NOTE: The quote at the beginning of the sermon is from a book titled "Lead" by Paul David Tripp.
Sermon Transcript:
I want to start us off this week as we continue our conversation we started last week on giving and just what it looks like to give well as the Church of Christ. Continue that conversation with a quote that I got from a book this week that Kylie and I have been reading together, and I share it with you because I think it really ties into what has been said about our conversation on giving, and it goes like this, and it's a little bit longer. Quote,
How ambitious to do the work of God, how ambitious to do the work of God, how ambitious, Further, God calls us to be ambitious for the growth and expansion of his kingdom between the already of our conversions and the not yet of our homegoing. Human beings are achievers, meant to build and rebuild, to grow and to expand, to uproot and to plant, to tear down and to build, to dream and to achieve their dreams. But every ambition and every achievement must bow to the lordship and the glory.
of the Lord Jesus Christ. And I greatly appreciate, I'll end quote, I greatly appreciate the strong language used in this quote. It says, God's saving grace ignites a radical shift in ambition. Where once we were ambitious for what we want, we are now ambitious for what God wants. And every ambition and every achievement must therefore bow to the glory and the lordship. And I contend to you that our giving, a conversation started last week,
should fall precisely into that category. When we became a Christian, God's saving grace did ignite a radical shift in our ambitions. And therefore, we give. Whereas we used to be ambitious and motivated to work our jobs and get our paychecks and spend our money on ourselves, we now find ourselves ambitious to use our money, our funds, our resources for the glory of God. And ultimately, it's not just our money and the use of it that succumbs to this new ambition,
but as the quote ended, it is every single ambition, every single desire of our heart, being in Christ, that we now submit to Him. So rather than be for our own benefit, as our ambitions and dreams tend to be, we now know to invest in that which is for God's purposes. And Jesus told us last week how we can do that. He started the conversation on what it looks like for us to do that.
He says, giving Christ's own words from last week, I gave us Matthew 6 during the Sermon on the Mount, and this is what Jesus said. He said, here's how to give to God's glory. Matthew 6, 19-21. Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, where thieves break in and steal. Instead, store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroy, where thieves do not break in or steal. Verse 21, for where your treasure is,
there your heart will be also. And he tells us elsewhere a different conversation in Luke 6. He said, give. Pretty straightforward. Give, and it will be given to you. It will pour into your lap a good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over. For by the standard... And this is what Christ said it means to give. This is why he told us to give.
This is how he presented the idea of giving. And after each of these passages, I said the same thing, the same common note of all of everything I said last week. God wants us to invest wisely. God's not concerned with putting what little we have in the box, with making sure the church has a nice building, with making sure the carpet stays clean. God is concerned with what you do with your temporary resources to invest in the eternal things of God.
You know, if there's ever anybody in the universe qualified to give advice on your money, it's not Fidelity, it's not Charles Schwab, it's not T. Rowe Price. It is the one who created all things. It is the one who created the things we use to make money, the concept of money, who has given us the idea that we can make money. that has given all things their value and therefore determines their return. And it's from that position of eternal wisdom that God told us that Christ himself said,
provide purses for yourselves that do not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will therefore never fail. And it was always this language of storing up. It was always this language of investing. It was always this language of putting your money that is earthly and temporary into eternal means so that therefore it will be the wisest investment you will ever make because the returns you will receive will be there forever. And so how do we do that? What did Christ say? How do we put that wise investment advice.
into earthly application? Well, he said in one of his parables, the phrase, be rich towards God. Rather than giving to yourself, rather than being rich towards yourself, which means lavishing yourself, providing for yourself, pouring out blood. on yourself, Christ says, be rich instead towards your heavenly father. We're so used to putting our time, our money, our schedule, our priorities, our ambitions, our desires, and just lavishing them on ourselves.
But he's saying, redirect that and instead lavish it on God, the one who truly can give you a return. And even referring to the quote I started us with, Christ is really just calling for us to be ambitious for God's kingdom. He's calling us to use our money for the growth and the expansion of God's kingdom. The quote even said that. It said, God calls us to be ambitious for the growth and expansion of his kingdom. And Jesus says, using your resources is the way to do that.
He says, invest in kingdom opportunities, invest in means through which the gospel travels. That is truly wise investing, be it churches, be it missionaries, be it mission organizations, traveling evangelists, Bible translators, church planters, mission events, discipleship trainings, anything in which God is capable of moving and blessing, Jesus says you invest in that as much as you possibly can because that is the wisest investment you will ever make.
Now, that's what we talked about last week. That's what we talked about when we kind of closed 2 Corinthians 9, 6. And maybe you walked away from that conversation or maybe just hearing it again. And you're now thinking, all right, well, that makes sense, Pastor. You know, I get that. If the eternal God of the universe, who is also eternally gracious, gives us this advice, then it would only make sense that when we put it into practice, the return on it would be eternal and gracious.
But to be honest, and maybe you're thinking this, that's great and all, but I really... I still don't want to give. You know, I really don't feel called to, you know, do that. I don't feel called to invest in eternity. Investing in all the nonsense I got going on right now keeps me busy enough as it is. So why, you know, why? Why should I do that? Why would I want to? And again, maybe there's tons of reasons why you wouldn't want to give. You know, maybe you like what you have and you don't want to see it change. You know, maybe you like the quality of life that your income affords you.
You know, perhaps you don't really have a whole lot to give to begin with. And giving to God would really just tighten up that margin. I'm sure there's scenarios, complex as they may be, that speak to this very issue in your life. And it's to those people that the Apostle Paul's words speak to us today. And here's his piece of advice. He says, all right, then don't give. And if I was going to preach a sermon on giving, you'd think the last piece of advice I'd want to tell you.
But yet, the Apostle Paul tells us, following verse 6 of last week, So if you walked away last week, or from any sermon on giving, or from any preacher, pastor, whoever, sitting up on a stand and telling you you should give, and maybe you feel reluctant afterwards to give,
maybe you feel somewhat compulsed to give afterwards, God's word says, don't. Don't. Check your heart at the door, and do not give. And now a lot of folks are going to start coming to our church, because we're the church that preaches you not to give. I can already tell. But that's what it says. It says, do not give. If your heart is compelled to give, If your heart is reluctant, do not give.
You should give whatever it is in your heart that you have decided to give because you decided in your heart. And maybe your heart says, well, I don't want to give. And again, to that, people would say, hallelujah, amen, God's word said it. I don't have to give. I'm off the hook. I'm done. I don't feel like giving anymore. That's more for me. And that sounds great for the most part. And as it is perfectly all right not to give, but a big if to attach to that is,
yes, you can be perfectly fine, but then you must be content with this reality that if we do not give, God says he won't love you as much as he could because the end of the verse says, God loves a cheerful giver. So therefore, if you are not a cheerful giver, if you do not give cheerfully, if that is not in your heart, And therefore you, the last chunk of that verse, doesn't apply to you.
You will not be loved as God loves a cheerful giver. You are not the cheerful giver in the equation, so therefore God's love is not poured out. And that's, I mean, pretty straightforward. I don't have to extrapolate on that a whole lot. So apparently when you give cheerfully, God's word tells us that there is a special sense of love. There is a special dispensation, a special giving of God's love that is reserved only for those who give in accordance with God's word,
who give cheerfully, who give faithfully, who give generously. If you give, you get it. If you don't, you don't. And hear me again on that. Whenever you give generously towards the Lord, following the command of Luke 6, Matthew 6, 2 Corinthians 9, whatever it is, there is a special blessing of God reserved for you and specifically reserved for those... Now, I'd venture to guess that most Christians or people who go to church or call themselves Christians have never experienced this sense of blessing,
have never experienced this sense of love that God promises the cheerful giver because perhaps they've never given cheerfully. Perhaps they've never given as Paul tells us to give here. Paul speaks to this, the Apostle Paul speaks to this reality elsewhere in Acts 20. He tells us in a conversation about his ministry at the very end, he says, remember the words of Lord Jesus himself saying, it is more blessed to give than to receive. There is more blessing reserved for those who give.
than there is reserved for those who only receive. Proverbs 11, which I gave to us last week, said the same thing. I think it was verses 24 and 25. And that's why Paul can say, if you give what you have decided, Add it in your heart to give, verse 7. Verse 8 says, God is able to bless you abundantly. And there's the love poured out on us. There's that special blessing reserved for us. God can bless you abundantly. The special blessing of verse 8 only comes to us when we give carefully and obediently.
And so what it seems to come down to, you know, we talked about the principle. What it comes down to is our second point on your outline, having the right attitude when it comes to giving. You know, we can know the truth behind giving. We can know the, as I talked about last week, the divine investment opportunity that stands before us. We can know the reap what you sow principle we read for at the beginning. But if our heart is not cheerful, if our heart is reluctant, if our heart is compulsed to give in a way that is not in our heart,
God says not to give. And therefore, you will not receive blessing. So what this says, to us, As a church, when it comes to our giving, is what I said before, we need to check our heart at the door. You know, it doesn't mean that if you don't feel like giving, you just don't give. It doesn't mean that only people in the church who are committed or on fire for the Lord.
are those responsible for giving and providing. What it means is that if your heart is a heart of verse 7, a heart that cannot fully enjoy and give joyfully to God, then what you need to do is check your own heart. That it's not an issue of your finances. It's not an issue of your season of life. It's not an issue of your commitment to the Lord. It's not an issue of how much you like the church or how much you like the pastor. The issue at hand is that your priorities, your heart is skewed.
That your heart is not in the place where it needs to be. That your spiritual attitude will need to be in the place where it needs to be. to be restored or returned to an attitude of joyful giving, to an attitude of cheerful giving, because that is the default stance of a true Christian when it comes to giving, that they can give joyfully, that they can give exuberantly, that they can give in a way that is cheerful. Maybe I can simplify it by putting it this way.
In the life of a Christian, giving isn't just a secondary duty. You know, it isn't just something we do it when we remember, we do it if the circumstances permit. You know, true Christ-like giving should be understood as being one of the most simple and yet significant means through which we receive God's blessing, which is what's spelled out in verse 8. And what I mean by that is, as Christians, we can give in practically any circumstance. You know, I don't know if you've thought about this, but whether you're rich or poor,
You still can give generously. Whether you're young or old, you can still give cheerfully. You could be in the church or on your couch, and you can still give generously. You can be sick, injured, bedridden, paralyzed, smart, dumb, lazy, or indifferent, and yet you can give cheerfully and generously. You can always give how God wants you to give despite your circumstances or season of life.
Now, think about all of the other Christian practices you can't do that with. For example, think about evangelism. Think about just sharing the gospel, sharing Christ with somebody. There is not always a circumstance where you can do that. Maybe you're at work, and maybe at work you're alone most of the time, so there's nobody to do that with. So therefore, the circumstances do not permit you to evangelize. Or maybe you're always... Everybody's busy, and it's so hard to find... time at work to do that, and therefore you can't. Maybe your work situation is hostile to Christianity, or your home situation, whatever it may be, but you can't always be sharing Christ.
That's just the fact of the matter, and that is one of those situations which you cannot always do. Even reading your Bible, very simple, you cannot do it that way. God tells us to know His Word, to study His Word, to memorize His Word, but you can't always be doing that during work. You know, you can't always do that at home. You can't always do that when you have kids that have to get ready for church, or kids that have to get ready for school, or you know, you have to wake up, you have to leave this time for work, or you get home in the evening, you get home late, you got to get the kids down, you got to make meals, you have to get ready for tomorrow, and they have.
projects, and this, and this, and that, and you don't always have time to do that. You just can't. You can't sit, maybe find time to sit down and read God's Word, and the list goes on with things like that. Prayer, fellowship, Bible studies, you know, anything in your present life that you might not have the time to do in your work. You can't always do that at home. You can't always do that, with God. But yet, when it comes to giving, you can always do it. There's generally no extenuating circumstance that can keep you from receiving the blessings of verse 8 when you give.
And usually the only thing that does keep us from getting there is me, myself, and I. That keeps me from giving. You know, if you come to think about it, you can even reap the rewards of faithful Christian giving when you're asleep. And the train of thought I carry into that is, you know, let's say you use your resources, your prayer, your money, and you use it to support a missionary. You know, you support somebody, you know, in the Philippines, they're 13 hours ahead of us.
So whereas it is 11, 18 a.m. right now, it would be just after midnight. Numbers are hard. It'd be just after midnight in the Philippines. But let's say, you know, know, maybe you're asleep, so it's, let's say, midnight here, and it'd be just after, one in the Philippines, and so while you're here, you're sleeping, you're, you know, you're in for the night, you're out like a light, there could be a missionary in the Philippines that you support that is sharing the gospel on a college campus with college kids who.
are on their lunch break, and the money that you are giving to that person, the money that you are investing into that person to which they can live in the Philippines, to which they can be on mission in the Philippines, to which they can reach Filipino college students with the gospel, that is a gospel enterprise, that is a means through which God is moving, and when you invest in that, Jesus says, you're storing up treasure in heaven, you're storing up treasure in heaven, so when that person is awake and doing gospel work, you are reaping eternal reward, and you're not even awake, and it works for all.
things, it works in our giving to the church, as the church continues to pursue the gospel work in the community, it works in your giving to God. So, you know, organization... opportunities, things like VBS, where maybe you're even at work, and yet the money you're giving is going towards God's work. Every ounce of gospel work done by your support is credited to your account. That's what Christ said. That's what Paul is telling us. And really straight from the mouth of Christ himself,
I'm sure these are relatively familiar words, he says, if anyone even gives a cup of cold water, so even the slightest amount of refreshment, the slightest amount of provision, to one of these little ones who is my disciple, truly, I tell you, meaning do not forget this, this is fact, that person will certainly not lose their reward. And that reinforces everything I just said. So even while you're sleeping, your generous gift is reaping a reward.
that you will certainly not lose. And I said it. It goes to giving to the church. If you invest in Sunday school, confirmation, Bible study, the preaching of the Word, the teaching of the Word, Bible studies, the supporting of the pastor and those who preach and teach in the church, when you do that, you reap reward after reward after reward after reward that though you might not see now, you will certainly never lose. God will not let it slip by His notice that you're giving to Him.
And that's what Jesus said. And it may be a reward that you begin to receive in this lifetime as He blesses you. Or it may be a reward reserved exclusively for heaven, exclusively for eternal life after this earth. But either way, you can't lose it. And you know, I can't tell you which it is. I think that's always the question we have. What if I give to God now, but He doesn't bless me soon?
You know, I think the train of thought there is, what if I give... so much, however much it may be, to God, and I almost out-give God, because then I don't have enough to survive here. I don't have enough to exist here, to provide for myself here. And again, I think the logic of the question is, I think I'm capable of out-giving God. And God promises us on multiple occasions, you see the sparrows, you know, they fly around, they do their thing. I don't let them go hungry. They don't even fall without my noticing.
And so, do you think I'm going to let you fall? Do you think I'm not going to provide for you? You see the lilies of the field, you see how splendid they look, you see how colorful they are, you see how beautifully clothed the lilies look. Do you think I'm not going to treat you any better than a flower that'll be dead by tomorrow? And yet, we think we can almost out-give God so much, that he's just going to leave us in desolate, broken, empty, broke circumstances. And I think the fact of the matter is, we,
we cannot out-give God. The blessing and the promise is there. The reward to gain is there. It's just how we want to give, how much we want to store in our heavenly purses, as Christ would say. And so this all goes back to Paul's words in verse 8. God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things, at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.
And maybe to give you your last point, that's the right reason to give. That's why he's saying this. He's giving us a reason to give, because God is able to bless us abundantly. Because he alone, as the Psalms say, has the cattle on a thousand hills, and all things on this earth belong to him. Because he wants to freely provide for us everything we need in this life, not only to survive. It doesn't say, I'm going to bless you, so you have just enough to do this. And God's word tells us that he has so much ability and abundance to bless us with.
that in any single circumstance, in any given time, in every single moment of need, God will give you some of what you need. No, it doesn't say that. God will give you, verse 8, so that in all things, at all times, having most of what you need. No, it still doesn't say that. What does it say? It says, all, in all things, at all times, having all that you need. And again, this goes back to we think, we can out-give God,
and he's going to give us all things, at all times, and yet leave us in need. This is just a promise that God wants us to take straight to the table. There will never be a time in your life, if you are in Christ and seeking to obey, and we are not going to be in Christ. walking in him that all of your needs will not be met by the generous provision of God as he promises here. And so therefore it is in his abundant ability to bless us that we as Christians should therefore have this overwhelming desire to give generously to him.
And that is really the best possible reason that I could give anybody here today as to why we should invest what we can into the kingdom of God. Not because it inherently benefits me, not because it makes me happy, not because it does anything. You know, the pastor said it, so I'm going to do it. But because when God says we invest in him, we receive an eternal reward that nobody can touch, that nothing can touch, that is there for eternity. And that's, you know, that's about it.
I mean, at the end of the day, if God can bless us abundantly, copiously, extremely. profusely, exceptionally, then why wouldn't we give? Do we want to be blessed abundantly, exceedingly, exceptionally, copiously? You know, it doesn't say marginally. It doesn't say minimally. It doesn't say barely. It says, I will bless you abundantly.
And so we ask ourselves, do we want to be blessed abundantly? And is that how we're going to invest? You know, the call to give is the call to understand the divine investment opportunity set before us. The promised rewards that Christ says we will receive. And then our application of that is then deciding how will we do so. How will we put our money where our mouth is?
How will we invest in that which is God's? And so really to pull everything together, I'll say this, every one of us in this room, you know, adult, teenager, kid, young, old, rich, poor, all of us, every single one of us has, you know, we have jobs, we have careers, we have circumstances in which we're in charge of handling what we have when we have it. And we all know there's countless ways we can invest what we have when we have it into things that are just absolutely pointless.
Pointless. Things that might bring joy for a day, joy for a week, joy for a month, joy for a couple years, whatever it may be, there's always, always, always somebody looking to take that money from you. And it's to that Jesus says, invest in me. Invest where the rewards and the blessings are always abundant and it cannot be lost. Invest knowing that Paul says, whatever we reap, whatever we sow, might I say, we will reap.
Invest knowing that Paul says, whatever we sow, might I say, we will reap. And so then how much are we willing to sow? What are we willing to sacrifice to sow for eternal reaping? You know, if we give generously from our means, whatever amount that might be, then we receive a generous reward. It doesn't say number for number. It doesn't say this for that. It says if you sow generously, you will reap generously. And so then if God is able to bless us and reward us and grant us abundant blessing and a special dispensation of his love,
then we should want to invest in whatever it is that God is calling us to invest in. And any means we can get our worldly funds kind of translated into eternal reward. And so on that, I want to close with just maybe a little story I was reading this week. It says after finishing college in 2008, a software engineer began working at a typical large... technology company or firm in Silicon Valley. Sometime in 2010, he invested $3,000 in what is.
known today as cryptocurrency. With the price of Bitcoin at the time only being about 15 US cents per coin, that means he had almost 20,000 Bitcoin. He says, and I quote, I knew from the very start that I would be playing the long game. I just wanted to see how high it could go. He had almost forgotten about his investment three years later when it popped up on the news. The price of each coin was rising by about 10% or more each day. And so he sold 2,000 of his 20,000 coins when the price.
hit $350. I think some rough math in my head would tell me that's about $70,000, maybe. No, $700,000. When the price hit $800 per coin, a few days later, he sold another 2,000 coins. I'm going to say that's probably up to about 1.7%. Yeah, that's actually right. He already netted $2.3 million, to throw them together. He says, and I quote, I quit my job then and left on a round-the-world trip.
Today I spend most of my time traveling the world. And then it gives us all sorts of details on this. He flies first class to five-star restaurants where he enjoys that. In the 30 days before he was interviewed by Forbes, he had visited Singapore, New York City, Las Vegas, Monaco, Moscow, back to New York, Zurich, and Hong Kong. We, the people writing the article, we estimate that his net worth is therefore somewhere between, $100 million and a billion dollars.
Now, when I read that story this week, the first thing I thought was, you know, there's a 50-50 chance that that's entirely made up just by how vague it is. But even if that person isn't real, just consider the circumstances. There's probably at least a handful of folks who at the time, 2008, had a lot of money. Bought 5,000 Bitcoin, 10,000 Bitcoin, maybe 50,000 Bitcoin. Who knows? You know, it's back again. Cents on the dollar. Shares, which as of Friday, when I finished my sermon,
were just over $109,000 a coin. So I'm not going to do the math. I already embarrassed myself once with the clock thing. But 109,000 times 1,500, 2,000. I'm sure you're climbing up into the millions, if not billions of dollars at that point. And the first thing we always think when we hear stuff like that is, man, wouldn't that be nice? You know, man, wouldn't I, you know, if I was just, rather than 2008, when I'm pretty sure that's when the stock market was doing some questionable things,
what if I just dumped $100 into a bunch of pretty much fake internet coins? Where would I be today? And we look at that return on investment. We look at that return on investment. look at just that opportunity, and we think, man, that would be the life-defining, career-ending, setting me, myself, my kids, their kids, their kids up for the rest of their life, and we would have such a life, and yet we won't get near as excited about.
the fact that we can invest eternally and receive eternal rewards and reap eternal rewards and continue for year after year, 10,000 years after 10,000 years in heaven, receiving that reward back when we put even the slightest amount into God's kingdom. Again, people aren't lining up at the door to buy that coin, but Paul says, give cheerfully knowing that investment opportunity sits before you. Give knowing that a hundred million years from now, that one dollar you put.
into God's kingdom will still... Be compounding and returning reward unto you. It is a heavenly purse that does not wear out. So my prayer then is that we would take this promise of God, of Christ, of the Apostle Paul, of the Word of God, literally to the bank. And that we would invest in ourselves the funds we have into the things which God calls us to invest.
And so with that, let me pray for us in clothing. Lord, we could be 90 years old or we could be 3 years old. Yet whatever we come across, whatever resources we have, whatever things we can use to invest in the kingdom of God with, if we give it, that reward is there for us. It doesn't say it has to be a dollar amount.
a certain number on our checkbook. We don't have to give a certain denomination of bill. Lord, it just says give. Whatever you give will be returned unto you. So if we give less, we receive maybe just some back, but maybe less. But if we give more, if we give generously from what we have, if our heart is truly cheerful in it, then you promise the eternal reward that cannot wear out, that cannot be lost, that cannot be forfeited by any means of time or investment. So Lord,
even just a few weeks we took to talk about this, I pray that giving would be the heart cry of our church. I pray that how we give as individuals would be just symbolic of our relationship with you, that if we're giving generously already, that our heart would be in it. That if we know we're not giving generously, if we know we're not giving sacrificially, then maybe you'd put that on our hearts. And maybe if we just, we don't know where to go with this information, God. We don't know what to do with what the Word of God. says, that you would just speak to each and every one of us in this room, young and old, as to how.
we can invest in you, knowing that if we do that, Lord, there's so much you can do with this church. There's so much you can do with our funds. There's so much you can do in this community, knowing that it just starts with something we can do at any point of the day, awake or asleep, rich or poor, young or old, at home, in church, whatever it may be, we can give. So let that be true of us who have heard this word of God and will now be called to respond to it today.
So we thank you, Lord, and we pray this in your name. Amen.
