A Culture Of Giving

OUTLINE

ANCIENT CONTEXT – CORINTHIANS

• PAUL IS ADDRESSING A LOT OF CHURCH ISSUES

• PAUL ALSO ADDRESSING FAMINE

• HE TAKES UP AN OFFERING AMONG CHURCHES TO HELP THE JERUSALEM CHURCH

• MACEDONIAN CHURCHES ARE VERY GENEROUS

• PAUL USES THE MACEDONIAN CHURCH AN EXAMPLE OF GENEROUS GIVING

MODERN CONTEXT EXAMPLE

WHY DID THE MACEDONIAN CHURCH GIVE SO MUCH?

THEY HAD DEVELOPED A CULTURE OF GIVING WHICH UNDERSTANDS

• THE ABILTY TO GIVE GENEROUSLY IS FROM GOD

• THAT EVERYONE HAS THE ABILITY TO GIVE SOMETHING

• YOU DON’T HAVE TO STRONG-ARM PEOPLE TO GIVE

• GIVING BOILS DOWN TO A HEART ISSUE

SERMON

If you have your Bibles, please open up to 2 Corinthians 8:1. I think in the red pew Bible, you can find it on page about 1,146. We have been going through the four values of worship, discipleship, outreach, and community. Some of you want to know how much longer we are going to be going through these core values, and actually, we have bout four more weeks. We will take it through the month of May and then go into some sort of summer series that hopefully will keep you attention through the summer. Today, we are going to continue on talking about the value of community. Specifically authentic community, the community known as the church, body of Christ on earth. You should know by now that the church is characterized by many things, including it is a culture of giving. That is what we are going to look at today.

A little bit of background. Some of you are familiar with the book of 1 Corinthians and possibly 2 Corinthians. Paul was believed to have written at least two letters, possibly three or four, but the ones that we have are 1 and 2 Corinthians. In 1 Corinthians, you may recall Paul is dealing with a lot of issues in the church. He is dealing with issues such as lawsuits against believers. He is dealing with the issues of disunity. He is dealing with issues of sexual morality. He is dealing with issues of disruptions in worship and those sorts of things, much like what we deal with today. Amen. A lot of those same types of issues. Paul is dealing with all these issues at this church where he spent 18 months. In addition to all these issues he is dealing with, he is also dealing with a severe famine that is going on throughout the Roman Empire. At this particular time, there was a severe famine going on throughout the entire Roman Empire, and it seemed to really hit the churches hard. Because, again, the churches were already dealing with a lot of things like persecution and job loss and that sort of thing. Paul thought this might be a good opportunity for the churches in the north, particularly the Gentile churches, the non-Jewish churches, to help out the church in the Jewish church in Jerusalem. So he decides to take up this special offering to help out the church in Jerusalem. What he does is he decides he is going to visit. I am not sure of the period, but it is probably at least a year or more when he is traveling around or his associates are traveling around and basically hitting up the churches for a donation to this particular collection. He goes out to the churches in Macedonia. He goes to the churches in Corinth. What he finds out is that the churches in Macedonia, although they have less disposable income, in other words, although they are poorer than the church in Corinth, they actually give more money. They actually give a lot more money. They actually give an excess of money. What we find here in this second letter is that Paul is not only following up with some of the issues that he addressed in the first letter, but also he is treating this as a follow-up to this collection offering. In other words, what he is doing is he is using the example of the Macedonians to encourage, or in Paul’s way, slightly strong arming them to give more money to this particular collection. So that is a little background into this chapter. We are going to read just through the first nine verses of chapter 8 in 2 Corinthians. (Scripture read here.)

Again, this is pretty much self-explanatory, but to put it in a modern context, let’s say there is a church in Africa that is experiencing some sort of a huge famine or something like that, and I decide I want to take up a collection to help them out. I go throughout the churches in Pittsburgh and ask them if they will chip into this collection. So I might go to the churches on the North Side and get some money from them and I might go to some of the wealthier churches in, let’s say the North Hills or Fox Chapel or Franklin Park or some of those places. What I might find out, similar to Paul, maybe the North Side churches, although they had less disposable income, they were more generous than the churches in Fox Chapel and Franklin Park and the North Hills. That is really a contemporary example of what is going on back then. The issue today is not why the churches in Corinth or the churches in Franklin Park or wherever don’t give more money. The question is why did the Macedonians give so much. That is really what we want to look at today. What we should see, as you might have guessed, is that the Macedonians had developed a culture of giving. That is what we are going to look at today. Although the information is limited in this particular book, I think by looking at a few key passages, we can glean some pretty good information about the idea of what makes up a culture of giving. So that is what we are going to do.