Church With A Future – Part 2

Introduction

As Steve prayed, mentioning our service men and women who serve our country. I’m reminded of a friend of mine that I’ve known for many years. We went to Florida College together, who posted, I believe it was yesterday, about her husband, who’s a member of the body of Christ, Casey Blake, is in Kabul, where the Taliban have made attacks on embassies there, and she has not heard from her husband, actually. And is concerned about him. And so there’s a Christian that we know, who’s at roughly my age, who is in the city of Kabul. And so if we could remember Casey Blake specifically at this time. I know they have a daughter at Florida College at this time. And so I thought of them as Steve was praying.

We talked this morning about a church with a future, and made these two points in the first lesson about New Testament giving is a joyful response to God, and it’s an attitude more than an act. Alex Garza, some of you know him, a believer in this area, posted on Facebook a quotation from Randy Alcorn that said, God prospers me not to raise my standard of living, but to raise my standard of giving.

A joyful response to God, we are admonished in Romans 12 and verse 1 to be living sacrifices. It is, of course, difficult and challenging to be a one-time sacrifice as Christ was for our sins upon the cross. But his believers are to be a living sacrifices. We could not make such an offer to God unless it stems from a joyful heart to offer this reasonable service to God. And so I thought of Romans chapter 12 and verse 1 in this regard. And in 2 Corinthians chapter 4, Paul says in verse 11, in much the same vein as living sacrifices, he says, For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus’ sake. That the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.

1. Some Gifts May Be Greater Than Money

And again, such an offering from the Apostle Paul, constantly delivered over to death. I die daily, he says in 1 Corinthians 15 and verse 31, could only be the result of a joyful response to God. And all that we give should be reflected by this joy in our hearts. A third observation that I want to make about this passage and how it tells us to give is that some of the gifts that will be required of us in this generation may be gifts greater than money. I’ve made this point before.

Maybe a neighbor kid. If you had some physical disability or you were aging, you might have a kid in the neighborhood mow your lawn. But I want to tell you, if you run around town around here at all, you see these trucks with the low boys on the back with all of the equipment necessary to mow yards. You see those all over the place. That is a thriving business in our part of the world. We are so busy that we value our time so much that we’ll give this exorbitant amount $30 to $40 for somebody to mow our tiny little yard. Or we will wash our car. We’ll pay somebody to do that so we don’t have to take the time to do it. And we’ll even let somebody charge us thousands for landscaping.

Because we don’t want to take the time and do all the work and get all the plants and get our hands dirty on an entire Saturday to do it all ourselves. And so we throw money at a lot of things. And I think some people have developed that mindset too about the work of the local church. I might give generously of our money, but I might be a little bit more stingy in regard to other areas of need among the Lord’s people. You know, in the first century, we’re talking about a little bit different circumstances. Here are poor saints in Judea who have no way of providing for themselves physically, the physical needs that they had. And so this collection is being taken up all over with churches in Asia Minor and beyond in Greece.

Well, we don’t hear about those kinds of needs very often, do we? We might help out in Zimbabwe. Perhaps we’ve heard of the work going on there by the skults and others, and we might try to assist financially in that way, or people who’ve been damaged by the results of a storm, and we might help Christians in other areas, but that happens only sporadically. Not a constant need like we’re reading about here in chapter 8 and chapter 9. And while we have some goals as a church that might involve something in relation to our building, our facility. Still, our contribution is several thousand. We’re able to support a preacher full time. We’re able to fund our Bible classes. And let me just say that what we give, we need to have an understanding of how it’s being used to promote the gospel, the materials that our young people use.

Those things cost a lot more than they used to. And so we’re helping God’s work to prosper. And we’re doing it in a number of ways by this contribution. But God needs more from us than just our money. And we might be more generous with the money that we have as a result of our affluence than we are with our time. And sometimes local churches struggle not because the contribution isn’t what it should be, but because a sufficient amount of time is not being sacrificed. You have 10% of a local church doing 90% of the work that’s done. The serving of others, the taking of time that is necessary to serve others. A lot of times that’s only being done by a small segment of the local church rather than everybody carrying their weight in that regard.

2. Proper Giving Issues From the Knowledge of Grace

Well, I put money in the collection plate. But sometimes it’s a sacrifice of our time and our energy and our talents that the local church needs. And so I just want to make the observation as we talk about giving joyfully to the Lord, that we think about it in terms greater than the physical material things that we can give, such as our money. But here is the final point of this lesson that I want to spend the rest of our time with tonight. And this is what’s borne out in 2 Corinthians 8 and 9, that proper giving issues from the knowledge of grace. Remember, I talked about the guilt section of the sermon this morning. Too many times when we hear preaching on the subject of giving and giving financially, you know, the heaping of guilt.

You know, when I said something about spending more on our smartphones each month than we put in the collection plate. Well, that should stand a reason, shouldn’t it? Or spending more on an out-to-eat meal than we put in a collection plate on the Lord’s day. Somebody says, Yeah, but he made me feel guilt. Well, maybe we need to feel guilty if that is the case. But when we start talking about the percentages, we talked about the biblical tithe of the Old Testament. Yes, that’s not New Testament instruction, but certainly that provides a model for sacrificial giving, especially when that giving was to be done because of how God had prospered them because it was based on an understanding of God’s ownership of everything. And that we are merely stewards of the things that we have materially.

Well, that’s still true, isn’t it? Now, I did get something wrong in regard to the tithing this morning that I have to correct. Carrie Underwood. Brett pointed this out to me. I said her income was 20 million, and I said the biblical tithe would be 200,000. And most of you didn’t catch it because that seemed like a lot of money. $200,000. Wow, what could a church do with that? But actually, the biblical tithe for 20 million would be two million. Well, if we had somebody give that kind of an amount over a year, we’d have enough for any building plans we wanted to pursue. So somebody needs to talk to Carrie Underwood and really get Jesus to take the wheel in her life. We’ve got some issues with modesty there, I know.

But let’s leave Carrie Underwood in our dust here. Where was I going? I got distracted and all of that. Proper giving issues from a knowledge of grace. Paul isn’t approaching the Corinthians on the basis of guilt. He’s not even going with guilt when he talks about the example of the Macedonians that we read in the first five verses. You know how they gave overflowing the wealth of their liberality out of their poverty. He said, They begged us for the favor of participation. I think he’s saying, look, here’s how other Christians have responded. Surely you can do the same. Go on reading with me in 2 Corinthians chapter 8 and verse 6. And Titus was involved in the collection of this. I mean, you think about this, how great a responsibility it is to collect this money.

It’s not like they could wire it to Jerusalem or put it in a bank and transfer the funds. The perils of journeys, the perils of robbers, and then there’s the, I wonder if Titus, I wonder if Paul is pocketing some of this money. And so Paul selected men of proven character to be the administrators of this gift that was being collected. And so he chooses someone like Titus, to whom the book was written by the Apostle Paul later in the New Testament. And it speaks later of his earnestness in this on two occasions. And so here is this earnest messenger who is bringing these funds. And he speaks of him early, and he says, Titus, that he had previously made a beginning, so he would also complete in you.

Notice this gracious work as well. Okay, hold that thought gracious. But just as you abound in everything in faith and utterance and knowledge in all earnestness and in the love we inspired in you, see that you abound in this gracious work also. Now, what he is describing in their need to give to help out with the poor saints in Jerusalem, he says, this gracious work, and he’s mentioned that twice, and he says, I’m not speaking this as a command, but as proving through the earnestness of others, the Macedonians, the example of others, their earnestness in this, but proving through the earnestness of others the sincerity of your love also. Just like the Macedonians have responded in overwhelming love and sacrifice in this gracious work, I want you too to prove the sincerity of your hearts.

Again, this is more about attitude than an act. I want you to prove the sincerity of your love also. I’m not speaking this by way of commandment. I really believe this is elliptical. And I’ve talked to you about ellipses before. He’s not saying it’s not a commandment to give. But he’s saying, I’m not appealing to you on the basis of merely a command or a command only. I’m appealing to you from a greater standpoint of motivation, and that is that you prove the sincerity of your love. And then he goes back to this verse 9. This is one of the more compelling verses in all the New Testament, when he says, For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, that you, through his poverty, might become rich.

Why should you be involved in this gracious work of giving? Because you are the recipient of the greatest grace of all. Jesus, who was rich, we sing, dwelling in ivory palaces, he came into a world of woe. He who was rich for your sakes, he became poor that you, through his poverty might become rich. So how should we respond to that? By being gracious as well. And what is it in our sacrifice or even being a living sacrifice that compares even closely to what Christ did for us. We’re not saving anybody by our gifts, by our grace, as he did. So Christ’s example toward us was their motivation. He praises them. In verses 10 and 11, he says, and I give my opinion in this matter, for this is to your advantage, who were the first to begin a year ago, not only to do this, but also to desire to do it, but now finish doing it.

You got in the beginning of this, you started it, now complete it. Finish doing it. And just as there was the readiness to desire it, so there may be also the completion of it by your ability. And then the passage we read this morning, for if the readiness is present, it is acceptable according to what a man has, not according to what he does not have. And so what I’m reading here is that they got all excited about it in the beginning. There was readiness and there is desire, but there has been perhaps a lapse, a loss of some of that earnestness and desire. And he’s challenging them again to fuel that to get the motivation to finish the work that needs to be done.

To me, verses 10 and 11 sound a lot like our lives as Christians. What starts oftentimes with a tremendous amount of zeal and enthusiasm and joy in our salvation. Over time, we sort of lose our perspective and lose sight of the big picture, and we sort of find ourselves just going through the motions and the readiness and the zeal and the joy and the desire just sort of slips away from us a little bit. But this passage is telling us we can rekindle it. We can get it back. Just like they can get back their zeal for this great project of helping Christians in Judea. We can recapture our zeal. Do you need to do that? Was there a greater zeal for the things of the Lord in your heart in some time past.

How can you get that zeal back? Paul has told us how. In 2 Corinthians 8 and 9. It comes down to an appreciation of grace. And I believe you can do this. Chuck quoted Dwight Moody. And I wrote this down because I knew I was preaching this. People become what you encourage them to be. I don’t want to nag you about anything that is your spiritual responsibility, but I want to encourage you. Even when things were really dire, Paul would say encouraging words. You know, we studied the book of Galatians recently, and he has to tell them at one point, you’ve accepted another gospel, you have become bewitched, he says, Oh, foolish Galatians in Galatians 3 and verse 1. And in chapter 5, he starts appealing to them more by saying, Look, you were running well, someone has hindered you from obeying the truth.

This persuasion does not come from him who calls you. And then he says, I have confidence in you that you will adopt no other view. He says, I think you’re going to fix this. Like the Hebrew writer says, who I don’t believe was the Apostle Paul in Hebrews chapter 10, when he says, We are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but are of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul. And yet he’s talking to people who have become sluggish, not imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises, but he’s encouraging them to do that. Those who have strayed with an evil heart of unbelief.

We are not of those that do that. And so a lot of times people will become what you encourage them to be. And I hope that’s reflected in my preaching and teaching. Because I’ve said before that I don’t believe there’s a reason why anybody here tonight should be lost. We have so much going for us. If we would stay focused on the grace that God has brought to us through Jesus Christ, proper giving issues from the knowledge of grace. And so in this matter of giving, and whether we’re talking about the financial collection, which the church needs to continue as we have, or whether we’re talking about the time and the sacrifices of our energies that need to be given so that the work might prosper, that our young people might be taught, that our assemblies might be edifying and beneficial, that others may be taught in other places, that sound teaching can emanate from this pulpit because of the one that is supported, whether it’s me or Chuck or someone else in the future.

3. Be Motivated by Grace, Not Guilt

Be motivated by grace, not guilt. And when I talk about giving, I want to motivate you by grace, not by guilt. And Paul does something interesting in these texts. There are two words for money, and I researched this again this afternoon to make sure. Two primary words for money. There were others, the words crema and arguion in the Greek. You’ll find argurion in 1 Timothy 6 and verse 10, coupled with Phileo, brotherly love, when it says the love of money is the root of all evil. It’s philagarion in the Greek. But it’s interesting that these two primary words for money or silver in the New Testament, those words don’t appear anywhere in chapter 8 and chapter 9. Here you are talking about a financial collection, a collection of money for the poor saints in Jerusalem, and you never mentioned the word money.

Money’s found in a lot of texts in the New Testament. You look for it in 2 Corinthians 8 and 9, you will not find it. Doesn’t mention the word money, but I’ll tell you what he mentions over ten times. The word grace. That is too important to miss here. He is emphasizing the grace of God, not the mammon, not the material things of this world. But using what God has given us because of his grace. That’s why this point is so important. Let me tell you some other words that appear over and over again in chapter 8 and chapter 9. The word koinonia. You’ve heard that before, the word fellowship, the favor of fellowship. That’s what it says in verse 4 in the Greek. That’s the word koinonia.

The favor of participation, sharing. When you see the words participation and sharing, it’s the Greek word for fellowship. You’re having fellowship with these poor saints. And he will say later in chapter 9, while you put material things as you have sowed material things, you will reap spiritual things. It’ll produce many thanksgivings to God as a result of your gracious gift. And so there’s a sharing here in this matter of giving. And it’s blessing. It’s a blessing to be involved in the things of God. This blessing, this service, this ministry of the saints. He mentions in 2 Corinthians chapter 9 and verse 1. So it’s not about guilt as it is about grace. And of course, as I mentioned, blessing, Jesus says in what? In Acts 20 and verse 35, you know some of the few red letters that you’ll find after the book of John, quoted by Paul in Acts 20 and verse 35.

What is it? That beatitude. It is more blessed to give than to receive. So who was the more blessed in what’s going on in chapter 8 and chapter 9? Those who ultimately receive the funds and are able to buy food and supplies in order that they might live, or the ones who gave to make it happen. It is more blessed to give than to receive.

4. A Church That Doesn't Know Grace Has No Future

He’s a good guy, a little bit younger than I am. But Tim’s a faithful gospel preacher. And we were in a Bible study several years ago, and he just made this statement, and it made me think of this text. I think we were studying 2 Corinthians at the time. He says, a church that doesn’t know grace has no future. That’s why this sermon is called a church with a future. A sermon that doesn’t know grace, a church that doesn’t know grace has no future. And that makes me think that the depth of our knowledge about grace determines everything. It determines everything in the nature of the giving that the Corinthians did in regard to these poor saints. But I’ll tell you where else it goes. The depth of our knowledge about grace has everything to do with how we regard and treat other people.

And that’s true whether we’re talking about our relationships in the home. Has God treated you better than you deserve? Shake your head like this. It’s okay. God has treated you far better than you deserve. Have you sinned since you received salvation by being baptized into Christ? How good is that grace? That sin can be forgiven. Now, how are we going to turn in turn treat other people? And I’ll tell you what we do. And we do this in our homes a lot. It’s all about fairness. You know, we’re Americans. It’s about justice. Whatever people dish out, that’s what they get back in return. I’ll give my mate what they deserve. Well, aren’t you generous? Is that how God dealt with you? Is that how Jesus, God commended his love toward us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us?

But they don’t deserve that. They don’t deserve this gracious treatment because they’ve been mean. Does overcome evil with good have any meaning at all? In Romans chapter 12, verses 16 through 21, maybe you spend a little time with those verses. Vengeance is mine. Look, if there is vengeance to be given, God’s going to take care of that. But let me help you out with that, God. Let me get into the vengeance business a little. Know you want to be like God. Get more into the grace business. How gracious are you in your relationships in your home with your spouse? Or we keep a record. What love does not keep into account, wrong suffered. But we’re pretty good at tallying things in marriage. They did this to me, I get to do this to them.

They treated me this way, I get to treat them this way. That’s not the way grace thinks. You see, your knowledge of grace affects how you regard. And that’s how the treatment actually follows. How you regard. How we regard and treat other people. Now, I’m running out of time. I only want to go about five or ten more minutes in this tonight, but I’ll tell you, I could go for an hour here. If I got really wound up.

5. Our Knowledge of Grace, That's What It Affects

And secondly, and let me, whoa, before I go on. How are we going to teach people about the grace of God unless we demonstrate the grace of God to them? Secondly, the nature of the service we render. I mean, whether it’s stingy or lavish and generous, the nature of the service, you know, I just want to be about myself and my own problems and my own circumstances. I never want to get out of that box and really expend of myself for the betterment of others. You know, I’ve got it pretty tough here. You know, if we’re all going to play the I Got It Pretty Tough here game, nobody ever gets served. We’ve all got our own problems that we have to deal with and struggles and concerns.

But maybe those wouldn’t seem so great if we got out of that box and got into the service box. You see, grace determines the nature of the service that we render. And it’s okay in our service if we experience a little pain and a little discomfort. That’s good for us to do that. I’ll tell you what else it affects. It affects how much and how passionately we pray. Your knowledge of grace does. And I’ll tell you, if we’re struggling, if we’re struggling to pray outside of these assemblies, there’s something amiss in our perceptions of grace. I bet you might not have made that connection before. But I’ll tell you, that’s the case. We have struggled, we have forgotten, we have removed it from our minds, this whole business of the grace of Christ.

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. If you know that, it’s going to affect even your prayers. And so, we need to say no to the world and say yes to prayer. We need to tune out the television programming, the music, our smartphones, and our tablets for a little while to do this important work of prayer. Our knowledge of grace is going to affect how we do with the problem of temptation. And whether we somehow can muster the courage to defeat temptation. Grace is the key to that. It will affect our commitment to the Lord’s people. And whether this church can truly count on us to be involved, to be present. Our knowledge of grace, that’s what it affects. See how far reaching it is?

Conclusion

And it will affect our efforts too to teach others, both the saved and the lost. And if grasping for the right words to end this discussion, Paul concludes. He wraps all of this up when he says, thanks be to God for his indescribable gift. I want you to go back from that a couple of verses when he says, as we’ve already quoted in verse 12, the ministry of this service isn’t not only supplying the needs of the saints, but overflowing through many thanksgivings to God. And he says, because of the proof given by this ministry or this service, they will glorify God. These people that you’re assisting, they will glorify God for your obedience to your confession of the gospel of Christ. Those Christians over there in Corinth are something else.

They’re a special group of people because they have contributed to us. And for the liberality of your contribution to them and to all, a contribution that goes not only to these poor saints, but to poor saints in the entire region, it seems. While they also, the reason why I know we’re still talking about Christians here, is because he says in verse 14, while they also, by prayer on your behalf, yearn for you, because of the surpassing grace of God in you. What are they attributing this generosity to? The grace of God residing in you. And that leads to the concluding words, as if, how am I going to sum this up? Well, thanks be to God for his indescribable gift. And so what that tells me is this that after all the giving has been done, after all the sacrificing has been done, after the work of the messengers and all of their earnestness, and the brother of fame that we’ll talk about in our study of 2 Corinthians, that’s further mentioned as an administrator of this gift.

After these men have done all of this work of bringing the contribution to the poor saints, after all the sacrifices have been made by the brethren in Macedonia and Achaia and everywhere else, ultimately, all of it is what it is because of God. It all issues from Him, it’s all because of Him, because remember, from Him and through Him and to Him is all things. Romans 11 and verse 36. And so when we’ve done all of this giving and all of this sacrifice, and when we’ve engaged in all of these assemblies and participated all of these years among the people of God, when we have overcome evil with good, as we talked about, and we’ve tried to model grace in all of our relationships, and we’ve done all of that.

It’s only what we ought to have done. And it’s only because of him. And again, our knowledge of grace means everything. And so when we see believers struggling to participate and to supply their part, we could guilt them really bad. You mean you can’t come to the services? Look at all that. We can try the guilt approach. You know what I’ve noticed? That doesn’t seem to work with people. Somehow we’ve got to get them to see the grace of God. And to appreciate that grace and model that grace. And then the proper giving will take care of itself. So let’s reflect as a result of these lessons about our future. Our future will only be as good as our appreciation of grace and the modeling of it in our lives.

You’ll find in that all the motivation that you need. And you’ll find in that all the motivation that you need to put on Christ while there’s time and opportunity. And so if there’s someone in our audience tonight who’s not done that, I bid you to appreciate, to think about 2 Corinthians chapter 8 and verse 9, that though he was rich, for your sake, for your rescue from sin, for your eternal salvation, for your immortality. For your sake, he became poor. That you, through that poverty might become rich. Do you realize how rich we are? Doesn’t matter what your bank account says or doesn’t say. All things belong to us because we belong to God. That’s what he tells the Corinthians in his first epistle, in chapter 3, verses 21 through 23.

All things belong to you. Do you really appreciate that? Do you really apprehend that? Because you know Christ, because you know his will, because you’re serving in him, because you have a relationship with him, that everything that means anything is in your possession. I used to say it a lot. I don’t know why I’ve shied away from it, but I used to say all the time, and I had little graphics that everything that means anything is in Christ. And that’s true. I hope you can appreciate it. And if you need to respond, do so as we stand and see.