I Am Generous! Series

Scripture: Matthew 6:19-21; 2 Corinthians 9:6-8; John 3:16

Theme: Generosity

Title: I Am Generous!

INTRO:

Grace and peace from God our Father, Son and Holy Spirit!

Good morning!

How many of us this morning loved that part of the day when our teacher told us to get out our math books?

When they began instructing us in how to add, subtract, multiply and divide? And later on when they began to teach us all kinds of advanced math related subjects – Geometry, Algebra. Trigonometry and Calculus?

The truth is math is all around us. Math is in nearly everything we do today. It is one of the essential building blocks for everything in our daily lives, including our cell phones, all our computers and tablets, our architecture (both ancient and modern), in our art, our finances, engineering and more and more so in our sports with all the emphasis on analytics today.

What we may not know is how much God loves math. That is right, the LORD GOD ALMIGHTY loves math. He loves facts and figures, triangles and octagons, algebraic formulas, square roots, logarithms along with cosines and tangents.

We know that because God loves to take math and turn it upside down. He likes to do the impossible with math.

+Like taking a little boy’s lunch that was designed for just a little boy and making it turn out to be more than enough to feed 5,000 people (Matthew 14:13-21).

+Like taking a jar of oil that has a designated volume limit and playing with the math to the point that the oil can fill every jar and pot imaginable so that a woman can save her sons from slavery and be able to feed her family as well (2 Kings 4:1-7).

We know that God loves certain numbers like 1, 2, 3, 7 and 10. All you have to do is to read your Bible and you can see over and over how the LORD loves to use those numbers.

+1(ONE) is the number of unity – “I and the Father are one.” (John 10:30)

+2 (Two) is the number of union – Jesus our LORD has two natures – divine and human. Humanity has two very distinct and separate members – male and female.

+3 (Three) is God’s Signature Number – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It was on the 3rd day that Jesus rose from the Dead. We are 3 parts – body, soul and spirit. There are three time periods – past, present and future.

+7 (Seven) is God’s number of perfection – 7 Days of Creation – 7 Feasts of Israel – 7 Letters to the 7 Churches in Revelation – 7 Sacred Objects in the Temple

+10 (Ten) is God’s Way of Speaking to Us – 10 Commandments - 10 Plagues of Egypt -10 times Fire fell down from Heaven – 10 times people were brought back to life

What am I trying to say?

We serve a God who loves numbers and who loves to share with us ways that we can also use numbers to bring about blessings and favor in our lives and in the lives of all those around us. One of the ways that God does that is helping us in the area of our stewardship; specifically in the area of our generosity.

And that is what I would like for us to look at this morning – How we can rejoice in becoming and being a Generous People. For that is what I believe we want to be this morning and what we are trying our best to be this morning – GENEROUS PEOPLE.

The Bible has a great deal to say about being a generous person and the blessings that come from a life of generosity. Let’s take a few moments this morning and remind ourselves that:

1. Generous people often have hearts that are bigger than they can even imagine

In the book of Exodus (36:1-7) the People of God were actually told to stop being so generous in their giving.

What? God told them to stop giving?

Let’s listen to some of the passage:

“And they received from Moses all the contribution that the people of Israel had brought for doing the work on the sanctuary. They still kept giving him freewill offerings every morning, so that all the craftsmen who were doing every sort of task on the sanctuary came, each one from the task that he was doing, and said to Moses, ‘The people bring much more than enough for doing the work that the LORD has commanded us to do.’”

The people gave more than what was needed to build the sanctuary, the Tabernacle to the point where God has to tell them to stop giving.

Can you imagine that? Can you imagine a fund raiser or a financial campaign where the givers are asked to stop giving because they had already met the need and more? It doesn’t happen often but when it does, like it did here for Moses and God’s People it is because Generous People often give more than they are asked to give.