Multiplying in Every Way

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. Most of us think that generosity is something that God wants from us. Well, Paul says no, generosity is something God wants for you. We are worried about what we are going to have to give up in generosity, but Paul talks in terms of what God wants us to gain. It's not something he wants from you, Paul says, it's something he's got for you. It's his means by which you abound. Welcome to Summit Life with Pastor J.D.

Greer. I'm your host, Molly Bitovitch. You know, tragically, it's not uncommon to hear speakers and pastors who promise God's blessing in order to manipulate listeners into giving them money. They claim that if you give a certain amount, then God will bring you physical healing or financial success. But is that really what the Bible means when it talks about blessing? What should be the heart behind true biblical generosity? That's our subject today as we continue the series called The Whole Story. Pastor J.D.

titled this message, Multiplying in Every Way. Grab your Bible and a pen and let's join him in the book of 2 Corinthians right now. Have you ever been around somebody that just seems so generous, so free, so forgiving, just so selfless and thoughtless in what they gave and you just were around them and it was like this contagious goodness and you thought, I wish I were like that. I'm not like that. You'll see this passage that Paul, we're going to walk through today, shows you how that kind of spirit gets produced in people.

So if you got your Bible, I'd invite you to take it out and open it to 2 Corinthians 8 and 9 is where Paul is going to talk about how this spirit is developed in us. Now, as you're turning there, let me go ahead and just acknowledge the elephant in the room. I realize that whenever we talk about things like generosity or this, people get as nervous as my grandpa used to say, as a long tail cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

So I know that people are like, oh, this kind of makes me uncomfortable when we talk about this. In fact, I was thinking it reminds me of the sex education talk that we had to endure in the eighth grade. Remember that thing? How awful that was.

I unfortunately sat on the front row of class that day and I can remember Coach Yokely looking at me right in the eyes and making sure that I was aware of every little detail. Now, did I need to know it? Yes. Were we all the better off for it?

Probably. Do I ever want that to happen again? Never, never. People get nervous because they feel like this discussion that we're going to be in leads to a guilt trip where I try to get your money.

Well, I want to do my best right here at the beginning, if I can, to remove that fear in a couple of ways. We start here at this church from the assumption that God doesn't have financial needs. It is true. He uses our gifts as his means to work in our lives and in the world, but he doesn't have financial needs. That's not what this is about. God deserves our first and our best. And he calls us to use our resources for the world, the way that Jesus used his for us. But that is different than saying that God has needs. He needs us to fulfill. Thus, this is more of an issue of discipleship.

This is about how you and I as disciples of Jesus respond to the gospel, which is why I often say, listen, and I'm a hundred percent, every fiber of my being is legit when I say this. If you just can't get over me talking about it, like I'm manipulating you and this is a way for me to try to get money out of your pocket and into my hand. Maybe you had a really bad experience growing up. Maybe you've seen this abused over the years. I would request, I'm not just giving you permission. I would request that you apply this by giving somewhere else. Because the number one characteristic that defines Jesus was how he gave. So you cannot be a disciple of Jesus and not be radically generous. So if I had to choose between you giving here or you being, I would much rather you become a genuine disciple of Jesus and give somewhere else than I would for you to let some bad experience become an obstacle for you going down the path of discipleship. I want you to become a disciple of Jesus, which leads me to the second thing I want to emphasize as we get started. 2 Corinthians 9, this is what Paul says, each one God had given is he's decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion.

Under compulsion is I think he was looking right at me when he was talking. I'm pretty sure not that pastors, you know, no, God loves a cheerful gay, loves a cheerful giver. And if that's what God loves, that's what we want to see produced. So let's go back to 2 Corinthians chapter 8. And that's where we'll pick up because that's where Paul starts to talk about this. 2 Corinthians 8. And in this matter, Paul says, I give my judgment. This benefits you who a year ago started not only to do this work, but also to desire to do it. Verse 11.

So now finish doing it as well so that your readiness and desire may be matched by your completing it out of what you have. Now Paul is talking about an offering that the Corinthians committed to a year before. And now a year into it, he's like, you had this desire and I want to urge you to finish it well.

What Paul does is he lays out for them. He says, this is what happened a year ago. And I just want to come at the halfway point. And I want to say, this is what God wants to see produced in you.

And so let's go through. He says some really important stuff in chapter 8. We'll come back to in a minute, but let's jump forward to chapter 9 because that's where Paul really starts his thinking. And God is able, he says, 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. Now notice y'all that when Paul starts his discussion on generosity, he doesn't start with a need that God has. He starts with a grace that God wants to give. Do you see that?

I'll say it again. God's not short on money. He doesn't start this conversation from need. One of my favorite stories in the New Testament is the story of Peter obsessing about where he's going to get money to pay a tax bill. And he's really worried about it because he wasn't expecting the tax bill. And Jesus is like, Peter just kind of rolls his eyes like, go fishing.

And Peter's like, why? He said, just go fish. And so he goes and he throws a line and he pulls out a fish and the fish has got a gold coin in his mouth worth the amount that he owes on the tax bill. Now if nothing else, Jesus is trying to teach you, I'm not really short on money. I can have you catch fish with gold grills in his mouth and it's going to take care of everything, if that's what it takes. He's not short on money. He's never been short on money.

He doesn't need it. But the giving of God's people is the means, listen to this, it's the means by which he multiplies his mission on earth. And it's also the means by which he releases his abundance into your life. The best biblical example of this is probably the story of the five loaves and the two fish, the feeding of the 5,000. Here you got Jesus standing in front of 5,000 hungry people and his disciples are 5,000 men plus their families. And he was like, hey, how are we going to feed these people? They haven't eaten all day. And the disciples like, we don't have enough money and we've got no food. We've got no jobs.

Our pets are falling off. And so we don't know what to do. And so Jesus says, well, now what do we got? And so they look around, there's a little boy standing there. It's got five loaves, two fish.

You may know the story. Jesus takes five loaves, two fish. He holds it up to heaven. He blesses it. He multiplies it. He distributes it. Not only is there enough to feed all the 15,000 people that are there that afternoon, they take up 12 baskets full leftover. He multiplies it.

Now here's the question. Could Jesus only feed that amount of people because it was five loaves and two fish as if, let's say he only had three loaves and one fish. Would it have only been half the miracle then? Sorry guys, I can only feed 2,000 of you because I only had three loaves and one.

No. He could have had a breadcrumb and a fish fin and done just fine. Because the point was not the amount that he had to start with. The point was the power that he had in taking what was offered to him in faith.

That's why we say it's an issue of discipleship. Just like the little boy took all that he had, five loaves and two fish. We take all that we have and we say, God it all belongs to you.

What do you want to do with it? It's got nothing to do with the amount of money we bring. The point is whether we place it all in the hands of Jesus. Obedience is also the means by which Paul says, God multiplies grace in your life. This is how you can abound. Before I show you how, he's about to explain how that works in a second.

Let me just make sure you see that. Because most of us think that generosity is something that God wants from us. Well, Paul says, no generosity is something God wants for you.

We are worried about what we're going to have to give up in generosity. But Paul talks in terms of what God wants us to gain. Not something he wants from you. Paul says it's something he's got for you. It's his means by which you abound.

Here's how it works. Verse 10, he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and it will increase the harvest of your righteousness. Verse 11, you will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way. Now, a couple verses, couple questions I want to ask out of verse 11 here.

Here's the first question we want to ask. What does enriched in every way mean? What does you will be enriched in every way?

What does that actually mean? Does that mean financially you'll be enriched? As in when you give to God, he will multiply you financially? Is that what he means? Well, that's certainly going to be included in the word every. Every way would mean every way, right?

I mean, that's every is a big word. That's a promise repeated throughout scripture that when you give to God, you can't out give him. He multiplies it and gives it back to you. For example, and again, there's numerous verses that say that Proverbs 3, 9 and 10, honor the Lord with all your wealth and the first fruits of all your produce.

And if you do, what's going to happen? Your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats will be bursting with new wine or grape juice for you, Baptist. It's just the means by which God multiplies it in your life. So does God mean financial? Yes, he does. But here's the other question. Does he only mean financial as if this is nothing but an investment program?

No. He says in every way, the image here of sowing is a really illuminating one. What you harvest after you planted a seed often looks quite different than the seed you put in the ground. For example, a peach seed. It looks like a little rat brain.

You'd never want to eat it. But you put it in the ground and it produces a tree that looks nothing like the rat brain and it produces luscious fruits that you actually would want to eat. Paul says money is like a seed that you plant, that the harvest you get from what you plant is actually much better than what you planted.

What you're not getting is a bunch of, you know, a bunch of peach seeds back. What you're getting is something much more and much better. He says that's the way that God uses what you offer to him in faith. What are some of those other ways that God enriches you when you begin to live this way?

Well, sometimes I'll give you a handful of examples. Sometimes it's greater contentment. Many have said that the secret to a happy life is not having everything you want, but wanting what you have. The way Paul would say it is godliness with contentment is great gain. You want to know the greatest gain you could ever get in life is to be insanely happy with what you have and not be contingent on always having something else. If God would produce in you an insane contentment over what you have, you would be insanely happy. One of the things that God does in your life as you give is he works contentment in your heart. It's a gift he gives in response to you giving.

My family has seen this firsthand. I'll tell you that when my wife and I give generously, what we find is that we grow really content with what we have left. Kind of ironically, the other side, it's when we don't give generously that we find ourselves always wanting more and dissatisfied because contentment is a gift God gives with generosity. Here's another example, increased love for the kingdom of God.

He gives you an increased love for the kingdom of God. C.S. Lewis said, it wouldn't be a sermon without a C.S. Lewis quote, C.S. Lewis said, wealth has a way of knitting a man's heart to this world. Wealth has a way of knitting a man's heart to this world.

And that's a terrible curse. Giving is the way that God breaks that curse and creates a greater love for the kingdom of God in our hearts. Here's how Jesus said it. I used to always quote this verse wrong.

Here's what it really says. Matthew 6 21. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. I always quoted it as where your heart is, that's where your treasure is going to be. And I quoted it that way because it just made sense. If your heart is somewhere, then your money ends up following.

But Jesus actually reversed it. He said, no, when you put your treasure somewhere, your heart will follow that. That's not a hard concept to understand, right? Right?

When you put your treasure in a place, it actually makes you begin to love that place more. I want to do a guy who is a little bit older than me, diehard UNC fan. I mean, just died in the wool, good day to be a Tar Heel, Tar Heel till I die, Tar Heel fan. He said I was always a lifelong Tar Heel fan, but then my daughter went to Duke, $70,000 a year.

He said, after a while, I found myself starting to cheer for them devils. He said, why? Because when you're giving 70,000 a year to somebody, your heart goes with it.

Right? That's what God says happens with our treasure. When we put our treasure in the kingdom of God, our heart goes with it.

So if you want to love heaven more, if you want to love the gospel more, you just give sacrificially and watch how that enriches and transforms your heart. I've heard a guy say recently or in the same way, I'm giving can really clarify your purpose. He says, you know, this guy told me he was in his late 50s. He said, I've been a Christian for three decades now. And for three decades, I've been, you know, doing what I thought was right. And he says, but basically my life was characterized by saving and gathering.

I just wanted to gather. And I was always telling myself, I'm gonna do it for my kids. He said, it wasn't until my mid late 50s that I really begin to give sacrificially that God filled in my life a sense of purpose that has just kind of redefined my life. It's given me a sense of purpose I never had before and a sense of purpose I want to be able to pass on to my kids and wish I'd done it from the beginning. Giving produces in you a more loving heart. Stinginess shrinks your heart. It breeds isolation.

It makes your heart close in on itself. Giving opens you up and an open heart is a much happier heart. That's just a handful of examples of ways that God enriches you in every way beyond financial. Makes you abound in things when you're generous. You end up personally like that little boy who gave the five loaves and the two fish.

The most overlooked part of that story is what happens at the end. I mean, think about the little boy shows up with five loaves and two fish. When it was done, they had 12 baskets left over.

My question is, what do they do with those 12 baskets? You cannot convince me that the little boy didn't go home with like two or three of them. So what's that conversation like as he goes back into his house that afternoon? He left with a Levite lunchable, a Hebrew hot pocket. He walks back into his house with what we call a tabernacle tailgate special. A couple of them in his hands that Jesus was created through spontaneous generation.

That's awesome. What happens is you end up becoming somebody that begins to abound, that God makes you abound through what you open your hands on. I'm going to tell you this for my adult life, the last 25 years, which is not how old I am, but I'm saying since I've been 18, 23 years old. For 25 years now, God and I have played a game every single year. It's who can out give who. God is 25 and O.

He has not lost to me a single round. It always amazes me the way that God has enriched my life, whether we're talking financial, whether we're talking contentment, any of these things, he enriches my life through this. You can never out give God, period. God's not going to be in anybody's debt. And he says, just test me in this and see and watch what I do.

Watch what I do. Paul says, when you begin to understand that, so you begin to have this kind of hard that suddenly begins to come alive in it. Second observation there from verse 11. Why does God increase you financially? If that's one of the ways he increases you, if you're enriched in that way, then why does he do it? You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way. According to Paul, God doesn't increase your income, hear me, just so that you can increase your standard of living. He increases your income so that you can also increase your standard of giving. God does not begrudge what he has given you.

And he's not upset at us for enjoying the benefits that come from hard work and labor and the benefits that money brings. But with that blessing comes a responsibility. With great power comes great responsibility. I don't think that's in the Bible.

I'm pretty sure it's a quote from Spider-Man, but it is true nonetheless. The Bible version of that is to whom much is given, much is required. You see, there's basically two ways that you can look at your resources. And which way you look at your resources will determine a lot or tell me a lot about your spiritual maturity.

One way is where you think, basically, you may never verbalize this, but you say, my life belongs to me. I work for what I have. I'm the one who goes to work. I'm the one who's collected this and my life is mine. My talents are mine, but I'm a Christian. So what do I owe to God? So what of mine should I give to God? And you almost think of it like a God tax. A God tax and you're like, what's the God tax? What's the amount that God deserves because I want to give to God because I'm a good person.

That is an unbelievably immature way of approaching discipleship and it shows that you've never really even begun the process of discipleship in this area. The other way that you look at it, which is the mature Christian, you say, God, it all belongs to you anyway. Not one penny of it has ever belonged to me because it all is a gift from you. My talents are a gift from you.

Every breath I take is a gift from you. It's all yours on loan from you to me. What do you want me to do with all of it? You look at it like I heard a financial advisor was talking to me about the growth and generosity in his life. He says, you know, I realize I'm a financial advisor. When somebody hands me an $800,000 check, I don't go out and do with that $800,000 check, whatever I want to do with it.

It's their money and I've got to ask, how do they want me to use that? He said, really, everything that I've been given is that way by God. God gave me this gift.

He gave me all my life. And I say, God, what do you want me to do with it? I'm a steward of it, not an owner of it.

I'm going to tell you guys, a lot of aspects of spiritual maturity grow in people over time. This is one I've seen that happens all at once. All of a sudden you realize it doesn't belong to me, it belongs to Him. And here's how you know you've crossed that threshold.

Listen to this. You'll quit asking, how much do I have to give? And you'll start asking, what am I not giving and why am I not giving it? That's not saying you're going to give all of it because God gives you some of it for the purpose of taking care of you and your family.

He wants you to enjoy things. But what I start saying is, God, I'm going to look at everything I've got, all my talents, all my treasures, all my time. What am I not giving into your kingdom directly and why am I not doing that? Because ultimately that's what I've got to answer because you enriched me in every way so that I could become more profitable, more fruitful in the kingdom of God.

Summit Church, let me say something very serious to us. Every single one of us listening to me right now is a part of the richest 2% of people in the world. And with that prosperity comes the responsibility to use it for His kingdom. So when He blesses you throughout your life, He does so so that you can multiply it for His kingdom. Is that what you are doing with the blessing that God has given you? Is that what you're doing with the ways that He's enriched you in treasure and talent and time?

Now, I know the age of our church, the average age. So a lot of you are like, well, I'm not really that wealthy yet. All right, well, let me turn the question around on you. Based on what you're doing with what God has given you so far, if you were God, would you give you more money?

Do you understand what I'm asking? If God's purpose is to enrich people so that they can become more generous, based on what you're doing with what God has given you so far, are you the kind of person that if you were God, you would give you more money? Because it's a whole attitude, Paul says, God says He wants us to develop in life.

And that is what God does with me, He does for the purpose so that I can sow it in multiplication. In fact, what Paul shows us in these chapters is that if we don't live this way, the flip side of it is a curse. There's like blessing and there's cursing.

There's no neutral ground. The cursing He alludes to in chapter eight, I'll take you back there real quick and show it to you. Chapter eight, verse 12, Paul says, it's acceptable, talking about what we give to what a person has, not according to what he doesn't have, you can't give what you don't have. Verse 13, for I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened, but that as a matter of fairness, your abundance at the present time should supply their need so that their abundance may supply your need so that there may be fairness. Then verse 15, watch this, as it is written, whoever gathered much had nothing left over, whoever gathered little had no lack. That is a quote from Exodus 16, verse 13, Exodus 16 in a story about the children of Israel experiencing the provision of manna. They're out wandering the wilderness. There was no food.

They didn't know how to support themselves. And so God does a miracle. Every night He rains down this stuff from heaven called manna. Manna, literally in Hebrew, translated, what the heck is it?

They didn't know. They called it, what the heck is it? Based on the description, it looks like a mix between a Twinkie and a protein bar. God combined it and every night it was all around them, all this provision. And God said, go get as much as you want, eat as much as you want. It's calorie free, I guess. But here's the deal.

Here's the deal. If you try to take more, if you try to take more and you try to stockpile it and you try to hoard it, it's going to rot on you at night and it's going to spoil your stomach. It's going to spoil your whole tin.

It's just going to ruin everything. And it's given to us as a symbol. And the symbol is when we hoard the excess of what God gives to us, it actually rots us spiritually.

There is nothing wrong. There is nothing wrong with saving for the future. But there comes a point at which you begin to trust in your savings for the future.

And when that happens, it rots your soul. How do you know you've gotten to that point where you trust in your savings? Easy.

It's a very easy question. It's when you save extravagantly, but you don't give extravagantly. When you save more extravagantly than you give, what you're showing is that you're trusting in that, not God.

We are called to live sufficiently and to give extravagantly. A bit of a turning of the tables than what we might be used to. You're listening to Pastor J.D. Greer on Summit Life. Today's message is titled Multiplying in Every Way, and it's part of a series called The Whole Story. If you'd like to catch up on previous messages or if you want to view the transcripts, you can find them online at J.D.

Greer dot com. J.D., we've got a new resource right now for our listeners. It's a custom Summit Life Bible. Now, we all know it's important to read our Bibles, but what's the best approach to reading the Bible? How does it grow our relationship with God?

All right. Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think what you're asking is we know the Bible is the Word of God. I would assume that the majority of our listeners would say, yes, I agree with that. So, how are we supposed to respond when we read? How does reading a book create a relationship, right? You know, when you're a young believer, the first thing you think is, well, then it should affect my behavior. But what you've got to begin to see is that the Bible is God's Word, that it is living and active, and He is using it to speak into your life. So, the promises you are unearthing are promises to you.

All the promises of God are yes in Christ Jesus. The warnings, some of them are going to apply to you at different times in your life. My dad tells me for years, I always thought my dad was like the superhero Christian that never missed a day of quiet time. And when I was older, he said, no, no, no, he said, I really struggled at the beginning. He said, but what changed is he said, I realized that in the morning when I would get up and read the Bible, that God was more anxious to meet with me than I was to meet with Him.

And he said, when I got that understanding, he said, it changed because I began to want to hear from God through His Word. If we could help you know God better, to serve Him more faithfully and to love Him and to know His love for you better, that's our heart here at Summit Life. And I think this resource is one of the best tools we've offered to help you do that.

So, you can reserve a copy today. Just go to jdgrier.com. We would love to do this, and it would be our honor to be able to say that we helped you a little bit, not just know more about God, but actually know God better. when you donate online at jdgrier.com. If you'd rather mail your gift, our address is J.D. Greer Ministries, P.O.

Box 122-93, Durham, North Carolina, 277-09. I'm Molly Vidovitch, and I'm so glad to have you with us today. Be sure to listen Friday as we continue our study called The Whole Story on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.