As we have looked together at certain values that should be part of our lives as Christian families, we began by talking about how God needs to be at the heart of our homes. That means that He must first be at home in every heart - our goal should be to see every family member come to know Christ as Savior. Beyond that, our goal should be to see every family member acknowledge Christ as Lord in their everyday life.
Next, we talked about the importance of valuing fidelity. A Christian home should be known as one where fulfilling our promises, being true to our word, and keeping our commitments is practiced, modeled, and taught.
Then, we considered the need for Christian families to value industry. We said that the Bible teaches that God’s people should be industrious and productive - that we should have a good work ethic. This should relate not only to the way we approach our jobs, but our marriages, our family life, our friendships, and every other area of life.
Now today, I want us to move a step further and think of yet another area of core value for the Christian family - generosity.
One of the most obvious characteristics of our Savior is His generosity toward us. Paul touches on this in Ephesians 5:1-2:
"Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that." - Ephesians 5:1-2 (The Message)
In verse 25, Paul begins with the word, "Therefore." As the old saying goes, "you should always ask, ‘What’s the ‘therefore’ there for?" Anytime we encounter the word, "therefore," it refers to something said previously. In this instance, Paul is referring to what he has just said about the need for God’s people to think and live like Christ (Ephesians 4:20-24). We would understand, then, that to be generous is to be like Jesus.
As a Christian family, we should value Christ-like attitudes and actions. Such living is characterized by generosity. Let’s notice what Paul tells us in our passage for today about practicing generosity.
1. Be generous with truth - vs. 25-27
We live in a day when it is common for people to run "fast and loose" with the truth. Consider these "Famous American Fibs": The check is in the mail. I’ll start my diet tomorrow. We service what we sell. Give me your number and the doctor will call you right back. Money cheerfully refunded. One size fits all. Your luggage isn’t lost; it’s only misplaced. Leave your resume and we’ll keep it on file. This hurts me more than it hurts you. I just need five minutes of your time. Your table will be ready in a few minutes. This won’t hurt a bit. Let’s have lunch sometime. We could go on and on.
God’s people are to be people of integrity - people who are generous with the truth. Sometimes it is easy to be generous with the truth. Other times it is not. Paul cites an example here of when being generous with the truth is not easy - when it has to do with being offended in a relationship.
Are you a truth-teller or a peace-keeper? Given a choice, most of us would like to just keep the peace. We think that if we’re honest, people will push us away. We’d rather not tell our boss what we’re thinking because he or she would just get angry. We’d rather not tell our spouse something because he or she will just get defensive. We’d rather not tell our teacher or parents the truth because they just wouldn’t understand.
Friends, when you submerge your true feelings in order to preserve harmony, you will undermine the integrity of your relationships. You might think you’re keeping the peace, but actually those feelings will go underground and eventually erupt. Paul says that such an approach "gives the devil a foothold" in our lives. It grants him opportunity to create even great problems between us and the other person.
Relationships are worth the effort associated with truth-telling. This should especially be true when it comes to relationships within our family. Think of this: If children do not learn how to honestly work through differences with others at home, how and where will they learn how to work through differences with others at school, at work, or in any other arena of life? Christian homes should be characterized by honesty, integrity, and authenticity. There should be an atmosphere of openness where, in a spirit of love, parents can not only be honest with children, but children with parents, and spouses with one another.
2. Be generous with resources - v. 28
A thief thinks only of himself and how much he can get away with. The Christian, however, should be focused on others and how much he can give. As Christian homes, we should seek to practice generosity when it comes to helping those in need.
Financial consultant and radio talk show personality, Dave Ramsey, contends that there are four things that parents should seek to teach their children regarding money:
A. They should teach them how to work.
B. They should teach them how to spend.
C. They should teach them how to save.
D. They should teach them how to give.
Through learning how to work, kids are taught discipline.
Through learning how to spend, kids are taught discernment.
Through learning how to save, kids are taught patience.
Through learning how to give, kids are taught selflessness.
True generosity is characterized by selflessness. If I give with strings attached, then I am not giving, I am manipulating. Manipulation is something that comes to us naturally, but selflessness does not. It must be learned. Through giving, we can learn selflessness.
Sometimes giving isn’t always as generous as it might seem. There is a story out of Miami, Florida about six Royal Palm trees that had been vandalized and cut down along Miami’s Flager Street. Due to the expense involved in replacing them, Dade County wasn’t sure how soon, if ever, they would be replaced. Along came a generous donation of six new trees. Not only were the trees paid for but they were even planted by the donor.
The former trees had been 15 feet tall and formed a beautiful foreground for a "Fly Delta" billboard. The new trees were 35 feet tall and now hid the billboard completely. The donor of the trees was Eastern Airlines.
3. Be generous with encouragement - vs. 29-30
In a 20-year study of 2,000 married couples, researchers uncovered one important predictive factor in determining which couples will stay married for the long haul. If you want to have a Marathon Marriage then you need to work at maintaining a 5-to-1 ratio of positive to negative comments. Positive interactions like compliments, smiles, and touches must outnumber negative comments like sarcasm or put-downs by a ratio of 5-to-1. (U.S. News and World Report, 2/21/94)
God views the way we speak to one another as being so serious that Paul says the Spirit of God is grieved when God’s people do not speak graciously to one another. Does the way you talk to one another in your home build each other up or tear each other down?
Alan Redpath once formed a "mutual encouragement" fellowship at a time of stress in one of his pastorates. The members subscribed to a simple formula applied before speaking of any person or subject.
T - Is it true? H - Is it helpful? I - Is it inspiring? N - Is it necessary? K - Is it kind?
I believe that we would do well to form our families into "mutual encouragement" fellowships, who also seek to live by this rule. Then, instead of grieving the Holy Spirit, we will see the Holy Spirit released in our homes to enable every member to be who God designed them to be!
4. Be generous with forgiveness - vs. 31-32
Try as hard as we might to treat each other as we should, we will have times when we fall short. At such times, we will need forgiveness. Since each of us will have times when we need forgiveness, we should be generous when others need us to forgive them.
An elephant and a crocodile were swimming in the Amazon, when the elephant spots a turtle sunning himself on a rock. The elephant goes over to the turtle, picks him up in his trunk and hurls him far into the jungle. The crocodile turns to the elephant and says, "What did you do that for?" The elephant answers, "That turtle bit me almost 50 years ago." The crocodile can hardly believe it and says, "And you remembered that after all these years? Boy, you sure have a good memory." "Yep," says the elephant. "Turtle recall."
Too many of God’s people have a bad case of "total recall." It’s one thing to remember an incident from the past; but it is another to allow that remembered incident from the past to impact the way I relate to someone in the present. Note what Paul says to us about forgiveness, "as in Christ God forgave you."
A common saying is that we should "forgive and forget." Often this is based on the notion that this is what God has done when He forgave our sin through Christ.
We get this idea from Hebrews 8:12 (NIV), which says, "For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more."
But think with me about this. The Bible says that God is all-knowing. He knows everything about us - past, present, and future. So to say that God has erased His memory is not consistent with what the Bible tells us elsewhere about Him. We must conclude, therefore, that what Hebrews 8:12 is emphasizing is something else.
The idea is not that God has amnesia regarding our sin, but that He will never bring them up again. He has determined that He will not allow our sin to ever again come between Him and us. When the Bible says that God "remembers our sins no more," it is referring what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13:5 (NIV), when he declares that love "keeps no record of wrongs."
When we forgive another person their offense, we must choose to not let the offense remain a barrier in our relationship with them. We will "keep no record of wrongs" to "throw up" to the person the next time they offend us.
Conclusion: Being generous with truth, with resources, with encouragement, with forgiveness; is the way in which God is generous with us. God has generously revealed His truth to us so that we might know Him personally and deeply; He has given Himself fully to us, along with all the resources of heaven; He works in our lives to encourage, equip, and empower us to be the unique person He has providentially designed us to be us; and when we fail Him, despite all He has generously provided to us, He forgives us of our failures and does not hold them against us.
When we say that Christian families should value generosity, we are saying that we should value treating others the way God treats us. And when Christian families truly live in a way that is consistent with valuing generosity, they will be used of God to reveal His true nature to others.
