His Unspeakable Gift

His Unspeakable Gift – 2 Corinthians 9:12-15

In 2 Corinthians 9, Paul, writes about human gifts. During the 40s A.D., a famine swept across Judea, and Jerusalem Christians were in need. The church at Corinth took up offerings to give to the suffering Christians in Jerusalem. Paul commends them for their willingness to help, and reminds them that those who sow sparingly will also reap sparingly, but that those who sow generously will reap generously. He writes about four great results of Christians giving; meeting needs of God’s people, glorifying God, demonstrating the reality of one’s faith, and gaining prayer partners. After addressing human giving, Paul turns his attention to giving thanks to God for God’s greatest gift, which he says is indescribable!" Why is this gift so indescribable? It is so because it is the result of an incomprehensible love.

I. An Incomprehensible Love

Paul tells us in Ephesians 3:19 that God’s love for us in Christ surpasses human understanding. One writer describes God’s love as opulent. Humanly speaking there is no reason that God should love us. Job asked “What is man, that You should exalt him, that You should set Your heart on him?” This love for us by God is beyond explanation when we consider the holiness of God and the sinfulness of man.

A. God’s Holiness

1. Job seeing the holiness of God said, "I had heard rumors about You, but now my eyes have seen You. Therefore, I take back my words and repent in dust and ashes." (Job 42:5-6)

2. Isaiah, upon the death of King Uzziah, saw the Lord in His holiness and cried out, "Woe is me, for I am ruined, because I am a man of unclean lips and live among a people of unclean lips, and because my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts." (Isaiah 6:5)

3. When God met with Habakkuk the prophet, He said this: "I heard, and I trembled within; my lips quivered at the sound. Rottenness entered my bones; I trembled where I stood . . . " (Hab. 3:16)

4. Too often we are like those described in Psalm 50:21-23 where God says that they thought that God was just like them. But God is infinitely holy.

5. The basic meaning of holy in the Bible is to cut away or to separate. R. C. Sproul suggests that this word conveys the same idea we express when we find a garment or a golf club or some piece of merchandise that is outstanding, that has superior excellence, and we might say that it is "a cut above the rest." (R. C. Sproul, The Holiness of God [Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1985], p. 40) Therefore, holiness, when applied to God, means that He is utterly unique, incomparable, matchless, without parallel and without peer. – copied

6. Holiness is being set apart from anything impure. God is infinitely holy and abhors all evil. Habakkuk declared that God’s eyes are too pure to look on or approve evil, and cannot tolerate wrong doing (Habakkuk 1:13). John 1:5 says: in Him "there is absolutely no darkness at all." James tells us that "God is not tempted by evil, and He Himself doesn't tempt anyone." (James 1:13).

7. Being holy, God hates sin because it is the very antithesis of His nature. The psalmist describes God’s hatred of sin this way: “For You are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness; no evil dwells with You” (Psalm 5:4).

8. Therefore, here is the rub. David asks the rhetorical question in Psalm 24: 3-4, “Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord?

And who may stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not lifted up his soul to falsehood and has not sworn deceitfully.”

9. We all fall incessantly short of God’s righteous standard due to our depravity.

B. Man’s Wickedness

1. God’s love is unimaginable when you consider man’s sinfulness.

2. If I were to ask the average person on the street, "Are you for God or the Devil?", most would strongly protest, "For God of Course!" Few people view themselves as enemies of God.

3. Romans 3:10-12 “There is none righteous, not even one; there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God; All have turned aside, together they have become useless; there is none who does good, there is not even one.”

4. Psalm 10:4 The wicked in his proud countenance does not seek God; God is in none of his thoughts.

5. Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; Who can know it?”

6. Because of this sin nature, man is alienated from and at war with God (Ephesians 4:18, Colossians 1:21).