The Grace Of Giving

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NORTH PINE BAPTIST CHURCH

Sunday 8th June 2025

2 Corinthians 9:6-11

“The Grace of Giving”.

Here is a connection I want us to think about.

What our hands do with our money shows what our hearts are doing with God.

Do you ever stop and think about that connection?

What your hands doing with your money.

What you give. What you buy.

Where you choose to allocate your resources.

What your hands do with your money shows what your heart is doing with God.

1 Timothy 6:10 speaks into this connection. Paul warns us that

10 The love of money … not just money, but the love of money …

The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

When we are in Christ money becomes a spiritual issue. Such being the case Paul, in 2 Corinthians 9:6-11, equips us to deal spiritually with this spiritual challenge.

Let’s read what Paul says.

6 Remember this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. 7 Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. 8 And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. 9 As it is written:

‘They have freely scattered their gifts to the poor;

their righteousness endures for ever.’

10 Now He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. 11 You will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.

As we consider this passage note that Paul never uses “guilt” as a way to get the Corinthians to give. Rather focuses on the grace of giving.

It is very easy for a preacher to make people give more on the basis of guilt.

I could do it by getting some statistics on the average earnings of the people represented in our congregation and then work out what the cumulative figure that would happen if we all gave 5%.

Or I could gather stories of people who were giving 20% … 30% … 50% to the Lord … and guilt you into upping your giving.

It is easy to guilt people into giving. But guilt giving is the opposite of grace giving. Paul is clear … you can’t be giving because you are reluctant or under compulsion.

As verse 7 says God loves the cheerful giver.

Which doesn’t mean that God does not love the uncheerful giver, or the reluctant giver, or the stingy giver.

The point Paul is making is that God loves it when we understand that He is a God who gives cheerfully.

A character of God is that He is a generous God.

When we really understand how this generous God is working in our lives

When we are in an eternal vibrant relationship with our generous God.

That relationship will flow over into generous cheerful giving.

God loves it when that happens. Not because it means He has more money, but because it means we are maturing in our understanding of the power of His work in our lives.

So, as we think about our relationship with God … with Jesus … how does cheerful giving reveal itself? Cheerfulness understands that God uses mathematical reversal.

Perhaps in our lives we have come to the conclusion that the way to have more is to give less.

Ten minus one is nine … and ten minus zero is ten.

So, if you want to have ten instead of nine, you don’t take anything out of your bank account on the first day of the week. Right?

That is true … when you are doing money math at the bank.

The problem with this sort of math is that it leaves God out of the picture.

God’s maths works differently.

We see it in verse 6 Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously.

God’s math says “You give Me more and you will end up having more than if you give Me less”.

That is mathematical reversal.

Now you could interpret that as an invitation to make it rich. “If I give more of my money to the church then I should get more money in the long run”.

But that is not what the text is saying.

The call to sow generously and the promise the reap generously is not a promise to make generous Christians more wealthy. Rather God is promising to generously provide in the lives of His people far beyond what money can buy.