Core Value #4 - Give Generously - Part 1 - Pleasant Grove Baptist Church

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Summary

Pastor Safrit walks through 2 Corinthians 9:6-15, emphasizing the importance of giving generously as a core value of the church. He explains that true generosity stems from the condition of one's heart and encourages the congregation to give cheerfully, reflecting God's own generosity. The practical application involves examining personal attitudes toward giving and recognizing that our contributions support the mission of the church and meet the needs of others, ultimately glorifying God.

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2 Corinthians chapter 9, today is where we'll be at. We're going through our core values, and guys, if you'll put that core values up on the screen, we're in our last core value of our church. We've got four of them.
The first one is glorifying God, and we talked about that for a couple weeks and what it means to glorify God, how we can glorify God, and as a church, what we can be doing in order to give glory to God. We moved on from there into growing together,
looking inward, and how we can grow together, work together, serve together for the kingdom and for God's glory.
And then we talked over the last couple weeks of going out and serving, and how we can go from coming in here and glorifying God and growing together, but then turning that into an act of service, and going
out into our community and reaching others that are around us, which leads us to our last core value, as any good Baptist pastor would have in their core values, giving and what giving means and giving generously.
And so as we look at giving generously today, again, it'll be this week and next week, sort of talking about stewardship, talking about giving.
And if you're a guest, again, we don't talk about this often, but it's part of the ministry. It's part of what God has called us to do is to give and to be a part of what He is doing. And so we'll take our text out of 2 Corinthians 9, verses 6-15.
We'll stand and read out of respect of God's Word. It says in verse 6, 2 Corinthians 9. I'm in the wrong place in my Bible. I'm sorry. Chapter 9.
But this I say, he that soweth sparingly shall also reap sparingly, and he that soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully.
Every man according to his, he that purposed in his heart, so let him give, not grudgingly or out of necessity, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, having all sufficiency in all things,
might abound in every good work. And as it is written, he hath dispersed abroad. He hath given to the poor. His righteousness remaineth forever.
Now he that ministered seeds to the sower, but ministers bread to your food, and multiplies your seeds sown, and increase your fruits and your righteousness, being enriched in everything and all bountifulness, which causes us through us thanksgiving of God.
For the administration of this service not only supplieth the well of the saints, but is abundant also by many thanksgiving unto God,
while is by experiment of the administration that the glory of God, of your possessions subject unto the gospel of Christ, and for your liberal dispersion upon them and upon all men, and by their prayers for you, which longeth
after you for the exceeding grace of God, thanks be to God for this unspeakable gift. Lord, we love you. We thank you again for this day.
Lord, be with the Lord as we preach this morning. Help us as we ultimately turn our thanksgiving and praise back to you through gifts and what that looks like this week and next week, and Lord, I pray that you would help us as we worship you supremely. In your name we pray. Amen.
You may be seated. I wrote down a couple of statements as I want to give some introduction. My introduction will be a little longer this morning than what it normally is, and we'll get to the text and the meat here in just a minute. But we give because God ultimately gave to us.
We proceed in this giving out of what God has given because God is the one who has given to us all things liberally, the Bible says.
Heart Condition in Giving
Our giving is not based on a certain measure of one's ability, but the Bible says upon the condition of our heart and where we are at in our own heart today.
As we give and as we talk through this, I want you to be in prayer about what God has for you to give because oftentimes we will be said, I'm a follower of Jesus, and that's sort of where our Christianity ends.
But the Bible wants us to move forward in saying, how can I go from just being a follower of Jesus to someone who can say that I will follow Jesus and give generously in that same way and in that same manner?
A couple of questions I want you to think about today is, what is the condition of your heart and when it comes to giving? Ultimately, have you prayed about your giving?
And then ultimately, what do you focus on? Do you focus on the seed or do you focus on what God can do with your gift? True generosity of a follower of Jesus begins with the right attitude.
Have you ever seen a kid who you begin to give things to, maybe it's a bag of Skittles or M&M's and they're walking around at Easter and someone comes up to them and says, hey, can I have one of those M&M's? And they're like, these are my M&M's.
How dare you ask for one of my M&M's? No, they're mine, right?
It's one of the kids' favorite term is mine. And all of a sudden, they give and they're like, well, I'll give you one, but only one. Don't ask for another one.
So they're giving, but they're not really in the heart of, an attitude of giving. You've seen that kid that just likes to share and you give them something and someone comes up to them, they're like, yeah, here's a handful.
And they're just giving because they just love. And all of a sudden, this is our attitude, our heart. When we begin to think of our attitude toward giving, it comes from the right heart. And knowing that what we have been entrusted with has been given to us by God.
As you study the early church, as I studied the early church, and you see the growth of the church and how God planted the church and how God planted the disciples and hundreds of thousands of people came to know Jesus almost daily in those first couple of weeks.
You look at Acts chapter four and the Bible says that all the believers were united in the heart and in mind and they felt that what they owned was not their own. And so they began to share everything they had. We began to see the church grow.
We began to see unity. We began to see the church coming together and giving of what they have because it begins to come from an attitude of their commitment to say, I'm going to move from worship. I'm going to move from growing.
I'm going to move from going to this part of where we give to the mission of the church. We give, and when we give, it brings great joy.
We begin to be able to think about how we can see God's blessings in our life. In fact, this thought came to my mind just now. I keep a friend of mine years ago, he challenged me.
He said, whenever you get a wallet and you begin making money, he said, I always keep a $100 bill tucked away in my wallet. So if you ever find my wallet, there's always a $100 bill in there,
always, typically. And I keep it in there. And a couple of years later, I was talking to a pastor friend of mine and he said, you know, he said, I've never given any type of money where God hasn't given it back to me.
He said, when I understand that God's the owner of all these things, I begin to see that God moves in these areas. And so I said, you know, I'm going to test this out a little bit. And so I was somewhere and I saw someone needed something.
I just pulled that $100 out and I gave it to someone. And within that day, another $100 bill came in my possession.
And I came, I put it right back in that pocket, right back in that wallet. And I began to think, you know, when we understand that we're just a vessel of giving things back to God and giving things to others, we began to see the mission of the church in action.
Mission of the Church
We began to understand why we as a church exist. If you think back to that first sermon of the year where we talked about the mission of the church, where we exist to preach the word, to practice hospitality, to penetrate the darkness, all this comes through the act of giving of ourself.
As this passage says here in verse seven, for God loves a person who cheerfully gives. Bible doesn't say, notice the Bible does not say, it does not care about the amount that we give. He doesn't say God loves the person that gives a million dollars.
No, he says God loves a person who is giving cheerfully. It's the attitude of giving that God cares about.
And when we begin to think about how we give and how we are part of this operation of the ministry, it begins to think about what God has given us and how we can give back to others.
John Wesley, one of the founders of the Methodist movement, preached a sermon one time called The Use of Money. In 1789, this is not a new thing for Christianity,
but in 1789, the Methodists of his day were ignoring the third part of his sermon. In fact, they began arguing that the primary reason, he began to argue the primary reason for the ineffectiveness of the Methodist movement was due to the failure to give all they could.
Wesley came to the profound conclusion that if the Methodists were to give all they could, that they would have enough.
Wesley's admonition to the Methodists to give all they could was not a pious rhetoric of to try to build the budget or to increase the contributions, but it was a plea for generosity and a plea for the compassion for the poor and needy.
You see, the poor and needy are the ones that need Jesus, are the ones that allow us to go and tell others about Jesus.
And when we begin to think of our giving through, we're able to give through Annie Armstrong or we're able to give for the mission to go forward, it's that we're giving so that God's word can be preached, God's
word can be administered through the Holy Spirit to go out and to tell others about Jesus.
Came across a story, I think it's a true story, of a pastor in Dallas, Texas. Larger church there, and he was pastoring there for many years.
And they had a young man that came up to him and had just recently got married. And you can sort of think back to those early days of marriage where we didn't really have a lot, we just sort of lived on love. All right, can anyone agree with me on that?
You just sort of hope the bills were paid by love.
And he came to the pastor and he said, he said, pastor, I want to make a commitment between you and my wife and we're going to sit here and I'm going to commit that every year I'm going to
give 10% of my income to the church. The pastor said, that's great.
I'm glad you're making a commitment. I'm glad you're coming together with your wife and you're making this thought. And he said that first year they gave $1,000. That's all they could give.
That was 10% of their income. You can do the math if you want. He said a couple of years later he earned $100,000.
And him and his wife were excited and they wrote that $10,000 check and they put it in the offering plate and a couple of years later he earned his first million dollars. God was blessing.
God was giving. He began to give and he wrote that $100,000 check and he gave it to the Lord and he said, God, I just want to help the church. I want to help the cause of Christ. And as time progressed and as God continued to bless
the pastor had moved to another church and he called the pastor one day and he said, hey, can me and my wife come and meet with you? He said, sure, we'd love to. It happens to me often.
I'll have former church members know, hey, can we have lunch? Can we do this? I'm like, yeah, let's do this. Let's have a great time. And so this church member had came and was meeting with him in his office and he said, pastor, he said, I know I made that commitment to you.
He said, but me and my wife this year made $6 million. And he said, I cannot in good conscience be able to write a check for $600,000 to the church. He said, I'm asking you
and I'm begging you to let me out of that covenant that I gave when I first got married. And he began to,
pastor began to think about it and he just got down on his knees and began to pray. And as he was praying quietly for a long time, the man said, what are you doing? Why are you praying? Are you praying that God will let me out of this covenant?
The pastor got up from his prayer and said, no, I'm praying that God will bring you back to where you can bring $1,000 back to the Lord. And so God will bring your income back down to where you can properly tithe again.
The man walked out in humility because he realized that God was the one that gave him
everything that he had. And he was the one that was squandering it away. One person said it like this, you can tell how generous someone is by looking at their checkbook. God doesn't want or God doesn't need your money.
God Wants Your Heart
All God wants is your heart. And he asks you, where is your heart this morning? The Bible teaches us that what we have is not ours.
And by letting go and surrendering in different areas, it's part of the commitment to say, I am gonna follow Jesus this morning. My goal this morning is to accomplish two simple things.
Look at what God reveals about generosity through the writings of Paul and bring us into a point where we will say, I will give generously and I will be a church member that gives generously.
You talk to any farmer out there, they know the more they invest on seeds and fertilizer, the more of the return of the crop they're gonna get. Right?
I was at the meal this week and I was needing to get some seed and some straw and the guy in front of me was asking, how much was it gonna be for a ton of fertilizer?
And the lady at the desk, she said, you know, this year the cost of that specific fertilizer has come down to half of what it was last year. And he said, well, I'm coming back for a ton.
If the price goes up, please call me before it goes up because I need that ton because I know what the investment's gonna be. It's gonna be greater than what I ever plant. We know when we plant
a seed of corn or any type of seed, we're gonna get back 10, 20, 100 fold of what we plant. And a farmer knows this.
Those that graduate from NC State are excited and as Carrie told me last night, NC State puts out the farmers and Carolina doesn't, but the farmers know when they plant these things that they grow. And the more you plant, the more you sow, the more the harvest is.
Also the opposite of that, the less we plant, the less we sowed, the less generous we are, the less we'll grow in the Lord.
And so the question that asks us this morning is why should I give generously? Why should I be a church member that gives generously? The very first blank I wanna put there, I skipped it. We will do everything we can to give as generously as Jesus did.
That's our thought for this, these next two weeks is how can I give generously as Jesus did? The first thought is this, knowing God who is the most generous giver.
Look again at verses 10 and 11. Now, he who supplies the seed, the sower, and the supplies, the bread for your food will also multiply the seeds sown and increase the fruit of your righteousness. So you will be enriched in everything to all bountifulness, which makes us give thanks to God.
Knowing God is the most generous giver of all allows us to grow in our grace toward him. In other words, you cannot outgive God.
You cannot say, God, I'm gonna give you this much and God's gonna say, well, that's too much.
One of the passages of scripture that comes to my mind when I think about this is in, I think it's in Deuteronomy where Moses said that the people brought their tithes or their offering to the storehouse and that the children of Israel had more than enough because everyone gave.
Everyone was willing to be a part of this endeavor. However, 1 Corinthians 3, 6 says this, I planted the seed in your heart,
Apollos watered it, but God was the one who made it grow. And we think about giving, it's not what my gift's gonna do, it's about how we as a collective body can give to see the gospel spread.
You look at the seed of a tomato or the seed of an acorn and you see how God takes that little seed and makes it something massive and something great that can provide for more and more people. Knowing that God is the most generous giver begins with the relationship with Jesus.
Jesus said unto Philip, he said this, listen, you know me
and if you know me, you know the Father. And we understand that the Father is the one that gave everything. everything.
One of the, the most familiar passages of scripture, if not the most familiar passage of all scripture.
It was the very first verse I learned as a kid, John 3, 16. We probably could quote it, our kids could probably quote it, but I wanna just think about the words here for a moment. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.
He gave his only son. He didn't hold his son back. He didn't, he didn't say, no that's too much of a gift for me to give away. That's too much for me to give away. He said, I'm gonna give my only son. I have two sons. I have one daughter.
They're all precious to me. They're all precious in my sight.
And if you were to come and say, I just need to take your daughter or your sons away for the rest of your life, I would not be able to do that because I love them too much.
And yet God, the creator of the world, the creator of the universe who spoke the world into existence, who formed mankind, said, I'm gonna send my son into the creation that rebelled against me so that he could ultimately give his life for you and for me.
Understanding Generosity
Understanding that we become a giving generosity of a church member begins to start by knowing God is the very most generous giver of all. It reveals a couple of things to us as we continue on in our notes. The first one is this.
In verse 7, it says that by beginning to give personally, it brings us into this resolve of making a personal matter. Look at verse 7. You must each decide in your heart.
Paul begins to say here, it is a personal decision for each and every one of you to decide for yourself in your heart how you are going to give. For me and my wife, it changes over time, you're right?
When we first got married, we weren't making as much. I was part-time, she was barely making anything and our giving was very, very small.
But as God has blessed and as God has given, our giving begins to grow and we begin to give as God gives to us.
You know, the hard truth and oftentimes we don't want to think about this is we most often decide what we give based on our wallet and what we have in our bank account when it should be the other way around.
It should be we decide to give because we've prayed about it, because we sought the Lord and the Lord said this is what I desire from you.
We talk about the rich young ruler this last week where he came to Jesus and he had all of his riches and all of his possessions and he said, Jesus, I want to follow you. And Jesus said, you can follow me if you give up everything.
For the cost of him it was everything because everything he had was everything he was.
And for him to follow Jesus he had to give up everything. But you go to a different story where the poor widow woman who came to Jesus who came in Mark chapter 12 verse 42 where there's two people that give and one person that's given a lot and this widow
who comes and she just gives her two pennies and she gives it to the Lord and the disciples asked Jesus which one of these is greater? Jesus said it's the one who gave two because she gave everything that was important to her.
She gave out of generosity because it was a matter of the heart.
Generosity is a personal matter and it's led by the heart and the more in love with God you are the greater your generosity will be no matter the ability that you have. Listen to that again.
The more in love with God the greater your generosity will be no matter the ability of what you can give because it's a personal matter.
Think about it as a young person as a person who begins to play sports and maybe they fall in love with the sport they fall in love with baseball or golf or soccer or football or whatever it may
be and they begin to love it so much that all you see them do is practice it outside.
God they got a soccer ball and they're kicking against the wall they've got a golf club and they're just practicing their swing and they're doing everything they can to grow in that sport because they love it.
And God says in the same way the more we love God the more we'll grow in our generosity toward Him because our ability to give will grow because of our love toward God.
It's a personal matter but not only is it a personal matter it's the matter of being resolved to do it. Verse 7 continues on and each one of you should give what you have decided to give.
Translation for that would be each of you must do as God has purposed in your heart. This addresses how much and it makes a priority on giving.
It literally means to place it before another because it says here don't give reluctantly in the response of pressure but to give as what you have decided to do.
We begin to think through this generosity and how it means to give we begin to set goals and we move we move in those goals and once we reach that goal that goal moves a little bit more. Right? Malachi 3.10 a famous passage on giving says this is
Malachi 3.10 bring all of your tithes into the storehouse so there will be enough food in my temple and if you do says the Lord of heavens I will open up the windows of heaven and I will pour it out of blessing so that great
you will have and you won't have enough room to take it all in.
As we begin to pray about what God has for us to give and we're going to talk practically next week about what all this means but today I'm just laying the foundation of why we should give the tithe
is biblical 10% it says it here and what I want us to understand is when we try it when we put God to the test and we say God I'm going to do what you say are you a true God
because every promise God has ever provided in the Bible he has fulfilled why wouldn't he fulfill this promise pastor named Shane said it like this God can bless anything but nothing God can bless anything
but nothing if we give nothing God will bless nothing and zero times zero is always
zero and God says put me to the test and give as a generous church member and when you do that
that's when we are resolved to do what God has called us to do that's when God says that's when I can use a group of people in unity as we looked at in Acts chapter 4 all the believers
were in unity of heart and unity in mind and they felt that what they owned was not their own so they shared everything they had and when we do that we understand the fourth point of this passage in verses 12 through 15 knowing there are greater
implications we look at this passage here and we began to see that it says that the administration of the service
was for the needs of the saints it was an abundance so that many thanksgiving were given and it performed the ministry so that glorifying God was possible
and it says that they went out and they served and they had these possessions so they can give others
we think of Darrell as I've had him on my mind over the last night as I heard he was in the hospital last night and with his heart and the heart problem that he's got going on and as
you look at the heart and the organ of a heart it operates the entire body it provides blood to all the cells it provides blood to the brain it provides blood to the lungs so that we can breathe it provides oxygen so that we can begin to make everything we do
my daughter said just last week my mom was here and my sister-in-law and one of them came up to me and they put their arm around me and they said you're a little sweaty
and I said yeah I sweat every time I preach because I'm excited about what I preach I'm excited about what God has for me but what it is it's the heart beating and it's those blood vessels
producing and it's all the heart doing everything it can because everything comes out of the heart in our physical body why is the spiritual body any different
everything we give should come from our heart it should come and flow out of the heart as the central generating part of our body where we begin to flow and give as a devotion as Christ would have us
to give Paul is saying here that the Christian community is beyond just one person it is a collective group of people who are growing who are giving who are seeing God move in their midst
you see that there's a couple of things as we look here there's a couple of things that are done it says that as they gave the needs of others were met
look at verse 12 it says that for the administration of service not only was supplying the needs of the saints but was abundant so that through many thanksgivings the supplies were given ultimately back to God the needs of the believers in Jerusalem were met and as they were met get this the joy
flowed from that and thanks was given back to God thanks was given back to God because their needs were met
you look at Jesus and I think I said this last week or I maybe said the week before Jesus would come into a situation and he would begin to meet their needs and then he would give them that spiritual blessing he would begin to teach them the ways of what God had
I'm sure if you asked people you would not be hard to find someone even in this room has not experienced the joy that was a result of someone else's generosity
a pastor down the road here was listening to a message that Stephen gave me and he said that we are sitting in the seats today because of the sacrifice of someone before us and we sacrifice today for the next generation
we sacrifice so that not only do we have the seats and we have the facility that we have but we
Sacrifice for Future Generations
sacrifice for the next generation and if we don't sacrifice if our forefathers would not have sacrificed we would not be where we're at today and that is what giving is it's understanding that I'm sacrificing for someone else
it may be for your kid it may be for your grandkid and it may be for your great grandkid that you've never met but ultimately we give so that one day they'll hear the gospel
so that one day they'll hear the good news of what Christ has done for them so that by the means of these screens or by the means of the projection or by the means of my voice or some
other preacher that's preaching they'll hear the voice of God in their life and they'll say I want what they have because someone sacrificed for them to hear the gospel
but that only happens when we give cheerfully and our giving produces joy in someone else's life and a grateful heart is a generous heart think about it others will come to know Jesus because of our gifts this impact
is an eternal impact and it's a greater impact than you'll ever know
you'll never be able to put a quantifying number on what you give and how God can take that gift and expound it by so many more than you ever imagined the Bible says that he gives more than we can even ask or think but ultimately it's a response of us giving
as Terry comes and I'll conclude this morning when your seed of faith through our generosity or giving have been planted it allows others to see who the most generous giver is I want us to look here at the very last two verses verse 14 and 15
and as they prayed for you they long because of the surpassing grace to you and thanks be to God for his
indescribable gift verse 9 was the preface of this and it says they shared freely and they gave generously to the poor and their good deeds will be remembered forever
you see when we begin to give it's a way of showing the world that we have something greater that we're given to
it's not that we're given to the stock market it's not that we're given to some investment firm that's going to go up and down with the economy it's God's economy says you give and I'm going to
reap back to you you're going to reap more than you can ever ask think or imagine it's understanding that I give because God gave
it's examining our heart it's thinking through what we're giving through prayer and ultimately it's understanding that there's this eternal impact but the question we have to ask ourselves this morning as we began to go to our invitation is does this church need your generosity does this church need
generosity of givers the early church did the early church as I read multiple times and they were all unified in heart and they felt that what they owned was not their own so they shared everything they had
Challenges of Discussing Giving
does hearing the message make you feel uncomfortable it's not an easy message on giving trust me it's not easy to get up and say give
but Christ did it Paul did it the apostles! apostles did it all throughout the church generation people got up and they said as we read in our open illustration John Wesley said if the Methodist church would just give the Methodist church would be where they need to be but they weren't
and ultimately why do we struggle with this? my grandpa I don't think I've ever shared this story my grandpa he came to church one time before I was ever born
to my knowledge he never came to church and he died 12 years 14 15 years ago and to the best of my knowledge he is not in heaven today he came one time
to the church I grew up in and he told my dad he said I'm never going back to that church because all they talked about was giving he came one time my dad said the best he can remember
giving was never even talked about but often times we struggle with this thought of what it means to give
why do we give we're going to talk about that next week promise this is just the intro of why we give and what we give but often times we struggle with this concept of giving to the church when
we sign our kid up for a ball practice or a ball team they say okay in order for your child to play you've got to give this much stuff these many times this many days you've got to give up this many weekends and
we're gung ho about it we sign on the dotted line and we say yep I'm all for it but when God says
pray about it and give we're like that's just too much when ultimately God's the one that gave everything to us not that ball team and God says I want you to give out of a heart of giving as I gave my only son
I want you to think about what you can give and when we have truly
never let go and trust God and we only focus on the seed God says don't focus on those things focus on the one that you're giving it to and ultimately we can be a people of verse 15 we can give thanks to God for his
indescribable gift and this morning I hope that's where you're at and maybe you're not there maybe you need to come and say God work on my heart this morning help me be
as that first church was where they gave because they saw the need they saw that people were dying and people were going to hell and they wanted to give so that the redemption gospel could be proclaimed that's ultimately what we're about today
I don't know where you're at and as we go in our time of invitation you can pray in your seat you can come down front and have a time of prayer with your family
prayer can be done in many many different ways but I challenge you this morning pray and ask God am I giving what you want me to give not what my mom and dad told me to give not what I thought was right but God am I giving what you told me to give
you ponder in your heart this morning Lord we love you we thank you for what you done Lord I thank you again for what you gave us Lord you gave us so much
and so often we give you so little we give you the leftovers we give you what doesn't even matter in our life and
you didn't do that for us you gave us what meant the most to you God I pray that you would help us examine our hearts this morning we love you in your name we pray amen