Here's what I want you to do. Hey, also in the few moments that we have, we're gonna look at this idea that God should be the center of your finances. Now, anytime we talk about finances or money, I get it.
Churches get a bad rap for that, don't they? I mean, some of you are already hating this right now. You can just be honest with me. I can see it from some of your faces.
You're not happy. And so, but churches get a bad rap when we talk about money, right? Because we don't like for anybody to kind of speak into that because we think money is so, so private. And so we get skeptical when preachers or pastors start talking about it. You know, I've heard things even as a young pastor, like all that pastor wants is my checkbook, right? And stuff like that.
So we get a little uncomfortable with that. And so what happens is a lot of pastors, they avoid the conversation about money. Here's just real quick, what I want you to understand is that 15%, if you look throughout the gospels, 15% of Jesus's teachings was about money.
That's a lot. Jesus talked about money and our resources and our generosity more than he did heaven and hell combined. You say, why would you say that? Well, here's the only reason. Not trying to make you feel guilty for feelings about churches and money.
Here's what I want you to know. Money's important. And money's a part of every single one of our lives. And what God has said over and over is that God wants to be the center. That's why he connects money with your heart. God wants to be the center of those things.
So real quick, before Igor comes, I wanted to teach just a little bit on this with this in mind, this idea. It is more blessed to give than to receive, okay? We all know this, right? We say this around Christmas time, don't we? It's more blessed to give than to receive. Well, this is actually a truth, a principle that even our culture has adapted that is true and it comes from scripture. It's more blessed to give than to receive.
Let's say that together. It's more blessed to give than to receive. Well, I want to show you, there's a passage of scripture in Philippians. You can turn there if you got your Bible. Philippians chapter number four. And truthfully, I studied this. I love, Philippians is probably my favorite book in the New Testament.
I love it. It's a book all about joy and that kind of thing. So I love the book of Philippians. And I went through the book about a year ago with you. And when I went through this in the past, I spoke the messages through the book to some teenagers years and years ago.
And it was much different. And when I came to Philippians four, a lot of times we look at Philippians for any of Paul's writings, his intros and his outros. And a lot of times we skim through those, right? Because a lot of times the apostle Paul would just give a lot of salutations and a lot of name dropping and different things.
And we just kind of skim through those things and we don't really pay attention to it. We don't think that there's a good sermon outline that can come from those passages of scripture. Well, when I studied this with the church, and you might remember this, we looked at this in a series that we entitled Joyful, our study through the Philippians. When we came to chapter four, there it's really a lot of stewardship that we find in chapter four. And I never noticed that. Literally as your pastor, I learned something new a year ago when I studied this and it was brand new to me and it became quickly one of my favorite passages of scripture when it comes to money in the church.
And I wanted to look at that so that you understand this. The church at Philippi, a little bit of background, church at Philippi was really what I would call a model church for generosity. So model church for what sacrificial giving looks like. This church had supported the apostle Paul for roughly 10 years. So they had sent him out. We have record in scripture that they had sent a man by the name of Epaphroditus.
You remember that name? They sent him many miles from Philippi to Rome with a package with some things in it for him, like a financial offering that was given to the apostle Paul. And in Philippians four, Paul is kind of writing and Paul has been the recipient of the generosity of the church at Philippi. And so I want you to understand we're a church and I want us to be generous as a church. We should be a giving church. You should be a giving Christian, a generous Christian. And when we think about this, this is a model for what that looks like for each one of our lives. And here in Philippians four, he really gives us this model.
There's really a few things I want you to see. First is this. So if you take notes, you can write this down. Giving or generosity is commended. It is commended. Look at Philippians four, verse 14 through 16. He says this, not withstanding ye have well done that ye did communicate with my affliction. Now ye Philippians know also that in the beginning of the gospel when I departed from Macedonia, no church communicated with me as concerning giving and receiving, but you only. He goes on, verse 16, for even in Thessalonica ye sent once and again unto my necessity, verse 17, not because I desire a gift, but I desire fruit that may abound to your account. Giving is commended.
I mean, you see it right here. He celebrates this. This is God's word. And they're celebrating that, hey, all these other churches weren't supporting him, weren't giving to him. And he said, listen, when I was in affliction, you guys gave to me.
The church at Philippi, you supported me. Here's what I want you to understand is this, money, sometimes we think that preachers think money in and of itself is evil. It's not. The scripture never says that money is bad. So if God's blessed you financially, I don't want you to ever think, well, I'm guilty, I shouldn't be blessed this way. Money is not bad. The scripture says the love of money is.
The love of money is bad. I mean, you can trace this throughout scripture. Abraham, he was a wealthy man and God used him. I mean, he had 300 servants in his household, right? Job, God used him and God blessed Job with land and flocks and homes. And then at the end, he gave him more than he had at the beginning.
Joseph was really a rags to riches type of story, if you would. I want you to understand you can be godly and have money. Those two things are good, but what you see here is that giving and generosity is something that is commended in God's word. It's something that's encouraged in God's word.
And really he gives us a couple of reasons. In verse number five of Philippians one, he talks about this. He calls the church at Philippi partners, or the word here is fellowship.
And he talks about their partnership in the gospel. And here's what I want you to note, is that the reason generosity is a good thing is because giving or generosity, it turns people into partners. It turns people into partners.
So listen, let me think about it this way. When you give, when you give, here's what happens. You become a partner with all the gospel ministry that goes out of here. So in other words, you become a partner with every missionary we have in our church. You become a partner and the next service we're going to celebrate six baptisms.
You become a partner in that. Because when you give, it makes you from just a person, but now you become a partner in what God is doing. That's why generosity is a good thing. But not only that, generosity or giving, it pleases God. It pleases God.
I mean, look at verse 18 of Philippians four. "'But I have all in abound, I'm full, "'having received of Epaphroditus "'the things which were sent from you, "'an odor of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, "'well pleasing to God.'" Listen, when it talks about this odor going up to God, anytime we see that aroma, we think about sacrifice.
Right? That's what that is. In the Old Testament, when the priests would offer up a sacrifice, what would come from that sacrifice is it would be an aroma that would go up to heaven, and the point was that aroma would satisfy God. That aroma would please God. And what Paul's saying is when you give, it sends up this aroma up to heaven.
It sends up this aroma that satisfies and pleases God. That's why giving is commended. And so let me just speak directly to the church for just a moment. Giving shouldn't be, well, the church really needs my money. No, giving should be because God is worth it to you, and it all belongs to him to begin with, and so we should be a generous people because God has been generous with us. That's the nature of what it is, but number two, what we see here in Philippians four is this, not only is giving commended, giving is an eternal investment. It's an eternal investment. I mean, if you think about this, verse 17, he says, not because I desire a gift, but I desire fruit that may abound to your account. If you're investing your money, everybody in here probably has thought about that, especially if you have a family, you have kids, you've already thought about, hey, what's this gonna look like when God takes you home?
How do I set my family up for success and things like that? So perhaps you've kind of invested, the point of investments is this, you're hoping that your money will double down the road. Isn't that why we invest money? You invest it now, you sacrifice now with the hopes that 50 years down the road or 30 years down the road, your investment will double or triple or something like that. That's the reason why we invest. Well, Paul's saying that when you give to the church and you invest your money in the church, you sacrifice now, it has an eternal investment.
That's what he's saying here in verse number 16, he desires fruit that may abound to your account. So what he's saying is that when you give now, there's an eternal investment that is attached to it. Think of it this way, is this, can you imagine when you get to heaven and you meet somebody who was saved from the Morris ministry in Honduras, and you meet somebody who's in heaven because of the ministry of the Morris in Honduras, and they come up to you and say, hey, you were a member of Union Grove, thank you for giving, because you played a part in that person's salvation.
It's like the skinners, right? You know, for them, they spent so many years, 41 years in Germany, and for them, it's like, there's a lot of people that are gonna be in heaven that you guys have partnered with because of your generosity. That's why we are supposed to be generous and we supposed to be generous with our money because there's an eternal investment that has happened there and that eternal investment, you probably aren't gonna see till you get to heaven. There's gonna be fruit in heaven that will remain from your account because of your generous giving now. And so when you think about giving, don't be like, man, the church really needs my money. No, it's like, hey, I'm gonna give now, and sometimes that's hard when money's a little tighter in your family. But if you give now, what happens is, is there's an eternal investment that you were hoping will happen one day. And that's a spiritual investment, fruit that can abound to your account.
Number three, giving is rewarded. Look at verse 18. But I have all and abound. I am full, having received of Epaphroditus the things which were sent from you, an odor of a sweet smell, sacrifice acceptable, well pleasing to God. But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches and glory by Christ Jesus. Now, when you see that, verse 19, can sometimes people think, well, God's just gonna give you everything you want, right? Pray for a new car, he's gonna give it to you, right? And a lot of TV preachers will tell you those things, so be careful, okay?
But listen, that's not what he's saying. But what's interesting, there's two words that I want you to see here about how giving's rewarded. In verse 18, he uses a word when he said the word full, but I have all and abound, I am full.
That's Paul, I am full. Well, then in verse 19, he uses this word, but my God shall supply all your need according to his riches and glory by Christ Jesus. He uses the word supply. You have the word full, and then you have the word supply in verse number 19. Here's what's interesting, those two words are different in English, aren't they?
Very much so, we see them up here today. But here's what's interesting to me when I was studying this is this, they're the same Greek word. It's a Greek word, pleru, and that word is the same word for full that Paul uses, and it's the same word for supply that Paul uses as well. And so in verse number 18, Paul's saying, I am full. And then in verse number 19, he's saying, my God shall supply you, you can be full. So you say, if he's using the same Greek word, what in the world is he trying to tell us with these two words in this text that giving is rewarded? What he's saying is this, is that you guys filled me up while I was doing God's word, so because you filled me up, God's gonna fill you up. So in other words, when you give to fill up, if you would, to use our word here, our terminology, when you give to our missionaries, when you give to the gospel being done here in this community, that's what happens when you tithe, all the ministry that we get to do. When you give to that, here's what I want you to know, Paul's saying is that when you fill others up, God's gonna fill you up.
You don't have to worry about it. That's why some of our older members can get up here and say, wow, we were taught to give and to be consistent with our giving years ago, and here's what's interesting is that God supplied every need that we ever had. Wasn't always easy and we didn't get everything that we wanted, but what they're saying is this, when you do the discipline of giving now, of being generous now, God will return that to you and he will supply every need that you have. Doesn't mean he's gonna give you everything you want, so don't misinterpret that. But when you make it a commitment to fill others up who are doing gospel ministry, there's a promise here that we see that he's gonna fill you up. He's gonna supply for you because you filled others up.
Does that make sense? Giving's rewarded. You see that there's an eternal investment, it's commended, it's rewarded, but then also here, number four, giving spreads the gospel. Giving spreads the gospel around the world.
Now, this one's a little hard. When I did the, what we would call the exegesis of this text, it was kind of interesting, because I was kind of like, the last three verses, three or four verses are what we would consider, we'd skim through those, because it's just Paul kind of closing out his letter. But there's something I want you to see here to this point that giving spreads the gospel. Look at verse 20. It says, now unto God and our Father, be glory forever and ever, amen. And just like a lot of pastors, he says amen, then he has three more verses to go when he's done, okay? And so he says, salute every saint in Christ Jesus, the brethren which are with me greet you, all the saints salute you, chiefly they are of, what's the next two words? Caesar's household.
Mark that, we're coming back there. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. So here, when you think of giving, I want you to remember this verse, because if anybody was against, during this day, if anybody was against what Jesus wanted to do, it was Rome. It was Rome. And here, Paul is saying this to the church at Philippi, who would be enemies of what Rome wanted for them. And Paul's saying this, hey, when you get to heaven, I want you, the ones who are generous to me, the church at Philippi, I want you to greet and salute all of these people that are in heaven, especially Caesar's household. Here's what Paul's saying. Paul's saying this, because of your generosity, there's gonna be people in heaven that were at one time very, very far from God.
You could even say, because Rome was, very anti-God. And because you gave, because you were generous, because you supported the apostle Paul, here's what he's saying, is that your giving has helped spread the good news of the gospel around the world to people who are very, very far from God. That's what giving does. That's what generosity does. Can you imagine being chained up next to the apostle Paul when he was in prison?
Could you imagine that, what that would have been like? You're sitting there, and that's your duty for the day, and you're sitting there next to Paul, and he just constantly is talking about Jesus and things like that, and the guard's probably like, man, how many more hours? He's counting down the time to get off work, and things like that that day, and Paul's just talking and stuff like that. And then eventually, some of those guards and some of the people of Caesar's household would eventually trust in the message that Paul was trying to tell them. And Paul is saying, the only reason that happened is because there was a church behind me, the church at Philippi, who believed in the gospel enough that they were willing to sacrificially give of what God had blessed them with so that I could come into places and share the good news of the gospel so now when we get to heaven and we're all there by the same way, there's gonna be people that are so far from God that nobody would have ever thought could ever enter into the kingdom of heaven.
Why? He says, because there was a lot of church people that decided giving is gonna be rewarded, giving is commended, giving will help spread the gospel. And so for us, church, I want you to think about this idea of giving. Don't be intimidated by this. And I hope you understand, as your pastor, I've been your pastor for three and a half years, okay?
And here's what I want you to know. We have spoke on giving probably, I bet, no more than 10 times in three and a half years. It's not a lot.
I mean, we don't talk about it a whole lot. We encourage it. But what I want you to know is, when we think about God in the details, your relationship with God should impact the way you view your finances. It should impact the way that we view, the way we invest, the way that we give right now. And the reasons are, I mean, if I walked around, I don't know everybody's story in here, but if I went around and said, hey, do you want to see heaven bigger one day? Do you wanna see more people in heaven?
Everybody in here is probably gonna say, yes, pastor, we want that. Well, the way to do that is we gotta be generous so that the gospel can get out all around the world. We gotta be generous so that the gospel can go and that one day we will see that fruit.
Might not be here and that's okay. Because listen, Jesus himself would say, don't lay up your treasures here. If you're looking for fruit here, then that's an earthly treasure that you're chasing. No, Jesus would say, lay up your treasures in heaven because some of our fruit from our giving and our generosity we might not see this out of heaven. We're gonna see it there. And I don't know about you, but that's what we should be chasing.
That's what we should be after. And the reason is it is more blessed to give than to receive. It is more blessed to give than to receive. You say, okay, I'm a member here at Union Grove. What does that look like?
What does that look like here? Well, for us, I mean, there's a scriptural principle that I'm not gonna dive deep into that you see throughout scripture about giving to the local church. Like for us, that would mean like, what we would call the tithe, right? We take every week, we do an offering.
And even this morning, people pass the plates and stuff. That's our tithes and offerings. That's important for us. And that should be a part of every one of you that you give to the church because that helps us take the gospel all throughout this community. And we take the gospel here and there and everywhere. And then on top of that, there's some additional things that we do as a church that I want you to believe in. Like not only just your tithe, but we have a Forward in Faith campaign that we are doing.
I need you to be faithful to that because you believe that what God can do there can expand the kingdom of God one day. So it might be harder for you to give now. You might think, man, I don't have enough to give.
Just be faithful. It's not about the amount you give. It's about the heart in which you give it. And if you give and you are generous now, it's trusting and saying, God, I'm gonna trust you with this now. Bills are tight, but I'm gonna trust you now because I believe that if I fill others up and I fill missionaries around the world and I fill what God wants to do through our school here and I fill all of those things, that God's gonna supply every need that I ever have. That's what giving looks like, our missions department. Like I'm so grateful for the people that give above and beyond missions so that we can send missionaries around the world to people.
I mean, think about it. I shared this story just a couple of weeks ago. If you were at our missions conference back in February, if you were there, you remember we showed a video. We showed a video of Nate Claunch and one of our missionaries, I mean, Bob's son. So he's really close to us, grew up here.
You got Nate and his team of guys. God had led them into a tribe there in Papua New Guinea called the Gandhi tribe. And so they had gone and when he went there, the tribe had never heard the message of Jesus.
They don't even have the Bible translated in their language. And so Nate and his team went there and God through just, he orchestrated some events of getting them there. The whole tribe had this village meeting, this village meeting to see if they would welcome what they called the voice of God, that they would welcome that into their tribe. They voted for Nate and his team to come in and be a part of that. Well, listen, about three weeks ago, about three weeks ago, Nate and his team went and they were gonna start figuring out where their houses needed to go there in the Gandhi village.
These people never heard the name of Jesus. And so they go and they're there and the leaders in that village, they gave them two options. These two families own some home or some own some land that they said, hey, you can choose which one. So they come and their team of missionaries come and they had chosen the piece of land that they wanted to build on so that they could make a home there with the Gandhi people and that they could eventually translate the Bible in their language and be able to reach them for the good news of Jesus. We've been supporting Nate and Laura for some time now as they've been doing this.
So you're a part of this. And as they went there, they decided, hey, we want this piece of land. Well, the other family that they didn't choose their piece of land that they offered to them, got mad, pulled out machetes.
They're in that moment. True story, you can read about this. If you follow the Claunches journey and they took machetes and it became a violent act. In fact, one of the guys, Joseph, who spoke up and said, we want the message of God to come here into the Gandhi village when he spoke up at the meeting, he got macheted in the back and had to be rushed to a hospital.
He lived, thank God. But here's what I want you to know. You want to know why Nate and them are there? Because they believe that the gospel still has the power to save anybody. But you want to know how they get to stay there is because of your generosity. Because you say, hey, listen, might be hard on me now, but I'm going to give now so that I can have fruit for what God is doing there. So listen, if you're not giving, start giving. If you're not giving, start giving, be generous to the Lord's work because he has been generous for us.
