How to Make Giving Fun
A Stewardship Sermon
Chuck sligh
January 15, 2017
Sparked by thoughts on preaching about giving by Robert Russell at http://thecharisgroup.org/2012/07/18/how-to-preach-on-giving-2/.
TEXT: 2 Corinthians 9:8 – “But this I say, He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully. 7 Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver. 8 And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work:”
INTRODUCTION
This is the second and last sermon in a two-week series on giving to God. If you were here last week, today you will get a fuller, deeper understanding of giving. If you weren’t here last week, well, this is why I normally preaching TWO sermons on giving—to make sure ALL are challenged on this important topic about giving to God.
Last week, I tried to lay down a theological foundation for giving, and we discussed two reasons people struggle don’t tithe—they struggle with God’s OWNERSHIP of all they have; and they struggle with God’s LORDSHIP by being obedient to give. Today, I’m not going to be theological; I’m going to be practical or informative. My thesis is this: Giving to God can and should be fun.
Now some of you just about fell on your face at that statement, but it’s true. The Bible talks about fun giving. We see it in our text. – The end of verse 7 says, “…For God loveth a cheerful giver.”
The Greek word for “cheerful” is hilarós [??a???], from which we get our English words hilarious and hilarity. Strong’s Enhanced Concordance says it means, “cheerful, joyous, prompt to do anything.” The Concise Dictionary of New Testament Words defines it as “…merry (“hilarious”), i.e. prompt or willing:—cheerful.” Vines Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words says hilarós, “signifies that readiness of mind, that joyousness, which is prompt to do anything; hence, cheerful (Eng., hilarious).”
I went a little overboard on the Greek sources because I want you to see all the nuances of this word. God is saying here that He doesn’t want giving to be this thing we do grudgingly and resentfully; He wants us to give cheerfully, joyously, merrily, hilariously, readily, willingly, eagerly, enthusiastically. Or to put it another way, God wants it to be fun!
Doesn’t that run counter to everything you’ve ever thought? You say, “Chuck, you don’t really expect us to really think giving is fun, do you?” Well, it is counter-intuitive, but really, isn’t the whole of the Christian life counter-intuitive? Think about it: Jesus said that he who loses his life for His sake will save it. He also said the first will be last and the last will be first. He likewise said, “Give and it shall be given unto you.” And Paul teaches that that we give up our lives to Christ to gain our freedom. So why would it surprise us that one way to have fun in life is to learn generosity?
Illus. – Think about your own spending. Don’t you spend some of your money to have fun? We go to the movies, the pool, Disney World or the beach. What are we doing? —We are spending our money to have fun.
Yes, but giving away money?—How can that be fun? Let me share two ways giving can become fun to you.
I. GIVING BECOMES FUN WHEN YOU KNOW YOUR GIFTS MAKE A DIFFERENCE.
Have you ever heard anyone say, “All the church does is talk about money.”? Well, to start off, that’s not true. Most churches don’t talk ENOUGH about money. During our stewardship emphasis every January, I usually preaching one or two sermons about giving in general, and just before our Spring and Fall Missions Emphasis, I talk about giving to missions. Besides that—that’s it. Three or four sermons out of 52 messages is not “always talking about money.”
Illus. – But I have a bone to pick with the Red Cross. All they ever do is talk about money! Have you ever noticed that? If you get any mail from them it’s always at some point asking you to donate. In fact, if you look at it EVERY PIECE of mail or email from them, they ALWAYS ask for money.
How come no one complains that the every time the Red Cross contacts them, they’re always asking for money? The main reason is that we all agree with what they’re doing. We support their mission and we either do or don’t give, but no one ever complains that they always are asking for money. We get it that to do what they do—they need money.
Giving to God is fun when you realize what your contributions do for God’s Kingdom.
What does the money you give here to Grace Baptist Church do for the Kingdom of God?
• First, your money supports our mission to reach the people in our community with the Gospel and to lead them to deeper obedience to God.
---Like a man who was kicked out of the Army for bad conduct and messed his marriage up who came to GBC and heard the Gospel and was saved.
---Like a young soldier who grew up in church, but all he had been was a “cultural Christian”—someone who knew church lingo and culture and accommodated to it, but had never been born again by God’s grace. – After a sermon I preached on cultural Christians, he realized he was one of those cultural Christians, and he repented and became a true believer.
---Like a German woman who had sought to earn God’s favor by good works, but put her faith in Jesus and found peace and joy after one of my sermons.
---Like two Army spouses who were ready to quit on God because they had grown weary of a depressing and oppressive legalism and the hypocrisy and judgmentalism in a nearby church, but discovered freedom and joy in serving Christ from the heart here at Grace, instead of by compulsion.
---Like a colonel in our church who was saved, but covetous and materialistic, but discovered joy in generosity after a study on giving we did in a homegroup.
---Like a single GI who was being put out of the Army on drug charges, who found out here at Grace that he didn’t need drugs to get himself high; what he needed was a relationship with the living God to fill the void in his soul.
---Like a woman who had been abandoned by her father, had had a bad home life, had been innocently caught up in an international drug ring, was raped repeatedly by her drug lords and felt a deep sense of emptiness until she came to Grace and heard the Gospel and was miraculously saved.
---Like another woman who had been an alcoholic who one day stopped drinking cold turkey, and turned her life over to God and never touched a drop of liquor again. – But she wasn’t growing in the church she was going to, but found a home and good teaching and mentors here at GBC.
---Like the couple whose marriage was falling apart and they had tried counseling on-post and everything else they could think of…except turning to the Lord. – They came one service, heard the Gospel and gave their lives to God, and in the process saved their marriage!
I could go on and on for hours. The Red Cross saves peoples’ physical lives and gives them relief from their awful situations, but our church saves lives for eternity and gives people spiritual relief from guilt, sorrow, regret, and broken lives and homes. When we talk about laying treasures in heaven at GBC, that’s not an empty slogan to us; we believe we really are making an eternal difference in lives!
In his book, The Treasure Principle, Randy Alcorn says,
Suppose your home is in France and you’re visiting America for three months, living in a hotel. You’re told that you can’t bring anything back to France on your flight home. But you can earn money and mail deposits to your bank in France. Would you fill your hotel room with expensive furniture and wall hangings? Of course not. You’d send your money where your home is. You would spend only what you needed on the temporary residence, sending your treasures ahead so they’d be waiting for you when you got home. (p. 45)
To me it’s FUN to send treasures ahead to my home in heaven.
• Second, your money is an investment in the future of Christianity.
Kids and teen ministry are not afterthoughts at GBC—something added on here because, “Well, people won’t come if there aren’t kids’ ministries.” No, kids and teen ministry are integral here; they’re central to our mission. That’s why we strive with all our hearts to have the best quality, most full-featured and most loving ministry to kids and teens we can possibly have.
Our teachers are AWESOME, and they’re passionate about lovingly teaching our kids about God to lay the foundation for a life-long faith in Christ. That’s why we buy the most biblical and interesting curricula, why we invest in excellent equipment and furniture, why we talk a lot about serving as a once-a-month K.I.D.S Church or Sunday School teacher and why we have a teen ministry.
We do that because we believe in the greatest investment plan there is—investing our lives and our time and our hearts and our resources in our kids so that they come to faith, and surrender to Christ’s lordship and become spiritual lights for their world when you and I pass from the scene. We need the support of PEOPLE to do the teaching, but we can’t do it without financial resources to support these ministries.
When you know your money is going into YOUR KIDS, that’s fun! And when you know that your giving is an investment in the future of the church on earth—that’s even more fun!
• Third, your money supports world-wide missions.
We have a commission to go into all the world to preach the Gospel. But to fulfill that mission, we must deputize others to go in our stead. That’s what missionaries are: the extension of our church throughout the world.
Paul says in Romans 10:13-15 – “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. 14 How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? 15 And how shall they preach, except they be sent…”
Go upstairs and look at the wall display of the world and read the prayer letters of all the missionaries we support.
---Read the prayer letters from Mission One, where we support only national church planters and you will be thrilled to see people in Kenya, the Sudan, Syria, India Nepal being saved from sin and the darkness of false religions, delivered from demonic possession and finding peace in the Savior.
---Read about Jim and Becky White’s incredible ministry among the Gypsies just up the road in Bayreuth, and Mirci and Maria Pricop, Romanian nationals also ministering to Gypsies, as well as other Romanians.
---Read about Brother Ghasemy, an Iranian who trains church workers who secretly travel from Iran to Syria to his Bible training school, and read of the wonderful things God’s doing through these church leaders in the underground church in Iran, one of the world’s most oppressive countries.
---Read about what God is doing through our two national Germans, Willi Slischewski and Michael Landoll, and two American missionaries we support who minister in Germany.
---Read about the Lindstam family in Uruguay, a country with one of the highest number of atheists in the Americas; and the Vernoys to Venezuela.
See, when you give to missions, you get to have a part in what God’s doing around the world, and that’s FUN!
• And lastly, your money pays for maintenance and salary.
That’s more mundane, but it takes money to keep the lights on, keep this building warm, keep the water running in and the sewerage running out and to maintain the repairs and upkeep of this house of worship, and to pay for office supplies, and audio-visual equipment and toilet paper and paper towels and tons of other little mundane stuff like that, and well, Susan and I kind of like to eat and to live in a house and drive a car, you know?
Utility companies don’t let us have all their services for free; office supply stores don’t donate their supplies to us; and for some reason, every time a repairman fixes something here, he has a pesky habit of sending us a bill! It’s because of your faithful giving that we have this place to worship—a place where all the ministry and spiritual activity I mentioned above goes on.
When you know how IMPORTANT your giving is and what they help us do here, and what this church means to so many people, it’s FUN to have a stake in it financially.
II. SECOND, GIVING IS FUN WHEN YOU REALIZE THAT WHAT YOU GIVE IS GIVEN BACK TO YOU.
We don’t want to give to God with the idea of what we can get from God—kind of like heavenly bribery. On the other hand, it is clear that the Bible does tell us that generosity brings us great blessings as a motivator for us to give generously.
For an Old Testament example, look no further than Malachi 3:10 – “Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.” In the New Testament, Jesus says in Luke 6:38 – “Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.”
Now these blessings may not necessarily be monetary. But the truth is that giving leads to receiving, whether what we get in return is monetary or other intangible, but more important, blessings.
CONCLUSION
At the end of the day, God’s not really interested in your money. He’s interested in what it represents—your heart! When I give, I am being obedient. When I am obedient, joy results. And being joyful is the same as having fun!
You know, God derives great joy in giving to us—Giving us our salvation free of charge to us; giving us forgiveness of sins; giving us the Holy Spirit; giving us a wonderful family called the church; giving us many blessings, many more than we could ever deserve; giving us health to work and make money; giving us money to live on and a lot extra for wants above our needs.
And if you’re going to be like God, you’re going to give, and give generously, hilariously, cheerfully.
Illus. – Shortly after World War II ended, Europe began picking up the pieces. Much of the Old Country had been ravaged by war and was in ruins.
Perhaps the saddest sight of all was that of little orphaned children starving in the streets of those war-torn cities. Early on a chilly morning, an American soldier was making his way back to the barracks in London. As he turned the corner in his Jeep, he spotted a little lad with his nose pressed to the window of a pastry shop. Inside the cook was kneading dough for a fresh batch of doughnuts. The hungry boy stared in silence, watching every move. The soldier pulled his Jeep to the curb, stopped, got out and walked quietly over to where the little fellow was standing. Through the steamed-up window he could see the mouth-watering morsels as they were being pulled from the oven, piping hot. The boy salivated and released a slight groan as he watched the cook place them onto the glass-enclosed counter, ever so carefully.
The soldier’s heart went out to the nameless orphan as he stood beside him. “Son...would you like some of those?”
The boy was startled. “Oh, yes...I would indeed, sir!”
The American stepped inside and bought a dozen, put them in a bag, and walked back to where the lad was standing in the foggy cold of the London morning.
He smiled, held out the bag, and said simply, “Here you are.”
As he turned to walk away, he felt a tug on his coat. He looked back and heard the child ask quietly, “Mister...are you God?”
Brethren, we are never more like God than when we give. “God so loved the world, that he gave ...” (Charles R. Swindoll and Lee Hough, Improving Your Serve: The Art of Unselfish Living: Bible Study Guide (Anaheim, Calif.: Insight for Living, 1993).
May God help us, like the God we serve, to give joyfully and hilariously!
