SPEAKER_00: Well, good morning, everybody.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, thank you, Hannah, for reading that long passage.
SPEAKER_00: It's great to have you with us.
SPEAKER_00: My name's Mark.
SPEAKER_00: I'm one of the leaders uh at the church.
SPEAKER_00: A couple of things just to mention at the at the start, wherever you're watching from.
SPEAKER_00: It's a great Sunday uh when you have uh lyrics like Potentate and uh Ineffably and Ebenezer.
SPEAKER_00: Uh so I commend you to look up those words, expand your vocabulary, and uh maybe go around uh uh describing things as ineffable uh this uh this coming week.
SPEAKER_00: Uh it's uh great uh old hymns of the of the faith this morning.
SPEAKER_00: And especially given that we're talking about generosity and greed, uh to mention Ebenezer uh as well.
SPEAKER_00: We uh are part of a global church planting family called Axe 29.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Axe 29 uh was founded in the US but now has about 800 churches all across the world.
SPEAKER_00: And uh this Sunday is Axe 29's church planting Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: And so we thought it was right and appropriate for us to show that video of the church plant that we are uh prayerfully moving forward with uh with Duncan and Becky and others into uh into church town.
SPEAKER_00: And so please do pray with us uh for that church plant.
SPEAKER_00: Pray that uh the people would be uh generous towards that.
SPEAKER_00: Uh we as a church have been so blessed over the years by the generosity of brothers and sisters uh in other parts of the world to us as a church, we simply wouldn't exist without it.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and now we have an opportunity uh to be generous with our money and our time uh to the effort of uh church planting ourselves in uh in South Dublin.
SPEAKER_00: So that's a great thing to be part of, and we're excited to see what the Lord's going to do uh with that.
SPEAKER_00: Why don't I pray for us and we'll have a look at this passage uh together?
SPEAKER_00: Father, I pray that you would cultivate in us a spirit of generosity, uh, that you would give us that grace, that gift of a generous heart that is so motivated and moved by your generosity to us in the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Help us this morning as we consider these things in his name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot to get to this morning, and so it's worth just diving right in.
SPEAKER_00: This is part of a uh two weeks thinking about generosity, giving, and how it is that we uh manage uh our money.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, that is where we are in the letter of the book.
SPEAKER_00: It's not something that I have made up, I've decided to bring to you.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, we simply preach through books of the Bible, and over the next two weeks, Paul is talking about what it means to be a generous people, particularly with regard to our finances.
SPEAKER_00: Now I imagine that most of us watching this uh would like to be known as somebody who's generous.
SPEAKER_00: We probably don't want to be associated uh with that Ebenezer of uh Charles Dickens' fame uh as somebody who is miserly and and mean.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, we probably know those people who are miserly and uh and not particularly generous, and they are not often uh fun people to be around.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a character trait that you'd like to pass to your children, isn't that right?
SPEAKER_00: You would like your children to be generous in their disposition.
SPEAKER_00: It's hard, isn't it, when you see somebody being greedy, when somebody is loading up their plate while there's a line of people behind that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00: It's not something that you want to emulate.
SPEAKER_00: You want, I want to be a generous person, and yet money is often a difficult thing to talk about.
SPEAKER_00: It's hard to talk about openly and and frankly and honestly, it's often a source of tension, maybe even in your relationships or in your marriage.
SPEAKER_00: Conversations about money are often a source of uh strife and division.
SPEAKER_00: You don't agree on your on your budget, you don't agree on your approach uh to money.
SPEAKER_00: It's worth thinking about it from a biblical perspective this morning and uh and next week.
SPEAKER_00: Would you describe yourself as well off?
SPEAKER_00: It's actually quite rare uh for you to kind of openly and freely admit, oh yeah, I'm I'm very well off.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a usual thing because what tends to happen is that people tend to compare themselves to the other people around them, the people in their kind of uh bracket, as it were, their socioeconomic uh bracket, their neighbors on the street, and you and you look at them and you go, Well, uh, I mean, I'm not I'm not spending the kind of kind of money that they're spending.
SPEAKER_00: I don't have the kind of car that uh that they have.
SPEAKER_00: They're far they're far better off than me.
SPEAKER_00: We compare ourselves not to the uh not to the person in another part of the world, not to a person even in another part of our city.
SPEAKER_00: We compare ourselves uh to the people who are better off.
SPEAKER_00: We go, well, no, I mean I'm not I'm not particularly well off.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you should see these, you should see these guys, you should see the Joneses that I'm trying to to keep up with.
SPEAKER_00: That means, however, that greed is quite hard to perceive because uh we don't focus on the things that we have, we focus on the things that we don't have uh compared to others.
SPEAKER_00: What is the difference between generosity and greed?
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever thought about that?
SPEAKER_00: What is the line between generosity and greed?
SPEAKER_00: If we want to be a generous people, when does the balance tip over?
SPEAKER_00: When do we stop being greedy and start being generous?
SPEAKER_00: Could a greedy person be generous?
SPEAKER_00: I think actually the answer is yes.
SPEAKER_00: I think that greed is generosity pointed inwards.
SPEAKER_00: Let me say that again.
SPEAKER_00: Greed is generosity pointed inwards.
SPEAKER_00: The greedy person is generous, they're generous to themselves.
SPEAKER_00: That's why they load up their plate and not the plate of someone else, to extend the metaphor.
SPEAKER_00: They are generous, but they're generous in the wrong direction.
SPEAKER_00: The generous person is somebody who is generous outward, who gives outward.
SPEAKER_00: Winston Churchill once remarked that the the measure of a person's living was what they got, but the measure of a person's life was what they gave.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus himself talks about money a lot.
SPEAKER_00: If we were to do a series on the on the gospels, particularly something like Luke's Gospel or Matthew's Gospel, he talks a lot about money and financial wealth.
SPEAKER_00: Not because he hated money or was against it or thought that money was bad, but because Jesus knew the pull that money has on our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: We look to it for our security, we look to it for our significance, we look to it for our comfort.
SPEAKER_00: We might not love money itself, but we love the things that money gives us.
SPEAKER_00: How often do we make decisions, big decisions in our life, with the primary focus on economics?
SPEAKER_00: Where will we live?
SPEAKER_00: Where will we move to as a family?
SPEAKER_00: What kind of job will I get?
SPEAKER_00: And your primary thinking is on the economic benefits or costs, not say on other factors.
SPEAKER_00: Again, weighing things like economics, it's not that it's a an all, it's an out and out bad thing, but there is a danger here, isn't there?
SPEAKER_00: That we can be governed in our decision making, in how we move through the world by our material prosperity, by the money that we have, by the things that we've been enabled to buy, the nice house, the nice car.
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember the story of the rich young ruler?
SPEAKER_00: In Mark's gospel, rich young ruler comes to Jesus and and asks him what must he do to inherit eternal life?
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus tells him to sell everything and to give it to the poor and then to follow him, to follow Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Why was that?
SPEAKER_00: Again, it wasn't because Jesus saw money as evil.
SPEAKER_00: No, it is because he knew that money had captured that young man's heart, that it was an idol for him.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus didn't criticize him for it.
SPEAKER_00: We read in the text that Jesus loved him, loved him enough to try to wean his heart off material possessions, to leave that idol behind, that false hope and false security, and find hope and security in following Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: That's the issue.
SPEAKER_00: It is so easy for us to think of money and greed and generosity wrongly.
SPEAKER_00: We can think that money is bad.
SPEAKER_00: It's not.
SPEAKER_00: Money is not the root of all evil.
SPEAKER_00: The love of money is the root of all evil.
SPEAKER_00: That's Jesus' issue.
SPEAKER_00: That's why he talks about it so much, because our hearts by nature love money.
SPEAKER_00: We love material possessions for the security and the comfort and the significance that they give us.
SPEAKER_00: We shy away from talking about these things because we don't, at some level, want to bring that area of our lives, our bank balance, our budget, into submission under Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: An old retired pastor uh once uh joked to me that the last part of a person to be converted was their wallet.
SPEAKER_00: And I think there's some truth in that.
SPEAKER_00: And so over the next two weeks, we're gonna have an honest conversation and see how the uh how the how the number the viewing numbers dip next week, since I have forewarned you mean you're in it now.
SPEAKER_00: Um but we'll see if people persist into next week.
SPEAKER_00: But we're going to have an honest conversation about money and about generosity because we want to be generous people, don't we?
SPEAKER_00: My hope is that we will see that the gospel actually sets us free, it sets us free with regards to money, it sets us free with regards to finding our hope and security in that which can be taken away.
SPEAKER_00: And when we are freed with regards to money, we can then use it as the tool that God has given us to be a blessing and to benefit others.
SPEAKER_00: A quick note on the context of the of the chapter.
SPEAKER_00: One of the things that had happened in the ancient world is that there was a famine.
SPEAKER_00: There was a famine in Jerusalem, uh, over in the the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea.
SPEAKER_00: And so the Christians in Jerusalem and Judea, they were starving.
SPEAKER_00: They hadn't enough to eat, and prices had gone up because the demand was high and the products were scarce.
SPEAKER_00: And so as a result, there was a collection being taken in the other churches.
SPEAKER_00: This collection was coming from Macedonia, it was coming from Greece, from Corinth, and other places around Asia Minor, around modern Turkey today.
SPEAKER_00: And the idea was that the money would go to the uh the fellows in Jerusalem, the brothers and sisters there, and it would benefit them, it would help them to live.
SPEAKER_00: It was a matter of life and death.
SPEAKER_00: These other Christians that weren't living in Jerusalem and Judea had saw the need of their brothers and sisters and decided to stand in the gap, that they were going to meet that need.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the gospel does, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: The gospel connects you to people that you've never met.
SPEAKER_00: They realized that while they didn't know them, they didn't know their names, that they shared the same faith, that same fundamental core commitment.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're part of the same family of God.
SPEAKER_00: And what does family do?
SPEAKER_00: They take care of one another, they look after one another.
SPEAKER_00: Paul and a couple of others.
SPEAKER_00: So there's Titus is named the latter half of this chapter, and then there's an unnamed brother who we're told is famous among the churches, so of good repute.
SPEAKER_00: And these guys have been tasked with taking up the collection.
SPEAKER_00: Paul was going around different churches, he was planting churches, he was speaking to churches about Jesus and uh about how the gospel is growing all across the world and was telling them of the needs that there are in Jerusalem, and so was taking up a collection.
SPEAKER_00: And he writes now to the Corinthians, reminding them and reminding us of our need to be a generous people for the good and the blessing of others.
SPEAKER_00: The first thing to note from our passage is that the desire to give, a heart that is willing to give, is itself a gift from God.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse one.
SPEAKER_00: We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia.
SPEAKER_00: This word translated grace is also the word for gift.
SPEAKER_00: It's the charisma.
SPEAKER_00: You get the word charismatic, uh, it is the word for gift.
SPEAKER_00: This grace has come to them.
SPEAKER_00: The grace of God means that God has given the Macedonians the desire to give.
SPEAKER_00: That desire itself is a gift.
SPEAKER_00: I remember what we just said, we noted that greed was generosity pointed inwards.
SPEAKER_00: And isn't that what sin is?
SPEAKER_00: Sin itself is when our whole selves are self-focused, pointed inwards, when we are self-loving, self-pursuing, self-giving, self-obsessed.
SPEAKER_00: And the grace of God comes to us as human beings, and what does it do?
SPEAKER_00: It untwists us, it twists us from our inward focus and helps us, causes us to be focused outwards on the good of others.
SPEAKER_00: That grace had come to the Macedonians who were no better than you and I, they were twisted in on themselves, and God's grace had come to them as a gift and had untwisted them.
SPEAKER_00: And when you are an untwisted person who is no longer self-loving, self-giving, but other person loving, other person giving, you become generous.
SPEAKER_00: That flow no longer flows inwards, that flow now flows out to others.
SPEAKER_00: That is what the grace of God does in the believer's life.
SPEAKER_00: And how does this grace of God come about?
SPEAKER_00: What is this grace of God that has come to them and so changed and reoriented their desires, their value system?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the answer, and in many ways, the center of this passage is actually down in verse 9.
SPEAKER_00: So we're going to jump down and we're going to look at verse 9 and then we'll go and see some of the implications of it.
SPEAKER_00: What is the grace that has changed their hearts?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the same word is used in verse 9.
SPEAKER_00: Have a look at it with me.
SPEAKER_00: Excuse me.
SPEAKER_00: Paul writes verse 9, For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for our sake became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.
SPEAKER_00: Notice the same word, grace.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus had gifted himself.
SPEAKER_00: To experience the poverty and the deprivation of rejection and death.
SPEAKER_00: This is how God shows his grace to us.
SPEAKER_00: He does it in the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul explains it here in financial terms.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus had left the riches of heaven in order that he might become poor.
SPEAKER_00: He had left the throne room of heaven, that he might have no place to call his home.
SPEAKER_00: He dies on a criminal's cross.
SPEAKER_00: And they took for him there on that cross, as we noted just a couple of weeks ago, even his clothing, his final possessions.
SPEAKER_00: So that he died literally with nothing.
SPEAKER_00: The richest became the poorest.
SPEAKER_00: And why did he do this?
SPEAKER_00: So that we you and I Macedonians, Corinthians, the Paul.
SPEAKER_00: Me and you, so that we might become rich.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus had infinite wealth.
SPEAKER_00: And if he had held on to it, you and I would have died in our spiritual poverty.
SPEAKER_00: But he laid it aside and became poor himself so that we might be rich.
SPEAKER_00: Paul here is not trying to guilt you into giving.
SPEAKER_00: He's trying to win our hearts with the truth of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: The truth is that Jesus has lifted us from the gutter and set us in glory.
SPEAKER_00: He gave up all of the treasure of heaven to make you his treasure.
SPEAKER_00: Knowing this, it changes our relationship with money.
SPEAKER_00: It changes how we view our material possessions.
SPEAKER_00: Because by faith, the disciple of Jesus realizes that our security and our significance is not ultimately found in our bank balance, but in the love of Jesus for us.
SPEAKER_00: That He knows our needs, that He knows us intimately and will meet those needs for us.
SPEAKER_00: When we realize that money changes, it stops being a small g god that arouses our anxieties or captivates our attention like uh like dragons in Tolkien's mythology or in Deegis in the mythology of dragons, dragons are greedy.
SPEAKER_00: Dragon sickness is to be greedy for gain.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel changes us, it cures us of our dragon sickness.
SPEAKER_00: And it makes money not a source of our comfort, but a means.
SPEAKER_00: A means of comforting and blessing others.
SPEAKER_00: The Macedonians had understood the grace of God in the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: That Jesus, though he was rich, became poor for us.
SPEAKER_00: And so they had changed by that grace and changed their view of money.
SPEAKER_00: Paul uses the Macedonians as an example, not because they're examples of people who had lavish wealth.
SPEAKER_00: They weren't well off if you read the passage.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't have lavish wealth, but they did have lavish hearts.
SPEAKER_00: They had experienced the grace of God in Jesus, and that grace had made them generous.
SPEAKER_00: Paul draws a few teaching points from their example.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to uh bring four out, if I can.
SPEAKER_00: The first is that the Macedonians gave sacrificially.
SPEAKER_00: The Macedonians gave sacrificially.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse two.
SPEAKER_00: For in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part.
SPEAKER_00: For they give according to their means, and as I can testify, and beyond their means, of their own accord, they give sacrificially.
SPEAKER_00: That's not the example of the Macedonians.
SPEAKER_00: They had little, but what they had they shared.
SPEAKER_00: When Paul says that they gave beyond their means, he's saying that it was a sacrifice to give.
SPEAKER_00: It cost them something, literally.
SPEAKER_00: It was an act of dependence that they gave.
SPEAKER_00: If you've ever travelled and been to a poorer part of the world, I remember spending a uh a summer, uh wonderful summer, uh, in Rwanda and loved my time there uh amongst the the people of Rwanda.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that you are constantly struck by is the generosity.
SPEAKER_00: The generosity of people who, comparatively speaking, certainly compare compared to 21-year-old me living in a western nation, they were so abundantly generous.
SPEAKER_00: They would give far beyond what you might expect, far beyond what they had.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Why did they do that?
SPEAKER_00: Well, perhaps part of the reason is that to give sacrificially, to give until you feel the pinch, until you know that it's gone, that's where dependence is cultivated.
SPEAKER_00: It's what drives you to faith.
SPEAKER_00: It's where you say, okay, I need to depend on God for this.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying that you you give away, uh, you give away absolutely everything that you have.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not uh advocating some sort of great uh grand gesture and aesthetic.
SPEAKER_00: Each of you needs to think through and examine honestly what does sacrificially giving look like for me?
SPEAKER_00: What would giving look like that causes me to depend on God more?
SPEAKER_00: Why was the widow blessed by Jesus in the temple?
SPEAKER_00: She gave far less than the others, she gave far less than they than the religious leaders who came and they filled the offering plate.
SPEAKER_00: She gave two small coins.
SPEAKER_00: Why was she blessed and the others not?
SPEAKER_00: Because she gave all she could.
SPEAKER_00: You see, the king is not counting what you give.
SPEAKER_00: The king is counting what you keep they gave sacrificially.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, they begged for an opportunity to give.
SPEAKER_00: Have a look at verse four.
SPEAKER_00: Begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints.
SPEAKER_00: They wanted to give their desire.
SPEAKER_00: And you imagine the scene.
SPEAKER_00: Paul and his team is with the Church of Macedonia, and Paul knows.
SPEAKER_00: Paul knows that they don't have much, they don't certainly don't have much in comparison, in comparison to the guys in Corinth or in Ephesus.
SPEAKER_00: He knows that they are that they're hard up.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, as Paul and Titus and this other brother, as they are, as they are leaving, the Macedonian Christians are coming up and they are they are pressing coins into his hands.
SPEAKER_00: And and Paul might be saying, no, no, no, no, you you need to keep.
SPEAKER_00: And they're saying, no, please, please, let us give, let us contribute something.
SPEAKER_00: Please take it.
SPEAKER_00: You can imagine it, can you?
SPEAKER_00: Let us help.
SPEAKER_00: They say, We know it's not much.
SPEAKER_00: This is all we can afford, but we know it's not much.
SPEAKER_00: Please take it.
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
SPEAKER_00: Doing it all for people that they'd never met.
SPEAKER_00: They begged.
SPEAKER_00: They sought an opportunity to give.
SPEAKER_00: How convicting, isn't that?
SPEAKER_00: I might respond to a to a plea or a request.
SPEAKER_00: But I don't often seek out opportunities to give.
SPEAKER_00: Do you wait until there is a plea for money?
SPEAKER_00: Or do you seek out those ways that you can give sacrificially?
SPEAKER_00: Third, it's worth noting that they saw this giving as a privilege.
SPEAKER_00: We're in verse four again, uh, begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints.
SPEAKER_00: The word favor here is translated elsewhere, it means the word privilege.
SPEAKER_00: They counted it as an honor to participate in this gift.
SPEAKER_00: It was an honor to be generous in this way.
SPEAKER_00: What a disposition.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody wants to receive anything begrudgingly.
SPEAKER_00: You know, those people are like, oh well, fine, here you go.
SPEAKER_00: You've guilted me into it.
SPEAKER_00: I'll write a check.
SPEAKER_00: Or fine, I'll go and set up my standing order.
SPEAKER_00: Enough.
SPEAKER_00: No, they saw it as an honor.
SPEAKER_00: That's how untwisted their hearts were.
SPEAKER_00: They weren't thinking about themselves, they were thinking about others.
SPEAKER_00: And fourth, just to note, they saw their giving as part of their discipleship, as part of what it meant to follow Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 5.
SPEAKER_00: And this, not as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God to us.
SPEAKER_00: They were devoting themselves first entirely to God, and as an overflow of that, that had implications for how they lived in the day-to-day.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what following Jesus does.
SPEAKER_00: Following Jesus has implications for every area of your life.
SPEAKER_00: Being a follower of Jesus, devoting yourself first to the Lord, as it says in the text, will have a knock-on, necessary impact on how you approach a whole bunch of different things and how you approach your romantic life, how you approach the kind of husband or wife that you are or want to be, how you approach your work and the kind of employer or employee that you are, and it influences your wallet, your budget, your bank account.
SPEAKER_00: How you view your money.
SPEAKER_00: Well, first of all, do you view it as your money?
SPEAKER_00: Or do you view it as something that God has graciously given you for his service?
SPEAKER_00: And all of this was voluntary.
SPEAKER_00: They did it willingly.
SPEAKER_00: There was no compulsion, no manipulation.
SPEAKER_00: They wanted to do it.
SPEAKER_00: The generosity of God and the gospel had reminded them, had shown them that all that they had came from him.
SPEAKER_00: That their security, significance, and value was held eternally by Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And so their hearts let go of their fixation on wealth.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what needs to happen with us all.
SPEAKER_00: To varying degrees, and we all have different means.
SPEAKER_00: But long before our fingers ever let go of our money, our hearts need to let go.
SPEAKER_00: Our hearts often have a firm grip on our material well-being.
SPEAKER_00: If the gospel can loosen the grip of our hearts, then our fingers will follow.
SPEAKER_00: There's a sense in which that needs to happen.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul wanted that to happen.
SPEAKER_00: He wanted to show them the generosity of these people that had little in order that they might be further motivated by that same gospel.
SPEAKER_00: So he turns to them and he challenges them.
SPEAKER_00: He offers them a challenge and then two assurances.
SPEAKER_00: A challenge and then two assurances.
SPEAKER_00: The challenge is there in verses 10 to 12.
SPEAKER_00: You might need to leaf over the page or scroll down.
SPEAKER_00: He says, and in this matter I give my judgment.
SPEAKER_00: This benefits you who a year ago started not only to do this work, but also to desire to do it.
SPEAKER_00: So now finish doing it as well, so that your readiness in desiring it may be matched by your completing it out of what you have.
SPEAKER_00: For if the readiness is there, it is acceptable according to the to what a person has, not according to what a person doesn't have.
SPEAKER_00: See what Paul's saying just there, right at the end, just where they're like he's not at all saying to the Corinthians or to any of us, go and take a loan.
SPEAKER_00: Not saying go to the bank or your credit union or your local, you know, uh estate loan shark and uh and get a few grand and put that in the offering plate.
SPEAKER_00: No, he's not saying that.
SPEAKER_00: But the challenge here is that the Corinthians should follow through on their intentions.
SPEAKER_00: You see, what had actually happened is that the Corinthians had come up with the idea to support Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: That's what he seems to be alluding to here.
SPEAKER_00: On his first visit, he had told them perhaps of what was going on in Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: And the Corinthians had thought, oh wow, I mean, we we must we must pick up a collection.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe you know, all of the other churches should uh they could contribute to it too.
SPEAKER_00: And you know, maybe we'll do a fun match, uh, you know, a gift-giving match, whatever they give, we'll match it in our church because we're we're better off.
SPEAKER_00: They could come up with the idea, and Paul said, That's a great idea, let's do that.
SPEAKER_00: And so he'd gone and communicated it.
SPEAKER_00: And then when he was coming back to Corinth, he saw there's a little bit of awkwardness.
SPEAKER_00: The guys are kind of shifting and going, Well, don't have my wallet on me right now.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying you're full of good intentions, but can you follow through?
SPEAKER_00: We know that you've got good means, and this was your idea.
SPEAKER_00: Can you follow through?
SPEAKER_00: It's so often or so easy these days to want to look virtuous without actually having any virtue.
SPEAKER_00: The Corinthians wanted the virtue signal, really.
SPEAKER_00: They're like, oh my goodness, the the guys in Jerusalem, gosh, they're having an awful time.
SPEAKER_00: My heart, my heart breaks for them.
SPEAKER_00: Goodness me, that sounds terrible.
SPEAKER_00: We should do something, we should we should take up a collection.
SPEAKER_00: Paul, you go and ask the other churches, and you know, we can talk when you come back.
SPEAKER_00: What a sad situation.
SPEAKER_00: But when it came to it, they were slow to respond.
SPEAKER_00: Paul simply says if you said you were going to give, you should give.
SPEAKER_00: Take the time that it that is necessary to set up that standing order.
SPEAKER_00: Take the time that is necessary to research where you wish to give.
SPEAKER_00: If you know, if you are feeling that it is an intention that you should follow through on, take the time today to do it.
SPEAKER_00: That's Paul's challenge.
SPEAKER_00: And he gives them two assurances.
SPEAKER_00: First is that his desire is not that the rich somehow become overly burdened, he wants equality.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 13 for I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened, but as a matter of fairness, your abundance at the present time should supply their need, so that their abundance may supply your need, that there may be fairness.
SPEAKER_00: He wants there to be equality.
SPEAKER_00: Now, Paul here is not advocating some sort of communist system of redress redistribution where you simply seize the assets of the of the wealthy and give them to the uh to the less well off.
SPEAKER_00: No, he's he's simply talking, saying that the goal of the Christian community, the goal of the Christian family, is that no one is in need.
SPEAKER_00: That's why the family idea is so important.
SPEAKER_00: If somebody in your family was really struggling, you would step in to help them.
SPEAKER_00: You don't sit down as a wider family and go, okay, well, you're on so much per year, and you're on so much per year, and you're on so much per year.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, we're going to average that out, and then the richer people have to give it to the poorer people.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what's happening.
SPEAKER_00: But if if somebody is in your family is struggling, you step in, you say, Look, let me let me cover that bill for you.
SPEAKER_00: Why don't I get you your uh your groceries this month?
SPEAKER_00: And uh the the pandemic, I know it's all been really hard, and the um the the government unemployment payments, I know that they're not stretching as far as you would like.
SPEAKER_00: Can we just can we step in and help?
SPEAKER_00: And that is what Paul is talking about.
SPEAKER_00: There will always be people within the church of different means, and the goal is not simply to tear down the rich, but to be aware of and concerned for other people's needs.
SPEAKER_00: The other assurance, which essentially is the second half of the passage from verse 16 down to 24, and we'll we'll cover it only very briefly in the next one minute or so, is he assures them that the money will be distributed with integrity.
SPEAKER_00: That's why he goes on for the rest of this chapter to describe how he, Paul himself, won't be the one who handles the money, that it will be Titus and this other famous brother, this brother that perhaps needed no named introduction in the letter because the Corinthians knew him and they trusted him.
SPEAKER_00: So it's gonna be Titus and those guys.
SPEAKER_00: They're acting, I'm asking you, but in terms of the actual financial administration, that's not gonna be down to me.
SPEAKER_00: And that was important for Paul because there had been issues in the past uh between the Corinthians and Paul over money.
SPEAKER_00: Not that Paul had done anything untoward, but the Corinthians really wanted him to take money as payment for his preaching, and he refused, and they felt embarrassed by that.
SPEAKER_00: That was not a done thing in their culture.
SPEAKER_00: But the reason why Paul refused is because when he got paid, very often what would happen is that whoever paid the piper called the tune, and Paul didn't want to have to change his message simply because he was getting money from them, and so he refused.
SPEAKER_00: And similarly, here he comes and says, Look, I'm not gonna have anything to do with the collection that cuts out any sort of accusation that he was skimming off the top or anything like that and dealing uh untoward uh in an untoward way.
SPEAKER_00: That's so important, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: It's so important for us in the church.
SPEAKER_00: Money can be a beguiling and corrupting power, and too often people misuse it and have misused it in the church.
SPEAKER_00: I, like Paul, for example, am standing here this morning and saying, look, you guys need to give.
SPEAKER_00: Many of you are, some of you are not, and some of you have had the intentions to do so, but haven't actually followed through.
SPEAKER_00: And I would encourage you to do that.
SPEAKER_00: But I am not anyone, or I'm not someone who has any access to any of the money that is given to City Church.
SPEAKER_00: That is not how this works.
SPEAKER_00: Neither I nor any of the elders have direct access to the bank account, and where we do have things like a like a church credit card, the elders will see the financial statements of that.
SPEAKER_00: Our financial manager will see the statements of that, and so there is accountability, there's another set of eyes looking at where the money is going and what it is going on.
SPEAKER_00: New accounts, as I have mentioned to you, have been opened recently, and we've made careful plans as an elder board to safeguard financial administration.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because we know the importance of integrity with regards to our finances, is one of the reasons why it is important to fill in and submit your membership forms.
SPEAKER_00: Because one of the things that we want to be able to do for members is give clear insights into how much money is coming in and where it is going.
SPEAKER_00: I am very happy informally to be contacted by any of you and to say, what is the predominant expenditure of City Church?
SPEAKER_00: Who do we support?
SPEAKER_00: Where's the money going?
SPEAKER_00: And at various points, I have spelled that out and will do so again.
SPEAKER_00: In the context of a membership and membership meetings, that makes the most sense because you don't want to just do it on a Sunday morning because look, it's one minute past 12 already.
SPEAKER_00: But I am assuring you that financial integrity is of the utmost importance to us as a church, as well as being a generous church.
SPEAKER_00: We have been rich beneficiaries of the generosity of other churches.
SPEAKER_00: Churches and so we want to be churches that are generous, generous to Duncan and Becky as they plant, their budget is not met, we are reliant on outside funding for them.
SPEAKER_00: We want to be generous to other churches, that's why we support Calvary Church Loch Ray as another church plant because we want to be a benefit and a blessing.
SPEAKER_00: Why we support Christian Unions Ireland?
SPEAKER_00: Because we understand the importance of on-campus student ministry, and so we support people there.
SPEAKER_00: We want to be a generous church who administrates their finances with integrity.
SPEAKER_00: You'll notice that all the way through this talk, I have not quite mentioned the question or answered the question of how much.
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's because it's not directly addressed here.
SPEAKER_00: And I might leave it to next week where we'll talk about it a little bit more.
SPEAKER_00: It's worth just saying now at this point that there's nothing in the New Testament to suggest that you should give 10%, that the tithe, that's what that's called, giving the tenth, the tithe, uh, is something that carries over to the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you might use it as a guideline, and God bless you.
SPEAKER_00: The reality is that most people give about on average 2.5% of their income.
SPEAKER_00: That less than 5% of the church gives 10% or more.
SPEAKER_00: I don't mean city church, I mean the church.
SPEAKER_00: Uh that the tithe is not normally adhered to, and we don't teach it.
SPEAKER_00: The principle here from this morning is to give sacrificially.
SPEAKER_00: For some of you, sacrificially will be 2%.
SPEAKER_00: For some of you, sacrificially will be so much more.
SPEAKER_00: You do business with the king in that regard.
SPEAKER_00: We'll think more about these things uh next week, but just a couple of final questions.
SPEAKER_00: Do you give it all?
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not looking uh at you, you're not looking at me, but it's worth thinking of if you don't, why don't you?
SPEAKER_00: Is it because things are tough?
SPEAKER_00: And I understand that that is true, and you may genuinely need to be somebody like one of the Christians in Jerusalem who needs to be benefited by the blessing of others.
SPEAKER_00: If you are someone who is in that situation, who is in dire need, then we want to be able to help you.
SPEAKER_00: Please, would you make yourself known to us either by contacting one of the elders directly, community group leader, whatever?
SPEAKER_00: But for many of us, there are lessons to be learned from the Macedonians who give in spite of difficulty.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see it as a privilege to give?
SPEAKER_00: Do you ask how much do I have to give?
SPEAKER_00: Or do you ask how much do I get to give?
SPEAKER_00: Do you need to follow through in your intentions?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe, like us, up until recently, we had often talked about sponsoring a child, and we needed to follow through on our intentions.
SPEAKER_00: And so we went to compassion.ie, which is a great Christian-administered uh uh charity website, and we have begun to sponsor a child.
SPEAKER_00: I don't say that as kind of look at me, I say that almost to our shame because we've had those intentions for a long time and had never followed through on it.
SPEAKER_00: Do you, like us, need to be prompted by the Holy Spirit to follow through on your intentions?
SPEAKER_00: Do you need to go to compassion.ie today or the the charity that has been laid on your heart or to give to us, your local church, as we seek to do the work of the gospel in Dublin.
SPEAKER_00: There are now easy ways to do that through our website.
SPEAKER_00: It's far easier to give than it ever was if you go to citychurchdublin.ie.
SPEAKER_00: If you have any questions between now and next week, either about the Bible's teaching on giving or how we use it and administer it, please reach out to me.
SPEAKER_00: I'll happily tell you how much City Church pays me.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not embarrassed about it at all, but I also don't feel like it needs to be broadcast.
SPEAKER_00: It's something that we need to be able to talk frankly and honestly about.
SPEAKER_00: In the meantime, I would encourage you to prayerfully consider these things so that we together will become a generous people.
SPEAKER_00: That's what we want.
SPEAKER_00: To be people who are known for our generosity, and in that, that we commend the gospel, the generosity of God to us, to the world in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Whether we commend that to others.
SPEAKER_00: Let us be a generous church family.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Father, help us to discern with godly wisdom and insight where you are leading us with regards to our finances, our budget, our material wealth and well-being.
SPEAKER_00: Would you wean our hearts off that in addiction to ourself and to me and to my, to seeing the things that we have, the money that lands in our bank account at the end of the month as ours and not ultimately as yours, as a tool, as a tool to care for and provide for our family, but also as a tool to be used for you in the furtherance of your kingdom and in the blessing of others.
SPEAKER_00: Give us Holy Spirit-enabled wisdom, we pray, in the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Amen, everybody.