On what was probably a beautiful spring day in the first-century Roman providence of Judea, a large crowd had gathered on the Korazim Plateau, overlooking the southern slopes of Lake Tiberias. It was rumored that the increasingly popular teacher, Yeshua (yay-SHOO-a), would be addressing the crowd that day. Yeshua was a relatively young man that only recently had begun to make a name for himself. In fact, he had become such a captivating speaker who had such a way with words that many of the Jewish people that came to hear him on this particular day were hoping for a political speech in which he would proclaim himself as the leader of an insurrection over the currently ruling party. The Romans, who occupied this Jewish territory, had instituted a brutal regime that saw widespread poverty and violence against the people. Maybe this would finally be the king who was coming to rid the land of the Romans and bring health and wealth to the people once more. So imagine their confusion when Rabbi Yeshua, whom we know as Jesus, uttered these words, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven…blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth…blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God.”
When Jesus arrived on the scene, his followers want to make him a king. Instead, he brought with him the upside down logic of what it meant to live for the kingdom of heaven. Men and women were no longer to vie for positions of power, instead they were to become one another’s servants. Instead of hoarding wealth in response to an increasingly volatile economy, they were to fling open their doors with joy and give to all in need. And rather than seek justice for wrongdoing, these Jesus followers were to live with open-handed generosity and forgiveness to all. So you can understand why some people started to walk away from Jesus when they heard these words: “blessed are the poor.”
These last few months, we have been studying 2 Corinthians together. It was probably close to 25 years after Jesus’ famous Sermon on the Mount that Paul wrote this letter. But today we’re going to see him continue this theme that Jesus introduced 25 years earlier of the Upside Down Logic of Heaven. And so turn with me to 2 Corinthians 8…while you’re turning there, for those of you that have said that I’ve never given you anything as your pastor, today is a gift just for you. Because the theme of chapter 8 is about giving and there’s so much to teach that we COULD spend all day on this subject alone. But today is also a day when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper which means we’ll preach one of the shortest messages of the year…on giving—so you’re welcome.
Paul has been focusing much of his letter on the Spirit-empowered life of the believer. And he continues that theme into chapter 8 with a biblical model for Spirit-empowered giving. In verse 1, he teaches that our giving should be motivated by God’s grace. In verse 2, Paul says we should give with great joy and radical generosity. Verse 3 teaches that Spirit-empowered giving is sacrificial in nature. Verse 4 tells us that giving is a privilege, not an obligation. Verse 5 highlights the fact that giving is an act of worship, and verse 8 says that giving is proof, or evidence, that God’s love is in us.
And then in verse 9, where our focus will be for the next few minutes, Paul gives us another one of his famous paradoxes showing how Jesus is the ultimate example of what it means to be generous. 2 Corinthians 8:9 | "For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich."
That though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor… So exactly HOW did Jesus become poor? There’s no real evidence in Scripture or in history books that Jesus and his family were any poorer than any of the other Jewish people that they lived with. So I don’t think Paul means that Jesus was poor in an economical sense. Rather, Paul’s referring to the fact that Jesus gave up all the rights and privileges, as God, so that he could become human. Think about this for a minute—he willingly subjected himself to human limitations such as place and time—still as God, but now as God in the flesh. Jesus, the Master Creator of the universe (according to Hebrews 1) stepped out of the majesty of heaven to become one of us. He set aside his glory and his rights as God to experience everything in life that WE would experience.
The Apostle Paul wrote specifically about this in another one of his letters, this letter to the church he started in the city of Philippi – let me read these familiar words from the New Living Translation: "6 Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. 7 Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a [servant] and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, 8 he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross" (Philippians 2:6-8, NLT).
Isaiah 6 tells us that in heaven, Jesus was rich in love with all the angels of heaven to adore him. The angels were continually bowing down and crying out, “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts.” But Jesus laid all of that aside to become the one of whom Isaiah would later write, “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of suffering and familiar with pain. Like one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised and WE held him in low esteem” (Isaiah 53:3, NIV). This is the paradox that Paul is talking about in his letter to the Corinthians. Jesus modeled this upside down logic of the Christian life by humbling himself, leaving his power and wealth as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, to become a suffering servant. He entered the poverty of human existence and held nothing back, not even his own life. “That’s what Paul is talking about. No reserves, no half-measures, no conditions, no holding back, pouring out EVERYTHING he had. THAT is the pattern of [radical generosity] that Jesus modeled” (borrowed from Ray Stedman).
And then Paul tells us what Jesus’ motivation was: "For your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich." He did all of this for US…so that WE could be rich. Rich in grace, rich in mercy, rich in love, rich in holiness, rich in eternal life. But here’s the craziest part…he did this, not after we cleaned up, not after we came begging to him for forgiveness. He did this while we were still his enemy. Listen to Paul’s words from yet another letter that he wrote, this one to the church in Rome. Romans 5:8 & 10: "but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. [Skip over to verse 10] For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, how much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life?"
Do you see that? Christ did all this while we were NOT his friends. Church, it’s one thing to be generous to your friends, it’s quite another thing to be generous to your enemy. That’s what Jesus did for us…and THAT’s what Spirit-empowered generosity looks like. This week, one of our pastors shared that he had listened to an old message on this verse preached by the late pastor and evangelist Ray Stedman, who shared this story:
In the days of the American Revolution there lived in Ephrata, Pennsylvania, a Baptist pastor by the name of Peter Miller. He was a man who enjoyed the friendship of George Washington. In that same city there lived another man named Michael Whitman, who was an ungodly scoundrel, who did everything in his power to obstruct and oppose the work of the pastor. On one occasion, Michael Whitman was involved in an act of treason against the government of the United States. He was arrested and taken to Philadelphia, some seventy miles away, to appear before General Washington. When the news reached Peter Miller that this man, his enemy, was appearing on trial for his life before General Washington, Peter Miller walked the long seventy miles to Philadelphia to appeal for the life of this man. He was admitted to the presence of Washington because of his friendship, and when he came in he began without delay to speak for the life of Michael Whitman. Washington listened to him and heard his story through, and then said, “No, Peter, I cannot give you the life of your friend.” To which Peter Miller replied, “My friend! My friend! This man is not my friend; he is the bitterest enemy that I have!” Washington said, “What! You mean to say that you have walked seventy miles through the dust and the heat of the road to appeal for the life of your enemy? Well, that puts the matter in a different light. I’ll give you, then, the life of your enemy.” And Peter Miller put his arm around the shoulders of Michael Whitman and led him out of the very shadow of death, back to his own home, no longer his enemy, but a friend.
Church, when we were enemies of God, fighting against him in any way that we could, Christ died for us in order that we might be rich in the Kingdom of God. That’s the upside down logic of heaven. And so this morning, as ambassadors of the King, I don’t think there’s a better way to express the richness that we have in Christ than to gather around the Lord’s table in a time of celebration.
And so whether you’re a guest this morning or a longtime attender of this church, let me invite you, if you are a born-again believer in Jesus Christ and you’ve participated in Believer’s Baptism, to share in receiving these elements this morning. For some of you today, you may choose to simply watch as we eat this wafer and drink the juice…and that’s OK. But for everyone this morning, at this time I would like to pause and give each of us an opportunity to examine our own hearts this morning. For some it may be a time for repentance, for some it may be a time for forgiveness, and for others it may even be an opportunity to receive the riches that are reserved for you in Christ. But for all us, it is a time to prepare our hearts.
