I have a
confession to make… I am not much of a gardener. In fact, I am not a gardener
at all. One of the only times I have ever done any kind of extensive planting
of seeds is when we had a house built in a new neighborhood in South Carolina.
Part of the package in purchasing the house was landscaping for the front of
the house, including beautiful green sod. However, no landscaping for the back
yard came with the package. Thus, we had to do it all ourselves.
When we moved
in, the back yard was perfectly raked and graded. It was a beautiful patch of
level dirt. My plan was to plant grass seed. I thought, “How hard can it be?”
Unfortunately, I waited a while before I got to work, and the rains came, and
that beautiful, level lot that was our back yard, started to slope downhill. I
thought, “I better get to work soon.” So as soon as the rains stopped, I bought
some grass seed and got to work. I followed all the directions, scattering the
seed, and then covering it all with straw. But the next time the rains came,
all the grass seed ended up at the bottom of the downward slope, all in one
corner of the yard. It was a beautiful lawn in that one corner.
What did I do
next? I planted grass seed again, and covered it over with straw. And I kept
repeating the process until we began to have a lawn growing, however sparsely,
over the entire back yard.
Three things
I learned for certain, from that exercise: (1) I am not a gifted gardener. (2)
As a result, my lawn was very imperfect. And (3) if I had never planted any grass
seed, we never would have had any lawn.
So, even
though I am not a farmer, and I am a very imperfect gardener at best, I can
relate to some of the stories in the Bible that talk about planting seed. We
have one of those stories in Paul’s second letter to the Church at Corinth, in
chapter nine, beginning with verse 5. Listen for God’s word to you….
The
point is this: the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one
who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. 7 Each of you
must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion,
for God loves a cheerful giver. 8 And God is able to provide you
with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of
everything, you may share abundantly in every good work. 9 As it is
written,
“He scatters abroad, he gives
to the poor;
his righteousness[b] endures forever.”
his righteousness[b] endures forever.”
10 He who supplies
seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for
sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness.[c] 11 You will be
enriched in every way for your great generosity, which will produce
thanksgiving to God through us; 12 for the rendering of this
ministry not only supplies the needs of the saints but also overflows with many
thanksgivings to God. 13 Through the testing of this
ministry you glorify God by your obedience to the confession of the gospel of
Christ and by the generosity of your sharing with them and with all others, 14 while they
long for you and pray for you because of the surpassing grace of God that he
has given you. 15 Thanks be to God for his
indescribable gift.
I think there are
at least seven things that Paul tells us in this brief passage about Christian
giving. First, Christian giving is bountiful. Actually, Paul says that
Christian giving is like sowing seed. If you sow bountifully you will reap a
bountiful harvest. If you sow sparingly, you will receive a limited harvest.
This is the third
in a series of stewardship sermons I have been offering this month. All of our
members and regular attenders should have received by now the pledge and
year-end giving appeal letter from our Stewardship Team. In addition, we have
placed pledge cards and envelopes in the bulletin today so that you might make
a commitment to giving to the church in 2018.
This passage in 2
Corinthians is part of Paul’s stewardship letter to the Church at Corinth.
Rather than trying to raise money for one particular church (remember the early
church at this point did not have buildings or paid staff to support) Paul is
trying to raise money to help the poorer Christians in Jerusalem.
Bryan Wilkerson
explains:
The
believers in Jerusalem were being persecuted and were suffering financially.
Paul recognized this need as an opportunity for the Gentile churches around the
world to come alongside the Jerusalem church, so he started a collection from
churches around the empire. In response to his earlier letter, the Corinthians
had pledged to support the Jerusalem church by taking an offering and sending
it on to Jerusalem. But as of yet, they had not followed through on that
pledge. So Paul wrote this letter, in part, to remind them of their commitment.
We don’t know why they hadn’t followed through. Maybe times had gotten tougher
in Corinth, and they were concerned for their own financial needs. Or maybe
there was no hardship, and they just wanted to keep the money for themselves.
Whatever the reasons, they were reluctant to part with the money they had
committed.
I imagine that each one of us here today
fall into one of four categories in relation to giving to support Stowe
Community Church:
1. Some of you made a pledge last year and
you have been faithfully fulfilling that pledge, and you plan to pledge for
next year as well. To all of you in this category, I say thank you on behalf of
the whole church.
2. Others of you perhaps made a pledge last
year and have struggled to keep up with that pledge. Whatever your
circumstances, God understands. But if it is possible for you to still fulfill
that pledge this year, I, like Paul with the Corinthians, would urge you to
follow through on that pledge, and make a renewed pledge for 2018.
3. Still others of you here today may be
members or regular attenders who have never pledged to SCC. I would invite you
to consider doing so today. I will talk about why in a minute.
4. And then the rest of you here today, who
do not fall into one of the first three categories, are probably visitors. I
know it is kind of a bummer when you happen to visit a church when the pastor
is preaching about money. Of course, we would welcome any donation to our
church you can make today, but if you are a visitor here, we do not expect you
to give. You can sit back and relax. But I hope that while you are relaxing,
you might think about what God would have you to do to support your church back
home, wherever you come from.
When I think of a bountiful harvest, I think of that sod in my
front yard in South Carolina. When I think of the kind of harvest I can produce
on my own power, I think of how my lawn in our back yard looked. As we consider
our giving, we need to consider not simply what we can do on our own power, but
what God can do through us.
On January 13, 2005, a local Christian radio station, JOY FM,
set out to raise $75,000 for “Homes for Hope,” an organization that builds
houses for those displaced by the tsunami that had recently occurred in India.
In India, a 10 x 15 foot structure, smaller than the size of some of our
garages, can be built for only $1,000. JOY FM’s goal was 75 homes. By the end
of that day the amount raised was over $750,000, ten times the goal amount.
One caller said, “We wanted to build houses. God wanted to build
a city.”[1]
I wonder, what kind of bountiful harvest might God produce
through our giving if we would only let him?
A second thing Paul tells us about
Christian giving in this passage is that it is thoughtful.
Paul says, “Each of you must give as you have made up
your mind.”
I don’t think God wants us to give to the work of the church in a
thoughtless way, simply throwing into the collection plate whatever loose
change we have. That’s OK, but I believe God really wants something more. I
believe God wants us to think and pray about what he would have us give, and
put some planning into it. That’s where pledging comes in. Pledging to the
church not only helps your church board to plan what we can do in a given year,
it gives you the opportunity to think through your giving and plan in the way
God wants you to do.
A third thing Paul tells us here about
Christian giving is that it is voluntary.
Paul says we are not
to give reluctantly nor under compulsion.
I don’t believe God wants us to give out of a sense of obligation or being “guilt-induced”
to give. Our giving needs to be of our own free choice. Not compelled.
In his book, Overcoming,
Steve Mays says,
… there are three types of givers in life. One
type is a flint, another is a sponge, and the third is a honeycomb. To get anything
out of the flint, it must be hammered; even then, all that results are chips
and sparks. To get anything out of the sponge, it must be continually squeezed
and put under pressure. Finally, there is the honeycomb, just overflowing with
its own sweetness.
I think Paul is
telling us that God doesn’t want us to be like the flint or the sponge when it
comes to giving. He wants us to be like the honeycomb that just oozes out the
overflow of God’s blessing.
That leads to a fourth thing Paul tells us
about Christian giving; it is cheerful.
Paul says that “God loves
a cheerful giver.” The word that is translated as “cheerful” in this passage
literally means “hilarious”.
The story is told of a mother who gave her child a one-dollar
bill and a quarter. “Sweetheart,” the mother said, “you can place either one in
the offering plate. It’s entirely up to you.”
As they were driving home, the mother asked the daughter what
she had decided to give.
“Well, at first I was going to give the dollar,” said the
daughter. “But the man behind the pulpit said God loves a cheerful giver, so I
felt like I would be much more cheerful if I gave the quarter instead.”[2]
We can probably
all identify with that story. However, I think God can enable us to experience
more than just cheerfulness over what we get to keep. God can give us hilarious
cheerfulness over what we get to give.
In this regard, I
think of Scrooge in Dicken’s wonderful story, A Christmas Carol. Remember how miserly Scrooge is before he is
visited by the three ghosts of Christmas, and how Scrooge overflows with
hilarity after their visit and he discovers he hasn’t missed Christmas after
all? Scrooge overflows with cheer because he hasn’t missed the chance to give.
That’s the kind of cheer God can put in our hearts if we have had an encounter
with him through his Son Jesus Christ.
That leads to the
fifth thing that Paul tells us about Christian giving. Paul tells us that
Christian giving is empowered. Paul says, “And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that
by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good
work.”
In other words, it is God who gives us the ability to give. Again,
when I give under my own power, I think my giving tends to look like my
backyard lawn in South Carolina. When I give under God’s power, the harvest it produces looks more like
the lawn in my front yard in South Carolina.
A sixth thing Paul says here is that
Christian giving is God-glorifying. Paul says, “Through the testing of this ministry you glorify God by your obedience to the confession of the gospel
of Christ and by the generosity of your sharing with them and with all others…”
Christians give not to be seen by others, and not primarily to
make themselves feel good, but to honor God. Our giving is the natural overflow
of hearts that are grateful for what God has done for us in Christ.
And that leads to the final point Paul
makes in this passage. Christian giving is thankful.
Paul ends this section of
his letter by saying, “Thanks be to
God for his indescribable gift.”
What gift is Paul talking about? He is talking about the gift of
God’s Son Jesus Christ. What bigger gift is there than that in the whole
universe? It is partly because of the size of that gift that you can never
out-give God.
If you have experienced the love and forgiveness of Jesus, then you
will naturally want to thank God. You can’t help but thank him. And that
thanksgiving will naturally overflow into giving—not just giving to the church,
but giving to others and to God in every way that you can find to give, every
day of your life.
My first position when I graduated from seminary was in a large church near Charlotte, North Carolina. I did a year-long internship in that church, working with youth.
Halfway through the year, I had a mother approach me and ask if I would meet with her 15-year-old son and his friend for Bible study. I gladly agreed to do that. Robbie and Tim and one other guy named John met every week. We started with the Gospel of John. We would read a chapter a week and then talk about it. Tim was especially enthusiastic and kept inviting friends to attend our Bible study. One week, one of Tim's friends, Stephen, prayed to receive Christ after one of our studies. Unbeknownst to me at the time, Tim went home and did the same thing that day on his own.
When we got to the end of the Gospel of John, I asked the guys what they wanted to read and discuss next. "The book of Revelation" was their answer. And so we started into a reading and discussion of one of the most challenging books in the Bible. By that time it was summer and we would often sit outside on the grass for our Bible studies together. After reading Revelation 4, with its beautiful picture of the rainbow around God's throne in heaven, Tim said to me, "I can't wait to get there!"
The next week, Tim was away visiting his grandparents near Asheville, North Carolina. In the middle of the week, Robbie's mother called me and said, "Tim's in the hospital in Asheville and we are going to see him." I immediately dropped everything and drove to Asheville. By the time I got there, Tim had been diagnosed with meningococcal meningitis. Despite our many prayers for him, Tim died in a matter of days.
Afterwards, one of the nurse's told me that when Tim entered the hospital he asked her if he was going to die. The nurse told him, "No, we're going to take good care of you." And Tim said, "It's alright, even if I die, because I know where I'm going."
Tim's death received quite a bit of coverage in the local news, and one day the local Christian radio station called to interview me about Tim. I shared how Tim had received Christ as a result of our Bible studies together, and at the end of the interview, the radio station played this song by Ray Boltz:
I dreamed I went to Heaven
You were there with me
We walked upon the streets of gold
Beside the crystal sea
We heard the angels singing
Then someone called your name
You turned and saw this young man
He was smiling as he came
And he said friend
You may not know me now
Then he said but wait
You used to teach my Sunday School
When I was only eight
And every week you would say a prayer
Before the class would start
And one day when you said that prayer
I asked Jesus in my heart
Chorus
Thank you for giving to the Lord
I am a life that was changed
Thank you for giving to the Lord
I am so glad you gave
© 1988 Gaither Music Company
I wonder, will there be someone in heaven to thank you for giving to the Lord, whether that be giving of your time, talent, or treasure? As you invite Jesus to live in your heart and work through you, I believe that not only one day will you hear that "thank you" but you will hear these words of Jesus:
‘Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’
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