The Love of Christ Controls Us

Well, happy Lord's Day Summit Church at all of our campuses. If you have a Bible with you, I'd love you to take it out now and open it to the book of 2 Corinthians in the New Testament.

I believe it is the seventh book in the New Testament, so find your way there, 2 Corinthians 5. We are going to do something today that I really enjoy doing, and that is walking through a text of Scripture that captures the center, the heart of who we are and what we do and why we do what we do as a church. As a part of this message today, I want to spend some time celebrating with you where the Spirit of God has brought our church over the last couple of years.

If you're new, I hope this serves as some great work that He had done in their past. These monuments serve not only to remind them of what God had done in the past, but also to instruct them for what He wanted to do in the future. That's kind of what we want to do today, is sort of verbally here erect a monument that will both remind us of what God has done and inspire us about what is ahead. Two years ago, the Summit Church entered into something that we called All In. We believe that God was calling us as a church to take several bold steps forward in reaching Riley Durham. We set the ambitious goal as a church of having nearly 100% involvement of people that are a part of this church to be involved in this, and $26 million over two years that we believed would allow us to take these bold steps. That included renovating and expanding our campuses to create more seating capacity and starting some new campuses. We wanted to start some new ministries, and we wanted to raise up and send out lots of more people on church planting and community blessing teams. $26 million was a huge audacious goal for us, but we learned that apparently the Holy Spirit had more for us than we even realized. 5,400 families joined in with the effort, which is 100% participation. To date, here we are a couple months from the end, we have already received $28.5 million. I believe that with your generosity, we could be at $33 million by the end of the year.

So yes, you should applaud for that because it's fantastic. It's never for us been about the money, because as I've told you, God doesn't have needs. We serve a God who has never had a need, and so our giving to Him is not as if we are meeting a need that He has. It's been about us as His people going all in with our whole lives for the mission, because that's what God calls us. The sacrifice that He gave to us calls for a response. And so we didn't want to just be people who make casual contributions. If Jesus died for us, then we want to go all in with His mission. I use the illustration of how if you eat bacon and eggs for breakfast, both the chicken and the pig had a part in producing your breakfast, but whereas the chicken only made a contribution, the pig went all in.

Right? And so we want to be pigs for Jesus or pious pork, and we're going to begin in verse 13. Verse 13, if we are beside ourselves, the Apostle Paul said, beside ourselves, if we're out of our minds, it's for God. So you're not a Christian, you're like, I feel like Christians are crazy.

It's right there in the Bible. If we're out of our minds, it's for God. Verse 14, for the love of Christ controls us because we have concluded this, that one has died for all, therefore all have died. And he died for all that those who live might know longer live for themselves, but for him who for their sake died and was raised. So from now on, therefore, we're not going to regard anyone according to the flesh.

I'll explain what that means here in a minute. All this is from God who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself by not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us now those who have been reconciled this ministry, this message of reconciliation. Therefore, Paul says we are ambassadors for Christ.

An ambassador is somebody who represents another government, another king. So God, our king, is now making his appeal to others through us. So we implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God.

You see, for our sake, God made him to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. In Paul's majestic passage here, I see three things for us. Number one, I see a motivation.

Number two, I see a measure. And then number three, I see a mission for how we are to live. All of these things, the motivation, the measure, and the mission of how we are supposed to live center around a message that we have for anyone that is outside of Christ. The message to you who are outside of Christ is being reconciled to God. God made Jesus to be the penalty for your sin. He's taken out your sin penalty, and now all that remains is for you to receive and come into fellowship with the Father.

It's a gift that has already been given to you. But for us, who are believers, who have received that gift, it means three things for us. Number one, it is a motivation for us to live sacrificially, and that motivation is the love of Christ. Paul says in verse 14, the love of Christ controls us. The love of Christ had become Paul's guiding motivating principle. Paul had begun to see everything in his life through the lens of the love of Christ. What does it mean to be controlled by the love of Christ? Let me give you a couple practical things.

You could write these down as A or B if you're taking notes. To be controlled by the love of Christ means you are captivated by his love for you. You're captivated by his love for you. Paul never seemed to get over his salvation experience. He said, I'm convinced that if Jesus died for me, then if I've got life because of his death, then I should no longer live for myself. I ought to live for the one who gave his life to rescue me from death.

You know, those people who understand the gospel never look at their lives the same. I've explained it to you like this before. If you got home one afternoon and there's a guy sitting on your porch, a friend of yours, who says to you, hey, while you were out, somebody came by that you owed money to and I paid your debt for you. My question to you is, what is your responsibility? Do you owe enough to that person?

Your answer should be, it depends on how much they paid. If the postman showed up and said, hey, he didn't put enough stamps on this envelope and you owe an extra 49 cents or whatever, then I put the 49 cents on there for you. Then you pat him on the back and you say, thanks for doing that.

You're a great friend. If they say, however, the mafia showed up while you were gone, it turns out your gambling past has caught up with you and you owed a million and a half dollars and they were here to kill you. But don't worry about it. I took care of your million and a half dollar debt. At that point, it's not appropriate for you to slap them on the back and say, thank you, friend.

You fall at their feet and say, command me, right? Because everything in your life is going to look different from that point. Paul said, my understanding of what Christ saved me from and what he gave to save me from it is something that demands not just a casual response. I am convinced that no longer, because I'm alive to his death, no longer do I live for myself. I live entirely for him. I sometimes think about what it's going to be like to stand before Jesus when I finally get my mind around what it is that he gave up to save me and what he saved me from.

I mean, I understand it now. I can explain it to you now, but there's something I think about seeing him in that moment, seeing the nails, the nail piercings in his hands and his feet and to get a glimpse of what he has given to me and what he saved me from. I know that in that moment, there is nothing that I gave up or sacrificed for him on earth that will not seem like it was a thousand times, a million times worth it. I think it's different now with my mind, but there's something about seeing it then and now I'm trying to do what Paul says here and just be captivated by the love of Christ and fall at his feet and say, everything is different now. Summit Church, that is our motivation for giving.

Let me be very clear. Again, we do not give because God has needs. We do not serve a God with needs. God has never had a need and if God did have a need, he certainly wouldn't come to you and me with it. Our God multiplies loaves and fishes. He speaks universes into existence through words. He doesn't pay a tax bill.

He sends them out fishing and puts $100,000 in the mouth of a fish. God doesn't have needs. He doesn't approach us from a place of need. A God who has needs is not worthy of worship. We don't give because God has needs. We give because in giving, we declare his value to us and our love for him. God never stands before his people with his hat in hand saying, please, sir, can you spare some cash, please?

I've got so much I want to do on earth, but I just can't afford it. If you could just give me some of your cash, I could get so much done. That is not a God that is worthy of worship. We do not give because God has needs. We give because in giving, we are declaring to him something about his value to us and our love for him.

You ever think about that? You ever think about what does your generosity say about the value of Jesus to you? Because Jesus said, if you want to know what you really love, then just follow the trail of your money. A friend of mine said, based on that, that means I love the federal government.

Yeah, yeah, I get that, but I mean your discretionary income. Because where you place your treasure is the place that you have put your heart. To be controlled by the love of Christ means you have been captivated by his love for you. Here's the second thing it means. It means that his love pours out of you toward others. His love pours out of you toward others.

You are committed to letting his love flow through you is how I would say that one. You see, Paul saw people in only two categories. He saw them in the categories of saved and lost. They had been rescued by Christ and people that Christ had died for that have yet to be rescued. You see how he says in verse 16, we regard no one according to the flesh any longer? In other words, we don't see people according to the normal categorizations. Rich or poor or young or old or powerful or weak, Republican or Democrat, white or black, Duke fans, UNC fans, educated or blue collar. We only see people in the categories of those who know Christ and those who don't. We regard no one any longer according to the flesh.

There are only two categories of people. You might have heard 1912 when the Titanic sunk. When word got back to England where the ship had originally hailed from that there had been this tragedy and 1,500 people were dead.

People, as you would imagine, began to panic if they knew someone that was on the ship. They put up this gigantic chalkboard in downtown London that had two columns on it. One column said saved. The other column said lost.

As they got words, the names, they just put them in these various categories. If you've seen the movie, you know that going onto that ship, people were in all different kind of strata. You had your Kate Winslet before she got creepy kind of people who were upper class.

Then you had your Leonardo DiCaprio who has always been creepy. People that were in the lower class, but in that moment, they're no longer in any kind of class. They're simply saved or lost. That's how Paul had learned to see his world is he saw his world through that lens and he says, I saw Christ plugged up out of the waters of judgment. So now his love for other perishing people who are in the same condition that I was in now controls the agenda of my life. If you really believe the gospel, it completely wrecks your life. You can never see your life.

You can never see other people through the same lens again. Does Christ control you? Are you captivated by his love for you so that it is the number one place in your heart? Does his love through you control the agenda of your life?

Here's number two. I see a measure for our sacrifice. That measure is Christ's sacrifice for us. Two words characterize Paul's description of Christ's sacrifice. Total, verse 15.

Substitutionary, verse 21. Total, he died for us. Paul says if Jesus died for us, then our response to him ought to be in some measure the same. Jesus did not tithe his blood for you. Jesus poured out all of it. And Paul says, therefore, our response ought to be in proportion to the sacrifice that if he poured out it all for us, then we're not going to give him 10% of our lives and then go on with our lives.

We're going to give him everything. We should offer, Paul would say, God, a blank check with our lives. Blank checks are scary. If you've ever given a friend, I've given friends, sometimes I owed them money, didn't know exactly how much, so I just signed a check.

And then all of a sudden you have this crisis of, do I know this person as well as I think I know this person? Is this the moment that they reveal themselves to be not who I thought they were and they completely empty out my bank account with my signature and a blank check? I much prefer to give my friends gift cards. You know, after these $25, that's it.

You can spend all you want up to $25 and then that's it. Have you given God, listen, have you given God a blank check with your life or have you given him a gift card? There's a lot of you giving him a gift card. It's an expensive gift card.

Oh, God, here it is. But God says, I never asked for a gift card. Because I didn't give you a gift card, I poured out my life. Therefore, those of us who live are no longer giving God gift cards, we're giving God blank checks and you say, any place, any time, you fill in the amount, you fill in the location, it all belongs to you. Total.

Here's the second word, substitutionary. Paul writes one of the great verses in all the Bible, verse 21, for our sake God made him to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might become a righteousness of God. Jesus' sacrifice was an exchange for us. On the cross he took our place of condemnation. That's what it means, he became our sin. And he gave us his position of privilege, we became his righteousness.

We traded places. That which belonged to us became his possession. That which belonged to him became our possession. There's a story in the Old Testament where Jacob is going to bestow the blessing of the firstborn on Joseph's oldest son. Joseph's older son and younger son are standing in front of him. He reaches out his hands to bless them, the right hand is the hand of blessing. He switches his hands and lays the hand of blessing on the hand of the younger son and lays the lesser hand on the head of the older son so that what belonged to the older son, the inheritance, the position of privilege, was now going to the younger son and what belonged to the younger son was now going to the older. Joseph protested but Jacob said no, this is how God wants it because he explained he was giving a picture of the Messiah. At the cross, God crossed his hands. And what belonged to Jesus, the older brother, the position of privilege and blessing and intimacy with God was bestowed upon us because what belonged to us, shame, condemnation, penalty of sin, was placed upon the head of Jesus. It's what Martin Luther called the great exchange. But don't miss what Paul is doing here with that truth.

In this context, he's using it, listen, as an example of how we live. They take what he says takes what they have earned. They take what they deserve and they bestow it on someone else. You get that? They take the hand of blessing where their talents and their resources have earned things and instead of laying it on their own head to bless themselves, they lay it on the head of somebody else.

They cross their hands. The benefit of my success and my talents is not going to be for me, it's going to be for a lost world. Remember, Paul would say in two, three chapters, remember the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. That though he was rich, that we had that position, that for your sake, he became poor. So that you through his poverty would become rich. You got the riches, he got the poverty. And then Paul says, then you do that.

You switch hands and you take your hand of blessing and you lay it on somebody else. Here's my question, is that how you see your life and resources? Is that how you see your life and resources?

That you're going to leverage what you have, the position you have, the power, the money, you're going to leverage it for somebody else? Paul, of course, says that kind of mentality is crazy. And in fact, the context of this passage is Paul defending himself against the charge and he's crazy. Did you notice that? Did you see the first verse? For if we are beside ourselves, if we've lost our minds, it's for God. When is the last time your generosity made somebody question your sanity?

C.S. Lewis said, you want to know how to know if you're living like a disciple of Jesus in terms of generosity? He said these two things will be true.

What you give away will scare you. And number two, people will question your sanity. If those two things are not happening, if your generosity is not scaring you and is not making people question your sanity, he says then you've not really begun to live as a disciple of Jesus. So there's a motivation, there's a measure. Number three, there's a mission in our sacrifice. That mission is the ministry of reconciliation. And that is reconciling people to God.

The gospel declares that Christ is born, our sin and our place, the sin of every human being in the world, but it does not do them any good if they've never heard about it. And so Paul says it is the preaching of this message of reconciliation that God has placed in the church. And listen to me, it is the most important mission in the world. All other ministries, all other missions apart from this one fail.

Helping people out of poverty, helping them to get ahead, helping them to get along, helping them progress in business, helping them get educated. These things are wonderful and necessary, but apart from reconciliation to God, their benefits are short-lived. To take care of the needs of someone's body, to take care of their social needs and not address their primary need, which is to be reconciled to God, is to do them a grave disservice. This is the ministry God gave to the church. The church is God's primary instrument for reconciliation. Churches make disciples of Jesus better than any organization on the planet.

It's where God has placed the locus of his spirit. It is the community in which disciples are formed, which means two things for us, for me. Number one, our focus in ministry at this church will always be the message of reconciliation. That's not to say we don't also meet physical needs because Paul says we're Christ's ambassadors. That means we represent Christ and he met physical needs, so we meet physical needs just like he did. And that's why we have ministries to the homeless orphan, prisoner, unwed mother, high school dropout.

It's why we have a counseling center at this church. But the primary focus of every ministry we have, like his, is reconciling people to God. It means that in everything we do, we focus on developing churches and planting churches. You want to summarize the apostle Paul's entire ministry.

Here it is. Go to places where there are no churches and plant them. Go to places where there are churches and help develop them, which means that in everything we do as we try to bless communities around the world, we're always doing it either in partnership with a local church or we're doing it to try to help get a church planted there.

Here's the second implication for me and I think for you. Because the ministry of reconciliation is the most important ministry, and because it is the ministry given specifically to the church, the primary place of my investment and every disciple of Jesus will always be the local church. There are a lot of organizations that do good in the world, and hear me, I support many of them out of my personal resources. There are several things every month that Veronica and I give to, but my primary calling is to invest in the organization that God has bestowed the ministry of reconciliation upon. The church, we say around here, is God's plan A. Because it is God's plan A for reconciling the world, it will be my primary focus for the investment of my life and my resources.

It is not, in fact, we're kind of a dysfunctional community, and if you're new here and you haven't figured that out yet, enjoy. It is because God has said that his church is going to be his ministry of reconciliation, and there's nothing that can distract us from that. This is what God, how he plans to reconcile his world as we are God's plan A, and that should humble you and scare you and inspire you all at the same time. We've got a motivation, we've got a measure, we've got a mission, that's why two years ago we did this all in. So let me share with you now a little bit of what we mean by God's grace, what the Holy Spirit has allowed us to accomplish these past two years.

Give you just sort of a rundown of things. We purchased and we launched the Blue Ridge Campus. We started the Chapel Hill Campus because Tar Heels need Jesus too.

Tar Heels need Jesus especially. We launched the downtown Durham Campus, which is already, by the way, running over 650 people a week. The Chapel Hill Campus has over 1,000 people a week. We have renovated and expanded our North Riley Campus and our Briar Creek Campus, creating more capacity there. Doing all of this has enlarged our capacities to reach people. We've added a total of 2,500 seats per service from all of our campuses combined. Listen to this, because of these changes in the last two years, listen to this, 11,000 first time guests have walked through our doors.

And that's just the ones that have told us about themselves. Yes, you should be thankful for that. Stop, stop, stop, stop. I am not letting you clap like that. Either you clap like real people or you do not clap at all, okay?

You're going to wish you held your applause when I say this next thing. We baptized nearly 1,400 people in the last two years and almost 2,000 new members have joined our church in these last two years. And y'all, when I say this, I don't want you to hear numbers. I know a few of you are like number people, but don't hear numbers.

Hear numbers of people, individual people, that God has used you in this ministry of reconciliation. There's a dozen stories. I can only tell you one. I've actually told you part A of this story before, but I've never told you part B.

So let me tell you part A and B together here. One of these people that's in that number is a girl named Ginger. Ginger is a girl that I met at a cell phone store a couple years ago when I was getting a new cell phone. I went in there to get my cell phone and there was a girl who already went to our church in there.

And you know what, to get a new cell phone takes like six and a half hours. So me and her tag team, this other girl. So we invited her to our church. She came. She was in her early thirties and she'd been a practicing lesbian for over a decade. She came, visited our church a few times.

She really struggled with depression. So one Saturday morning, this is amazing, one Saturday morning she had gotten to a real low and she was driving out to the Blue Ridge Mountains in western North Carolina where she planned to take her life. On the way out there she said I was about 20 minutes from the place where I was going to kill myself. She said when my cell phone rang and it was this girl from our church who worked at the cell phone store with her. And this girl said, you know, she said, I don't know why, but I got up this morning and I was just thinking about you. And I just felt like the Holy Spirit had put you on my heart.

And so I just wanted to call and tell you that I love you and that I'm praying for you and just wanted to ask what's going on. And this girl began to, Ginger began to tell her exactly where she was. This girl that went to our church, convinced her not to do it, to come back. She checked herself into a hospital. When she checked herself into the hospital, the girl from our church gave her a copy of the book I wrote called Gospel. Ginger was trying to decide if she even wanted to read it.

So she just had it sitting on her nightstand. The doctor comes into the room and begins to talk to her, notices the book and says, I've got the same book. And he said, how did you get this book? And she said, well, I visited this church a couple of times and I'm trying to decide if I'm going to read it. He says, I don't go to the Summit Church.

I've never been to the Summit Church. He said, but somebody pointed me to the Summit Church's podcast. He says, I'm just going to tell you, he goes, I've never stepped foot inside this church, but the message of the Gospel, he says, it's just wrecked me and my family.

He said, we just had this total transformation. He goes, I've just, it starts to basically leads her to Christ, not basically leads her to Christ, you know, in the hospital room. She then turns and invites this guy to start coming to our church.

So this is like the most backwards story I've ever heard. This guy who doesn't go to our church leads a girl who does go to our church to Christ, who in turn bites him to our church, right? So this weekend, well, actually they're out there both of the North Raleigh campus now. Let me put both their pictures up there for you. The one on the left there, yeah, your left is Ginger. Ginger is this morning in India leading one of our mission teams. Isn't that awesome?

The campus. That is what we talk about when we were talking about the numbers that I give you, like the ones that I gave you because Ginger is one of those baptisms and that doctrine is family or some of those new guests. That's what we're talking about. That's what we've done. God's enabled us to do here.

Here's what we've been able to do by God's grace for our world. Since December 1st, 2012, we have planted 11 domestic church plants. We've sent out 297 people to be a part of those plants, which by the way, are people that were leaders in our church. And not only leaders, they gave a lot of money because people that go on church plants are usually not like wallflowers. They're people who are really involved. So not only did we give away people, we gave away people who give, but we would not change it for the world.

Why? Because one of those church plants, Mercy Hill in Greensboro, is averaging over 1100 people now every weekend. This weekend, while we, the 8300 or so of us are here at the Summit Church, there are 6500 people worshiping in churches that we have planted in the last three or four years.

6500. Soon, that number is going to exceed the amount of people that we have here worshiping at the Summit Church. In fact, I was thinking about this. What's it going to be like in 40 years when I give that number? I will myself out here.

Stand up here, my walker. I'm going to point at you people. That number is going to be in the hundreds of thousands of people that are going to be worshiping in these churches that we plant around the world. This week, we had a meeting for the next three churches we're going to be planting and 150 of you showed up. Why do you want to leave our church so badly? In the last two years, we have sent out 555 people on 55 short-term mission trips, and 72 people in the last two years have left our church permanently to go live overseas on one of our church planting teams.

Seventy-two. In the last two years, we have dedicated $6.1 million to missions, and $2.1 million of that we have just given away. Given to a new church, given to a new ministry, because of your generosity, we were able to make two huge gifts that we believe are going to have a long-term impact.

They're kind of legacy gifts. We've established a half-million-dollar endowment at Southeastern Seminary, which I think is going to be called the Sam James Chair for Church Planting. Sam James is the guy who planted our church, if you recall, and it's going to be used to train church planters and pastors that are committed to worldwide church planting. Sam James is a nonprofit that has grown up right here out of our church, that is establishing a facility in downtown Durham to meet the very real needs of disconnected youth in our community. So the half-million-dollars we've given to them goes to the purchase of that facility for the establishment of this ministry that is going to impact teenagers living in difficult situations at a time that is one of the most strategic times of their lives.

That's what God has enabled this church through his faith and generosity to do. So what's next? What's next? Well, there's a number of things that we're preparing to do. We're going to renovate the Blue Ridge Campus and get it ready for what we need to do there. We are looking for space and a plan for what we call our mobile campuses. We have three campuses that set up and tear down every single week. First of all, that's annoying. Can I get an amen at North Durham?

That is annoying. Plus, it allows us not to have a permanent kind of presence, ministry presence in that city. We're at a stage in the growth of our church where up until now, I've kind of felt like we're like a fifth or sixth grader. You know how fifth or sixth graders grow and you can't really keep them enclosed because the moment you buy something, they're outgrown it? So you just take hand-me-downs and that's just what we do. Well, that's kind of how our church has been, but our growth is stabilizing a little bit.

Now, we're still growing at like 10% a year, so it's not like it's slowed that dramatically. We're at a place where we need to get some of these mobile campuses into a more permanent space. You people at Briar Creek are just sitting here kind of looking at me and saying, that sounds nice. They are rolling in the floors at the North Durham campus right now and at the Cary campus in Chapel Hill saying, praise Jesus, they are speaking in tongues right now. And they want to know, they're looking at me going, when is that going to happen? And I want to tell you at those three campuses, it is just days away. Days away.

Now, one day with the Lord is as a thousand years, so you might want to remember that too, but it's coming, it's coming. By the way, our philosophy of buildings here at the Summit Church is buildings, we are not out to build big beautiful monuments for Jesus. There are too many lost people in the world to spend our money on just bricks and mortar. Buildings for us are facilities. They facilitate ministry.

We're very minimalist. You can pretty much see that because we want to facilitate the ministry that God is doing through us. We're going to start some new campuses in the Triangle.

Right now, we're trying to figure out where the best places for those are, but that is all coming right ahead of us. You say, now what does this mean for you and for me? I know you're wondering, like, are we about to pass out another, like a still in card for you? No.

We're not going to do that at this point. But we do think that generosity and faith ought to be a permanent part of our lifestyles in response to the generosity and promises of Christ. God never called us to a season where we live for Jesus. He called us to a life where we live for Jesus because if one died for all and he saved us for eternity, then those who live should be so captivated by that that the rest of their lives is spent with his kingdom and not for their own. So to that end, I want to introduce to you a tool that I want you to use to help evaluate this part of your life. We call it the generosity ladder.

Veronica and I have been looking at this for a while and it has been really, really helpful for us. Each rung of this ladder represents a lifestyle, a growth and a lifestyle of generosity and sacrifice. By the way, these are not rungs that you climb to get closer to God. You don't go off the last rung and go to heaven or anything like that. The gospel is that Jesus has done everything necessary to save you.

You could not add to that. It's not about you giving stuff to God. The gospel is about God giving something to you. So don't use this as some kind of weird works righteousness thing.

This simply represents growth in how God is maturing you in this particular area. And listen, before I give you this, can I say what I always do? First of all, if you are not a Christian, I am not talking to you right now. Second of all, if you are new here, I am not talking to you right now. Third of all, if you are committed here and when I start talking about this, it kind of creeps you out because you feel like I am trying to manipulate you to get money out of your pocket into mine.

Listen, with every fiber of my being, I mean what I am about to say. I want you to apply this, but I want you to apply it by giving somewhere else. Because I know that to be a disciple of Jesus means you become an extravagantly generous person. And if you cannot get over the hurdle that somehow like maybe we are doing this to manipulate you and this is about filling our quaffers and all that kind of stuff, then I would prefer for you to become a generous person, remove that obstacle, become a generous person and give somewhere else than I would for you to let that be an obstacle. And maybe one day you will learn to trust us and if so you can give, but do not give here if that is a problem for you. I sincerely mean that. You become generous and just give away your money somewhere else. It is more important for me that you become generous in response to the gospel than it is that you give here. Okay?

I mean that with every fiber of my being. Let me walk you through this real quick and show you what it looks like to mature through this ladder. The first rung is initial giver. That refers to a first time giver. During all in, many of you for the very first time made a significant investment in the kingdom of God.

3,064 families became first time givers at the Summit Church. Now a lot of you have joined us since those two years and maybe that is the first step that you need to make is to make your first significant gift to the kingdom of God. The next rung up from there is what we call a consistent giver. That is somebody who has gone from an initial gift to a consistent recurring gift. The key thing here is that it has become a part of your budget.

It is a recurring payment like other monthly payments like your cell phone, your mortgage, your taxes, your utilities, those kind of things that you pay whether you are in feast or famine. Some of you that have become first time givers need to grow to that level. It has got to become a part of your budget.

That is about, I preached a great sermon that made you cry and you got goosebumps until you threw $20 in the offering. It has got to go from being that to being it is a permanent part of my life. Generosity is a permanent part of my budget. So some of you to grow to this you have got to put it in your budget.

You should set up a recurring payment online. Which leads me number 3 to what we call the intentional giver. That is someone who is intentionally or consciously trying to grow in their generosity. They are asking the question of how their recurring giving matches up with other priorities in their lives. They are saying things like how does my giving compare to what I spend on vacations, what I spend on eating out, what I spend on cars or clothes.

They want their spending to match their priorities so they set a goal. I heard about a guy in our congregation who said I want my gift to the kingdom of God to be the largest payment I make every month. He said right now my biggest payment is my mortgage. He says so that is my goal. He says I am going to incrementally increase until I get the amount that I give to the kingdom of God to be the largest thing.

He says because that is what I want the statement of my life to be. Is that I was primarily invested in God's kingdom. People in this category in intentional giving, listen, are not satisfied with meeting some basic requirement like a tithe.

Like a tax they pay to God. Tithing is never, I have told you this, tithing is never really commanded in the New Testament. The principle of first fruits is biblical. First fruits, think like a farmer, if God gives you a bunch of fruits you give the first back to him. Principle of first fruits is taught throughout the Bible. The reason we say tithe is because in the Old Testament that is what people gave.

So we say that is a great place to start with your first fruit giving. But we are people who have experienced the generosity of Christ. So we should not be going backwards in our generosity.

We should be going forwards. Tithing should never be the ceiling of generosity, it should just be the floor for us. So intentional givers set goals to grow to. Because they realize that it is not about paying God a 10% tax.

It is about we who live no longer living for ourselves but for him who died for us. So for you to grow to that level you set a goal. You say I want to get my investment in God's kingdom at least equal to this other payment. Or maybe you should choose a percentage and go for that. Maybe you should start with the tithe.

If you are not there that is a great place to begin. But intentional means you are consciously trying to grow. After that we have the sacrificial giver. Somebody in this category is no longer thinking what am I supposed to give. They are thinking what am I not giving and why am I not giving it. The sacrificial giver is less concerned about the 10% and more concerned about the 90%.

I'll give you an example here. Rick Warren who is a pastor out in California. I wrote a little book called The Purpose Driven Life that did okay. Rick Warren said, his words, I made enough money off a purpose driven life to buy not one but a chain of Caribbean islands. He said, however, he said my wife and I decided we would not increase our lifestyle one bit. He said we did not move. He said I still wear a $14 watch and I drive a 15 year old pickup truck.

He said we instituted something we have been pursuing since then. We call it reverse tithing where we give away 90% and we try to live on 10%. That is how a sacrificial giver thinks. I am not paying God a tax and then taking the 90%. I am saying God it all belongs to you.

What am I not giving and why? Because I am more into your kingdom than mine. Let me tell you something kind of where Veronica and I are on this.

This will tell you a little bit about my personality and my past. Hear this in the spirit that I say it. There has never been a penny of income that I have ever received that did not get tithed. Because my parents at three years old would give me my allowance in dimes. So that we could separate them, you know, not one for Jesus. So there has never been income that did not get tithed. And so I always felt like paying God a tax and now just wait for the 90%. What we realized, Veronica and I realized, is that that is not gospel sacrificial generosity. That we need to look at the 90% and say, God what are we not giving and why?

Because we love you and we want to be involved in your kingdom. So recently we were looking through one of our savings accounts and we had some minimum goals. We needed to be responsible for the future. We had some money that was just, you know. Listen, I had like 150 things that I felt like I was justified in doing with that money.

They were good, they were compelling and we just felt like the Holy Spirit saying, you know what? This is not about your kingdom, it's about mine. You've got your minimum requirements, you should just put that into my kingdom. And so we do that gladly.

Why? Because we want God to grow us so that our legacy is not here. We want to sacrifice. Somebody who gives sacrificially, listen, is making changes to their lifestyle to direct more toward God's kingdom.

Not because they have to but because they get to. Maybe there's some resource that God has blessed you with like savings or stock or retirement that he's calling you to put on his altar. By the way, maybe for you it's not about money at all.

I know a girl who in all took a hit in her income to go work in a career field she felt called by God to reach. She's got less capacity now for financial generosity so we're giving as less but she's pursuing a sacrificial life. Lastly we've got what we call the legacy giver.

A legacy giver is somebody who is thinking about the contribution their entire life is making. They've moved beyond the how much am I giving this year to the question how much am I giving over a lifetime. They're thinking about what I call the eternal investment portfolio. You've got a retirement portfolio where you go on and you look like how much is in there now? How much is in there now?

Oh no, the stocks went down, I don't want to look. You know, you have like one of those. These people begin to think of it like eternity like that and they begin to think how much do I want to give over a lifetime. I know a young guy who's 28 years old at our North Raleigh campus who two years ago when he was 26 said my goal is to give away a million dollars by the time I'm 60. He said so what that means for now is that I've got a plan. I've got a plan based on my projected income of how much I need to give incrementally every year. It means putting a cap on spending and spending and saving so I can yield more to giving. If you're older it means things like estate planning so that what you leave behind lines up with your kingdom priorities. I know a man who said the largest gift that I'm ever going to give is going to be on the day that I die.

He says because when our will is executed he said I want my life, the legacy to be the kingdom of God. He said for me that means cutting back and giving some of my retirement away now. I'm going to live off less in retirement and listen to this, punt some of my retirement bliss to enjoy in heaven. He's like heaven is going to be an awesome retirement.

Can you imagine what kind of golf score I'm going to get in heaven? He said so I'm willing to sacrifice now and enjoy more then. It also means beginning to share with others your journey and generosity so that you can inspire it in the next generation. Y'all what greater legacy to leave for the next generation than extravagant generosity. It is the greatest gift that my parents gave to me.

My parents who are still alive and I hope will be alive for many more years. The greatest thing that they will give to me is a legacy of sacrificial giving. Where are you is the question on that ladder.

Naturally you kind of like identify right. So what I want you to do is I want you to pray and say God this is where we are. God we want to grow more in our Christ likeness so what level are you calling us to go toward. Have you given God a blank check with your life? Have you put it all at his feet? Because that's what this is all about not raising money for stuff we need to do it's about us. If we go all in for God's kingdom with our lives. God owns a cattle on a thousand hill and he'll give us everything we need to do what he wants us to do.

He's not interested in your money he's interested in your heart. Why don't you bow your heads if you would. And maybe I could give you a three part prayer here okay. Number one where are you and your family on that ladder. And will you ask God to help you grow in your conformity to the sacrifice of Christ. Number two can you surrender everything to Jesus right now. Lord none of it belongs to me it's a blank check.

Here's my signature it all belongs to you. Number three if you made a faith commitment two years ago why don't you ask God for the ability to finish strong. The same faith the same generosity that led you to make the commitment ask God for that faith to finish it. Father we want to be a people who respond with full reckless hearts to the generosity of Christ we pray in Jesus name. You stay with your heads bowed our worship teams will come to lead us and we'll worship God for his inexpressible gift.