The Generosity Matrix

Today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Welcome to Summit Life with Pastor J.D. Greer and happy Valentine's Day.

I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. Okay, be honest about this. Have you ever felt guilty about your level of giving or maybe more accurately about how much you're not giving? Many people assume that because there are still people in need around the world, God's only purpose for our money is to get the gospel to them. While this is of course important, today Pastor J.D. Greer shows us how to view our possessions through a generosity matrix and apply God's wisdom to spending, saving, and giving, all with the ultimate goal of honoring Him with our resources. This very well might be one of those messages that you want to come back to over and over. So as always, you can find it or share it from our website.

That's jdgreer.com. Well, let's get into it now. Here's Pastor J.D. 2nd Corinthians chapter 8. Give you a little warning here in advance.

This is not going to be a typical sermon where I work my way as I prefer to do through one passage of scripture and just explain to you what it says and what it means. Instead, what I'm going to do today is I'm going to walk you through a tool that I have developed, developed a few years ago. It's really helped me in a personal struggle that I've had with my relationship to money. I will tell you it's a very type A person.

I like boxes to check. I like to know what the standard is. I want to know what's the A, what's the A plus so that I can just, you tell me what to do and I can get there. And I just couldn't really figure out what the standard was when it came to giving, when it came to generosity.

And I want to know what that was. There seemed to be, at least to me, there seemed to be two extremes in the Christian world when it comes to the question of how Christians view their relationship with money. The first extreme is that basically God wants 10%, what we call the tithe. It's the first 10% of what God gives to you. It's based on an Old Testament principle that the first 10% of whatever God gives you goes back to him. And Christians think that's like the God tax. And then once you have paid that, then basically you've fulfilled your duty and you can do whatever you want with the other 90%.

And God says, go and be blessed. In fact, some Christians would go so far as to say that giving that 10% is God's way of making you rich by multiplying the other 90% back to you. This whole generosity thing is really just God's faith investment scheme and it's God's way of enriching you. This attitude, this extreme, friends, is not just wrong. I would say it's unchristian because it's turned God into your servant rather than making you his.

That's one extreme. At the other end, the other extreme are those who constantly feel guilty about what they are giving or what they're not giving because they assume that as long as there are poor people in the world and as long as there are lost people who need to hear about Jesus, then God's only purpose for our money is to get the gospel to them. And whatever you're not given is keeping somebody else from a meal or keeping somebody else from hearing the gospel. John Wesley, the evangelist in the Great Awakening 300 years ago, founder of the Wesleyan denomination, he very famously took down all the pictures on his wall because he said, I couldn't stand to look at them because they were the blood of the poor because I knew that whatever I'd wasted on decoration for my little meager apartment was actually another orphan that I could have brought in from the cold and I'm staring at these pictures and all I'm thinking about is the blood of the poor and the cries of the lost who need to hear about Jesus. There are some Christians who feel like that, it's like the message is, hey, whatever you're giving, you should give more. You should feel guilty about what you have. Or it's like if you're a little older, you might remember that really stirring scene in the movie Schindler's List where Liam Neeson, who is one of the greatest actors of our generation right behind Nicolas Cage, is playing Dr. Schindler and at the end, he's basically taken his fortune and he's used it to deliver Jews from being killed in the Holocaust and at the end, he starts looking at his watch and he's like, this watch could have set two more Jews free and he goes through everything in his possessions, just feeling guilt about how he didn't use those to help liberate certain Jews and that's how certain Christians feel about their possessions.

They just look at it and like, well, whatever I have, I could have given that and why didn't I and I just feel guilty about it. I've heard this described even by some as a wartime mentality of spending, like you would spend if you were in the midst of a war. In Long Beach, California, there's a floating museum, maybe some of you have been to it. It's the Queen Mary. The Queen Mary was a luxury cruise liner, state of the art cruise liner in the early 20th century that was for the richest of the rich. When World War II started, England retrofitted that luxury ship so that it could ferry troops back and forth across the Atlantic.

When it was a luxury liner, it accommodated 3,000 people with every possible convenience. In wartime, however, it was refitted to house 15,000 people in rooms that once would hold one couple would now sleep eight soldiers. John Piper says wartime and peacetime demand different things. In war, you forego luxuries to provide resources for the battle.

You melt down your silver spoons, if that's what it takes, to make bullets. That's what a wartime mentality is. Piper says obviously we're in a war, not with physical enemies, but we're in a war for the hearts and souls of people, so we should have that same mentality.

Now, to be very clear to you, I find this position inspiring, and I think there's a lot of truth in it, as I will explain to you, but I think in the end, it's out of balance, at least if you take it all by itself, for a couple reasons. First, honestly, I don't know where you end this kind of thinking. I mean, in war, if the enemy was coming after my family, I would melt down all of my spoons, all of them, and eat with my hands if that meant that I would have bullets to defend my family, or say one of my children had been kidnapped and was being sold into the slave trade, right? Any of you parents, I would give up my last meal. I would starve myself if it meant that my child could be fed and free.

I would gladly do it. Is that what God expects me to do now, that there are still lost people in the world that I just live in starvation, and is that the way that I'm supposed to live? Five hundred years ago, John Calvin acknowledged the never-ending trajectory of this type of thinking.

He said, I actually updated a little bit of his language, so it makes more sense to us. If a man begins to doubt whether he may use linen for his sheets, like a fine cloth for his sheets, his shirt, his handkerchiefs, and napkins, well, he will afterward be uncertain also about cotton. If I can't use linen, maybe the question whether I should give up napkins altogether. I should be downgraded from linen to cotton, so why do you need a napkin, right? He goes on, if he decides that eating gourmet food is sinful, opting instead for only plain food, soon he must conclude that he could survive on beans and rice. I mean, you kind of understand what he's getting at there? You can never really end this kind of thinking.

For example, like this. I'd say most of you probably took a warm shower this morning. Do you really need a warm shower? Couldn't you save that money? Couldn't you have given up your hot water heater and saved all the money on electricity or gas or however you fuel it so that you could help more orphans and missionaries? Like, really, you were so selfish. Your warm shower is so important to you that you're willing to starve an orphan so that you can bathe in the warm, you disgusting, overfed, gluttonous American.

Have you heard those kinds of messages? Whatever you got, you should feel guilty about it because you're pampered and you're holding it from somebody else. I just don't know where to end that kind of thinking, honestly. More importantly, even though I find this position to be out of sync with the number of places that the Bible teaches us about possessions, I've concluded that what the Bible does is it teaches us to view our possessions through a matrix. Not the Keanu Reeves kind of matrix, but matrix like a set of principles. A matrix, a set of principles that you're supposed to hold in tension. Now, here's the thing. Here's the key to today, okay? Any one of these principles, if taken by itself, will lead you out of balance. The Bible gives them all and says, here are the seven that you are supposed to live under when it comes to money and you're going to have to develop wisdom and you're going to have to develop a sensitivity to the Spirit in knowing how to apply these things. Now, I'm just going to tell you, I told you in the beginning, as a type A person, I'd rather have a rule.

Just give me the percentage. Tell me what the silver star is. Tell me what the A plus is and I'll go for it. The Bible just doesn't give you that when it comes to generosity. It gives you a set of principles and says, live in the tension of these. That's where wisdom is. So let me give them to you.

I'll walk you through them and explain them. I call this the generosity matrix, number one. Number one, most importantly, Jesus's generosity toward us is the model for our generosity to other people.

I put this one first because it is the most important. All the Christian's life is supposed to be lived in response to the Gospel. In 2 Corinthians 8, where Paul gives his most extensive instruction on generosity, he tells the Corinthian believers that ultimately they should think about how much Jesus has given up for them and respond accordingly to one another. 2 Corinthians 8, 9, he says, you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Though he was rich for your sake, he became poor so that you through his poverty might become rich. Now, you should go and do for others what Jesus has done for you. After all, friends, family, Jesus did not merely tithe his blood, right? How much of Jesus's blood did he pour out for you?

Not 10%. He poured out 100% of his blood for you. And that means our responsibility is not just to give our 10% back to God and then go on our self-serving way. Our responsibility is to offer 100% of our lives back to him and then to pour our lives and resources out recklessly for him and for others, just like he did for us. It's like I often ask you to consider, where would you be without Jesus?

Where would you be? Had Jesus chosen to hang onto his stuff and not come to die for you? And I've told you the surprising answer is you would be at exactly the same place that millions of people are in the world without you. Because it is true that Jesus has died for everybody, but it's also true that Jesus's death does not benefit anybody until they hear about it. And the only way they hear about it is through your giving, your going, and your sacrificing. That's why Paul says in Colossians 1 24, that we, the church, are to fill up in our flesh, in our bodies, what is still lacking in regards to Christ afflictions. What is still lacking in Christ afflictions? And I thought when Jesus was on the cross, he said, it is finished.

And now Paul saying there's something still lacking? When Jesus said it is finished, he meant the full price for salvation has been paid. But what Paul is pointing to is it doesn't matter if the price has been paid, if there's still people that haven't heard about it. And the way that they're going to hear about it is going to come through my wounds. It might be my wounds through persecution, it might be my wounds of sacrifice, but just like Jesus was wounded to purchase the gospel for us, you and I are wounded to proclaim and to spread the gospel.

It's like Martin Luther said, it wouldn't matter if Jesus died a thousand times if nobody ever heard about it. And so what that means is that for the believer, when God prospers me financially, it's not simply so I can go on my way and go into my self-serving life. Even though he prospers us, we say, not to increase our standard of living, God prospers us to increase our standard of giving. You're listening to Summit Life with Pastor J.D. Greer, and we'll get right back to today's teaching in just a moment.

But first, I wanted to make sure that you heard about a brand new featured resource that we're offering to our listeners. It's a 60-day devotional written by Pastor Kyle Eidelman called One Day at a Time, a 60-day challenge to see, love and celebrate the people around you. This time of year, we focus a lot on relationships, specifically around Valentine's Day. But the Bible has a lot to say about all of our relationships, and He's commanded us to love all people, not just our significant others. So how do we get better at doing that? One Day at a Time offers a 60-day plan full of rich teaching from the Bible, as well as a daily challenge for how to practically love God and love other people.

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To give now, just give us a call at 866-335-5220, or give online at jdgreer.com. Now let's get back to today's teaching here on Summit Life. Once again, here's Pastor J.D. So he goes on in 2 Corinthians 9.

Paul says that directly. God will multiply your seed. Talk about the money that you invest. He will multiply. Why does He multiply it? He multiplies it for sowing, greater sowing, so that you can increase the harvest of your righteousness. God multiplies you. When He multiplies you, He does it so that you can be even more Christlike and bless more people than your sacrifice and your generosity.

So hear me, okay? This is the most important of all the principles, but it's not the only principle. And if this principle is the only one that you recognize, even though it's the most important, I'm telling you, you're always going to feel guilty. Because face it, whatever you sacrifice for others is not going to compare really to what Jesus sacrificed for you. If you're still breathing this morning, you have not given up near as much as Jesus have. And even if you did give your life for somebody else, it still wouldn't be as much as Jesus poured out for you. Right? So it's one principle, but it's not the only one.

So here's number two. A second biblical principle, God gives us richly all things to enjoy. That is a direct quote from First Timothy 6 17, in which Paul reminds his readers, God delights to take care of His children. As we saw last week, God created a world of abundance as a gift to His children because He's a God of abundance.

The whole Bible just screams that. I told you that the Garden of Eden, it was basically the size of Yellowstone National Park and probably 100 times as beautiful. He created all that for two little naked people to run around in just all by themselves. That's a God of abundance. He just created this lavish beauty. Jesus pointed to the extravagant beauty that God clothed the wildflowers with and the abundant provision that God supplied the birds with as examples of how He wanted to take care of us.

Remember this? Matthew six and Jesus said, hey, if God made the wildflowers that beautiful and they just get trampled on and God supplied that much for the birds, don't you think He cares more about you than He does birds and flowers? And if that's how He takes care of those things, how much more will He take care of you? David in the book of Psalms celebrates how God brings forth good food from the earth. Wine that gladdens the heart of men or for you bad, just substitute sweet tea right there.

What you should see with that, okay? I don't get hung up with the wine part. What you see that is God didn't create food just to keep us alive. He created that to make us happy. And all God's people said, amen, that's right. In fact, John two, the only time we see where Jesus supplies the wine for a wedding party, the people that tasted Jesus's wine that He made said it was the best they'd ever had. Now, Jesus could certainly have done the watered down, cheap and sufficient wartime, three buck Chuck kind of wine.

But instead He provided the good stuff because He knew His father made it. And He knew that by enjoying it, we would glorify God. In fact, you look throughout throughout scripture, God commands all kinds of feast and parties and celebration where the best of the food and the best of the wine is supposed to be served. When in Nehemiah, I'm thinking about where the people, after some amazing thing happened, the people said, Hey, we should say we should honor God for the way that He delivered us. We should do it by having a week long fast. And all of a sudden an emergency message comes down from heaven through Nehemiah says, no, no, no, no, don't fast.

I want you to party because in doing that, you're going to celebrate my goodness. Jesus lived out these principles of abundance. In fact, Jesus' critics accused Him of being a glutton and a drunk. Now that was not true, of course, but the reason they said it was because evidently Jesus loved a good feast. In fact, biblical scholar Robert Karras points out that at just about every point in Luke's gospel, go back and look at it.

Just at every point in Luke's gospel, Jesus is either coming from a meal, at a meal or going to a meal. That's a savior worth following. Amen. All right.

Dr. Karras says you can literally eat your way through Luke's gospel. I'm happy to tell you, this is one area of Christ's likeness I have already mastered. Okay. I will often say, Lord, make me more like you and then pass me the wings.

All right. God loves it. He loves it when you bite into the succulent richness of a horseradish crusted Pittsburgh style prime rib and every taste bud in your mouth just screams out hallelujah and thanksgiving to God. He loves it when you wake up in a hotel by the beach and the surf breeze blowing into your room and the gentle sounds of the waves. He glorified in the comforts you feel in a clean house on a soft bed with a well manicured lawn.

He even likes it when you enjoy the clothes that you're wearing or when you stare at wonder at the intricate precision of the timepiece that you are wearing on your arm. God gives us richly all things to enjoy. He is glorified when we enjoy them. In fact, we see in scripture that God blessed multiple people with great riches. Riches that they were generous with, yes, but riches they also enjoy. People like Abraham, Job at the beginning and the end of his life.

In the middle, he was pretty hard up, but at the beginning and the end of it, he was really wealthy. David, not even to mention Solomon. It's clear that some of Jesus's early disciples were people of substantial means. Some of the Christians in Acts had large houses.

The reason we know that is because they hosted early church gatherings. Paul says in Philippians 4, he says, I know how to be brought low and how to abound. I've learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger. I've learned the secret of living in abundance and in need.

I can do all things. I can do both extremes through Christ who strengthens me. In other words, there are times where God pours out abundance on his people and there's times where they go through a time of need. And Paul says a faithful Christian can live faithfully in either. Some Christians are good at doing one of those things, but not the other. It's like my friend Larry Osborne, who's a pastor mentor friend of mine. He says, you know, so JD, when God Abrahams me, that is blesses me with prosperity, I'll give him thanks and I'll enjoy it. And when he Job's me, that makes me lose everything. Then I'll thank him just the same and I'll trust him and I'll enjoy my relationship to him.

That's what Paul is saying in Philippians four through Christ, I can be faithful in both. Now I can hear some of you, some of you type a people or you're like me, like, wait a minute, JD, I just can't help but think that by eating this nice meal, I'm depriving some poor kid of their provision. And honestly, I will tell you again, that's a good question for you to ask. You probably don't need all that luxury in your life. Not everything in your life needs to be made out of gold, right?

Sometimes copper will do just fine. And sometimes you can store up that gold treasure and use it for the kingdom and you can live on copper, but you should remember that Jesus taught us not to look at the world through the lens of scarcity, but look at the world through the lens of abundance. Our God is a God of such abundance that what you enjoy in one place doesn't automatically keep it from, from somebody else. I mean, this is a little childish, but just imagine if Jesus showed up by your bedside, he reached out and he handed you a hundred dollar bill and you're like, Oh Jesus, thank you for this hundred dollar bill. And he says, yep, here's what I want you to do with it. And he gives you instructions, go out and take your family out and have a good time. And you're like, Oh no, I need to give this back into the mission. And Jesus says, no, no, no, hold on, hold on. Okay, listen, I got plenty.

I got my own mint. I can make all the money that I need. This is what I want you to do with that. If he did that, you would be able to enjoy that without feeling you were taking away anything from anybody else.

Right? Well, see, that's important. The way Jesus tells you to look at money, he's like, listen, it's not like it all depends on you. I'm a God of abundance. I'm a God who overflows with provision. So I need you to do what I'm telling you to do with this provision and not feel like the whole weight of everything depends on you. That's principle number two.

God gives us richly all things to enjoy. Now hang on. Okay.

I know that somebody is going to YouTube clip what I just said, and they're going to just take that section and I'm going to be the next prosperity gospel here today. That is one of seven principles. It's one, it's a legitimate principle, but you got to hold it in tension with the other six that I'm giving you. Okay. Any one of these by themselves is going to lead you to a bad place.

All right, so let's go to number three. We see that God in scripture gives access to some and expect them to share it with others. That is why he gave access to some. State of second Corinthians eight, Paul says that God often gives access to some of us in the moment so we can take care of those in need. And the story he uses to illustrate this, Paul uses the story of the manna. Second Corinthians chapter eight. At this present time, right now, your abundance is a supply for their need.

Just like it was written in the book of Exodus. He who gathered much did not have too much and he who gathered little had no lack. A reference to the story when they're in the wilderness and they don't have any food. So every morning God puts manna, this kind of bread from heaven all over the ground. And here was the deal. There was so much of it that everybody could eat their fill, but this was the, this was the deal. You can only get enough for that day. And if you try to get enough for like the whole week, it would go bad.

It would breed worms and it would stink. Thus, if you have extra, if you gather too much for the day and your friend, your neighbor doesn't have enough, what should you do with the extra and your friends and needs? So you might as well go ahead and share it because tomorrow there's going to be plenty.

How many of you would have been manna stockpilers at least at the beginning because you're like, well, what happened if, if God doesn't show up? But according to Paul, that's how you should think about your stuff. Now God gives you excess in the present, not so you can save it up as if he's not going to be faithful in the future.

He gives you excess in the present to share with those that are in need right now. It's important to remember that we can't take any one of these principles alone. We have to take all seven into consideration. So make sure that you join us on Thursday for the rest of the list. You're listening to Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. J.D., our newest resource is a 60-day devotional for the purpose of seeing, serving, and celebrating the people around us. Do you think the challenges and insights presented in this resource will apply to everyone? Like, are there specific people or ages or even relationship statuses that will get more out of it?

Yeah. Well, Molly, I would like to think that everything we offer here, um, is going to apply to everybody, but the ones we've offered recently, I can't imagine one that would be more applicable for people of all ages, all relationship statuses. The appeal is that it, what it does is it helps you cultivate a positive relationship, really friendship, which is kind of a lost art in our culture.

How do you really, you know, we, we know how to parent, we know how to discipline, we know how to be a good husband or wife if that's the relationship we're in, but what does it mean to really develop friendships within those things and speak blessing and life into people? My friend Kyle Edelman has put together a great, I love things that are really practical and what Kyle will give you is 60 days of practical advice that will change relationships from being neutral or negative into positive and blessing. To get your copy of One Day at a Time, just give us a call with your gift at 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220. Or you can give online anytime at JDGrier.com. I'm Molly Vidovitch inviting you to listen again Thursday when Pastor JD concludes his list of principles found in the Generosity Matrix. Join us Thursday on Summit Life with JD Grier. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Grier Ministries.