise. There's some evidence that perhaps Jesus did descend into Hades. You know, the Bible says, thou wilt not leave my soul in Sheol, and there's a debate as to whether or not that just means the grave or whether or not it means something more than the grave. Sheol does often mean more than the grave.
It means some kind of existence in the nether world. It's possible that Jesus was there for a time, but if he was, as I mentioned, it wasn't for long because he ended up seeing the thief in paradise. But here's the bottom line. Whether or not Jesus descended into Hades or Sheol is a matter of dispute. But one thing is certain, he did not purchase our redemption there. And there are some false teachers on television today who say that Jesus went to hell and he bore our hell in hell. No, he bore our hell on the cross. And so please keep that in mind. That's where redemption happened, and all that we can do is to simply say that perhaps we don't know whether Jesus went to Hades.
But one thing is sure, he did end up that very day with the father and with the thief. Thank you, Jennifer, for your question. Thank you, Dr. Lutzer, for that thoughtful answer. If you'd like to hear your question answered, you can by going to our website at RTWOffer.com and clicking on Ask Pastor Lutzer, or call us with the question at 1-888-218-9337. That's 1-888-218-9337.
You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, 60614. Some think God's bottom line for the offering plate is how much money ends up there. Not so. He has another agenda. Next time, more on why God loves a cheerful giver and takes more note of what we keep than what we give. Thanks for listening. This is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.
