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 6. Listen for God’s word to you….
Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And 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. As it is written:
“They have freely scattered their gifts to the poor;
their righteousness endures forever.”
Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.
This service that you perform is not only supplying the needs of the Lord’s people but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God. Because of the service by which you have proved yourselves, others will praise God for the obedience that accompanies your confession of the gospel of Christ, and for your generosity in sharing with them and with everyone else. And in their prayers for you their hearts will go out to you, because of the surpassing grace God has given you. 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. 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.
As we have seen over the past couple of weeks, 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.
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 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. We talked about this last week. 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.
Allow me to close with this story from Kevin Miller…
When I was a kid, my dad told me two stories all the time. In the first one, a couple goes to Harvard University and asks to see the president, because they want to give a donation to the university. The president agrees to see them, but he doesn’t know them, and because they’re from somewhere way out west, he treats them curtly. After a few moments, the woman finally turns to her husband and says, “Come, Leland; I think there are better things we can do with our money.” The man was Leland Stanford, founder (with his wife) of Stanford University.
Even as a child, I understood that the moral of this story was not, “Be nice to strangers.” Instead, this story was about who has real power. The moral is, “If you have money, you can tell anyone—even the most established, respected, or powerful person in the world—to go take a flying leap.”
The second story my father used to tell me went like this: One day a minister was invited to John D. Rockefeller’s mansion. As he drove up the winding drive lined with tall trees, he said, “My, my! This is what the Lord might have done—if he’d had the money.”
As a child, I understood the moral of this story, too. The minister, who represents belief in God, is overwhelmed by Rockefeller’s wealth. Not only that, he says God himself doesn’t have as much money as Rockefeller. Implicit in this claim is that he doesn’t have as much power, either. Rockefeller is more powerful than God, because money is more powerful than God.
As you might guess from the stories my dad told me growing up, he spent most of his life working really hard to make money. But then he made a tactical error. My mom and I were going to an Episcopal Church service, and he decided to come along. The priest was full of old-time religion, and he gave an altar call. Something connected with my dad that day, and he went forward and began to follow Jesus. He was 60-years-old. He began to read a small, blue King James Bible, and for the first time in his life, he began giving with real interest. He told me, in what was a rare sharing of his personal life, “Kevin, I’ve started to tithe, and it’s been a great adventure.”
My dad suffered a heart attack at age 70. He lay in a hospital bed for 5 days, and then he died. At the funeral home, they laid him in a casket with his navy blazer and a Lands’ End tie. A woman I’d never seen came up to me and said, “You don’t know me, but I was in a bad marriage; my husband was beating me, and I needed to get out to save my life. But I didn’t know what I would do to support myself. Your dad paid for me to go to junior college and get a degree, so I could be a dental hygienist. He paid for the whole thing, and nobody else knew about it. Now I have a job, and I’m making it. Your dad literally saved my life.”
I wonder what would have been my dad’s legacy if he had kept loving money and trying to be like Leland Stanford and John D. Rockefeller. He would have died with a lot of money, but not a lot of love. Instead, he took a risk. He tried to learn how to “keep his life free from the love of money.” And when he died, he left behind a woman who knows every day when she cleans people’s teeth that it’s a miracle she’s still alive.[3]
That story really puts things in perspective. And it leads me to say this: though I invite you to put money in the offering plate as it passes today, that is really not the most important thing. The most important thing is that you have an encounter with Jesus Christ and become a follower of him. If you do that, God will take care of the rest. God will make you a bountiful, thoughtful, voluntary, cheerful, empowered, God-glorifying, thankful giver by his grace.
Comments