HoHum:
Ben Patterson- When Lauretta and I were first married, we were very poor. The 3 necessities of food, clothing, and shelter weren’t quite within our grasp. We could manage only 2 out of 3- not bad as a batting average, but miserable if you’re trying to live. My employment was selling swimming pools. The first 6 months we were married, I sold 2. One Saturday morning the company I worked for asked me to drive down to Irvine, California, to pick up a payment for a pool sold by one of the other salesman. How humiliating! Oh well, since Irvine was near Newport Beach, Lauretta and I decided to make a day of it and have a picnic at the beach after I picked up the check. The man who bought the pool was a Christian psychologist of the Pentecostal variety, a mix of pop psychology and Sprit filled enthusiasm. He was friendly and insisted that we come into his kitchen for a cup of coffee before giving us the check. As we sipped from our mugs, he launched into a lecture about the joys of tithing. At first I was puzzled at this, but I put up with it so we could get the check and get out. But as the minutes passed, I found myself feeling increasingly like he had read my mind, or my mail. It had been years since I had given much to anything but my own whims and desires. I had felt uneasy about my selfishness, but now I was feeling something different. It wasn’t guilt; it was more like longing, but for what? Had I been asked to name it I would have said I was longing for freedom. After he wrote the check, he walked us out. As we pulled away, my heart was pierced by what he had said. My lack of generosity extended to places beyond my pocketbook. As Lauretta and I drove down the Costa Mesa Freeway toward the Pacific Ocean, I asked her how she felt about what that man had said. She replied that she too was deeply touched. As we talked, we decided to make a go of tithing. So we couldn’t afford food, clothing, shelter- so what? Had no Jesus promised that our Father in heaven would give us all we needed if we sought first His kingdom? The weeks that followed were just like stories I had read in Christian magazines. Somehow the money was always there. Once the amount we needed for rent appeared the day it was due, sealed in an envelope stuck in our mailbox. Another time we got a check for $100, the exact amount we needed for car insurance. And that was only the beginning of the fun in freedom and generosity as we started to not only give to the church but also to others.
WBTU:
We see in creation that God acted in sovereign and gracious freedom when he spoke it into existence. The creation is a free gift, extravagantly given. When we are generous we are merely agreeing with the nature of existence, living according to the way things are.
Also God governs the universe with the same extravagant generosity he displayed when he made it. Notice that as he governs he doesn’t seem to care who receives his kindness. Paul said this to pagans far from God: “Yet he has not left himself without testimony: He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy.”” Acts 14:17, NIV.
Now redemption is the best part of his generosity. “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” Romans 3:23, NIV. We have refused to live according to the standard God set when he made us. Who knows better than our Creator what we were made to be? We do, we vainly imagine: we think we can be our own masters, be equal with God, even. But we turn out to be less than human in the attempt. The wages of sin is death, and its root is ingratitude. This morning from Romans 1:21
What does God do with these ungrateful rebels who are dying because of their sin? He is generous, he graciously reaches out and seeks them. “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.”” Luke 19:10, NIV. His search took him to the cross. This was given freely whether those he seeks ever notice or care about his generosity. “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8, NIV. This is grace unheard of on a human level. God already went far beyond what we would do. He isn’t generous because we deserve it, after all it wouldn’t be generosity if we did- it would be wages.
Thesis: What should God’s generosity cause us to do?
For instances:
Be Humbled
“What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?” 1 Corinthians 4:7. From God comes all things, entirely out of God’s initiative, out of nothing.
We can give to God only what he first gave us. We’re like the kid who wanted to give his dad a birthday gift, so he went to his father’s closet, took a tie off the rack, wrapped it up and presented it to him with a “Happy Birthday, Dad!” When we give to God, we take something wonderful that He has given and that belongs to him already, and we give it as though it was ours in the first place. And He is so kind! He delights in the gifts we present, even though we couldn’t give anything if he had not first showered it on us.
Only humble can see generosity that lies at the foundation of creation. For only they can get low enough. It is significant that our English word humble comes from Latin root humus, which means earth. The humble are down to earth and, therefore, at just the right place to see things as they really are- to see the awesome grace that lies at the bottom of existence.
Be Dazzled
“When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.” Psalms 8:3-5, NIV.
David had no telescopes to show him how big the universe is. What would he have thought if he knew what we know! The sheer vastness of outer space and the coordination of it all is astounding. If we could travel at the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second, it would take us 8 minutes to get to the sun. To go from the sun to the center of the Milky Way would take about 33,000 years. The Milky Way belongs to a group of some 20 galaxies known as the Local Group. To cross that group, we’d have to travel for 2 million years. The Local Group belongs to the Virgo Cluster, part of an even larger Local Supercluster, which is a half-billion light years across. To cross the entire universe as we know it would take 20 billion light years
Years ago, there was a famous explorer named William Beebe. He was a good friend of President Theodore Roosevelt. Often when he visited the President at Sagamore Hill, the two men would go outdoors at night to see who could first locate the Andromeda galaxy. Then, as they gazed at the tiny smudge of distant starlight, one of them would recite, “That is the spiral galaxy of Andromeda. It s as large as our Milky Way. It is one of a hundred million galaxies. It is 750,000 light years away. It consists of 100 billion suns, each larger than our sun.” Then Roosevelt would grin and say, “Now I think we are small enough! Let’s go to bed.”
Yes, we should be in awe of the creation. In spite of our smallness we are crowned with glory and honor and God has freely given us Jesus Christ.
Become a honeycomb
We need to be mentored by God’s generosity. We need to imitate it as best we can. When we are humbled and deeply impressed by what we see, the most natural response is to want to follow that example. Ben Patterson- My favorite singer/ songwriter is Fernando Ortega. Every performance of his that I have attended has ended with a standing ovation by the audience. I have wondered sometimes what it would feel like to be ordered to keep silent after a concert, to be commanded not to express thanks. It would be painful! Restraint would abort my joy. Letting go to clap, shout and whistle allows my appreciation to be complete- almost. There is one thing left I can do to fully enjoy the gift: buy a CD and sing along. It is my way of imitating Fernando a bit.
In the same way, God’s generous artistry is meant to call forth the highest compliment we can give: to try to be like him, to give him glory and be glorified ourselves in the imitation.
There are 3 kinds of givers. Some are like flint: they must be hammered to give anything and then all that comes forth is sparks and chips. Some are like sponges: they must be squeezed to give anything, but the moment the squeezing stops, the water goes right back in. Some are like honeycomb: they ooze sweetness because of what they’ve become inside.
These crazy Macedonians had become honeycombs because of what they had come to know of God. As Paul wrote of their overflowing joy and rich generosity (vs. 2), he used the word grace in a free way. Grace was what they had received through Jesus (vs. 1) but grace was also their ability and desire to give from God. The giving was itself a grace (vs. 7). They received grace, they became gracious, and their graciousness led to more grace. Grace was all around, creating a riot of goodness and gladness that helped the cycle continue.
The Macedonians help us understand that the practice of generosity positions us to receive more grace. Generosity plants seeds of grace that grow into more grace. Read 2 Corinthians 9:6. Generous sowing is such a powerful means of grace that it will bring a bumper crop of joy, read 2 Corinthians 9:12.
Our Father God loves it when his children try to act like him. He loves a cheerful giver (2 Corinthians 9:7). The Greek for cheerful is the word behind our English word hilarious. All translations opt for cheerful over hilarious. Let’s say it’s hilarious. That’s the way it is: broke, self absorbed young marrieds become Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus; poor Macedonians become big time spenders; Pentecostal psychologists become prophets. Hilarity abounds.
