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If you were here with us last week, you probably know that we are in the middle of a series on generosity. If you were not here, let me just kind of bring you up to speed really quickly. We are talking about generosity, and uh it's not just so that we can use that word as a code word for trying to get you to give. Okay? Uh you know what I'm talking about? Some of us in this room, when people start talking about giving, tithing, uh, giving money to the church, we get nervous, we get anxious, we get a little bit uh uneasy. And I talked about that last week, that there's some of those emotions that we want to work through. But Jesus has a lot to say about money uh when he was walking the earth, and the Bible has a lot to say about money because in our hearts, there's something that happens when our hearts and our emotions get attached to stuff. And one of the greatest ways to free our hearts from stuff and from greed and from hoarding is to be generous. And and and we want to also, as a uh body of Christ followers, those who of us who claim to know Jesus, that are following Jesus, we want to reflect the heart of a generous and gracious God. So our job is to uh point people to that gracious God by doing generous acts of service. Uh it's not just money, but with our time, our talents, and our treasures, saying, God, we are going to bless others because you have been so incredibly generous and gracious towards us, right? So last week we talked a little bit about this and what does it look like. But uh just know that my hope is that by the end of this series, a few things would happen. Uh one, that you would actually see that it's that it's genius to be generous. We call this series the genius of generosity, that it's actually intelligent, that it's actually smart to be genius, to be I said that last week too, to be generous with our resources, okay? It is smart to be smart, right? Um but it's it's smart to be generous with our resources because we know this last week of the series that we're gonna come to, we're gonna talk about there are lots of benefits of participating in God's work. And so we we get to see some of those benefits in our lives and blessings in our lives that come from being generous. But also, um, we're teaching through a section of scripture where we're asking God to really grow us to see money through a different lens, uh, where we don't see it as something that's ours, that is to be held onto tightly and to be gripped onto, but it's something that God says, I have given as a temporary stewardship that we now get to release so that again, his work can be funded. And by the way, God doesn't need your money. Okay? And I want you also to know that God, in his, his, his wisdom and his his uh provision, he doesn't need uh point doesn't need your money. Okay? God will provide the resources that we need through the people who want to participate in his work. So that's not like a uh a sarcastic backhanded slam or anything. That's just simply saying we're not here just trying to get money from you. And we're gonna talk more about that in a minute. We trust God will provide for his work as we're following him. But the cool thing is, is it is incredible to actually participate in his work and to see our measly amounts of money do something that will last forever. Be a part of something that will actually last when we're all long gone, our hearts are no longer beating, our lungs are no longer filling with air. Okay? So we're working from 2 Corinthians chapter 8 and 9. If you have a Bible, I'd encourage you to go ahead and pull that out. And we're gonna kind of walk through some of these verses and talk about some things that are there. And as you're walking to that or turning to that, those passages, if you don't have a Bible, there's some under the chairs there. Also have the verses on the screen, or you can use your smartphone, device, whatever you've got your Bible on. And we're gonna look at the text because Paul has given some very practical, helpful instructions on money. Okay? He's given us some really helpful instructions. In fact, this would be probably the best two chapters in all of the Bible on giving and on generosity. So that's why we're we're teaching through it. And uh what Paul has been doing, and we talked about this last week, is he was giving the Corinthian believers, those who who already said they knew Jesus, these people who were in the church at Corinth, he's giving them instructions to complete this collection that they were taking up, this money that they were they were gathering together to send to believers in Jerusalem. So there were Christians in Jerusalem, they were struggling with persecution, they were having a hard time surviving, feeding their families. And so Paul's out doing these missionary journeys, and he's like, look, let's let's actually take up a collection, let's take it to the believers in Jerusalem and help provide for them. So you tracking? That's where we are. That's what's going on. And so Paul says, I want you Corinthians to know about these Macedonians. These guys are killing it. And what he meant by that is he said, look, they were extremely poor, like they had very little, and yet, even in their poverty, he uses the word extreme poverty, they were incredibly wealthy, incredibly generous. They were incredibly generous. Uh I don't usually put those two things together. Poverty and generosity don't seem to be uh common, commonly put in the same sentence, do they? And yet Paul says, because even in the midst of their poverty, they overflowed into a wealth of generosity, is what verse 2 said. And we said that last week that the reason this happened for these Macedonians, the reason why they were so generous, is not just because they were really good people, or not just because they had a lot of resources. We've already talked about that. It was because they understood the generosity of God. They had had a view, a window in to see the generosity of a gracious God. And in fact, we even said that ultimately the greatest motivator for our generosity is our generous God. Okay? The greatest motivator for our generosity is our generous God. And the way that uh Paul writes this, this is kind of the linchpin verse of this whole section. So if you have a Bible and you weren't here last week, I encourage you to underline, highlight, circle, star it, whatever you want to want to do there to mark this in your Bible, verse 9, which says this. Though he was rich, for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich. That is an amazing verse. What is he saying? He's saying that Jesus, who owns everything because he's God, he's in the heavenly throne room, and he steps down out of that throne room, he comes and he puts on flesh, he walks the earth, and we know that when he was on the earth, at least during his three years of ministry, he didn't have a lot. He walked away from that to do the ministry he had, and he would even go as far as to say he didn't have a place to lay his head. He was completely surrendered to God's mission and the uh the role that he had while he was on this earth, okay? And yet it says that he he walks away from the riches of heaven to become poor so that what? So that we might become rich. And he's not talking about filling our bank accounts, okay? Um, he's talking about that we would have spiritual riches, riches that can't be taken away, riches that will last and remain forever. So that's a powerful verse. That's a powerful truth for us this morning. And I want you to know, as I said a while ago, what we what we don't want you to think as we talk about giving is that it's just about giving. Because the truth is this morning is that true generous giving starts with receiving. It starts with receiving from a gracious God. Generosity is an overflow. So Paul addresses four primary barriers. This next section is very practical, it's very personal, and I'm gonna try to unpack what Paul was addressing for the Corinthians and make some parallels with what we may be struggling with today. Because my my guess, as I said last week, is that no one in this room wants to be known as a greedy person. Nobody would say, Yeah, I want to be a greedy person. I want people to think I'm greedy. I actually think most of us want to be known as generous people, gracious people. But getting to a place of generosity can be a challenge, and there's some barriers that we have to overcome, specifically when it comes to giving to the church or giving to the things of God or giving to help others. Sometimes there's barriers that we face, there's hardships that we deal with, right? So notice this verse 10 in chapter 8 says, Now I am giving an opinion on this because it is profitable for you who a year ago began not only to do something, but also to desire it. So Paul is saying to them, I'm writing to you an opinion on what I think you should do with your resources. Now, the first barrier that many times we have to overcome to become generous givers is to understand that it is a dangerous thing when we turn giving into a rule to follow. Now, I don't know how many of you guys grew up in church. I'm I know some of you who did not grow up in church. I've talked to some of you. But how many of you guys have ever seen these things? There's some in the back of the chairs here. Uh when I grew up in church, we had these little envelopes, and uh they were uh in my church they were pink. And and I don't know why they were pink, but they were pink, and they would actually send it, send them to us in the mail so that every month you got these in the mail, and it says on there, you know, you're it actually would they would even print your information on it for you. So you didn't even have to write your own information in. And it would say, I'm gonna give this much, and it would say, have you read the Bible daily, uh, you've invited someone to church, you memorized the scripture and it had a little box and you just check it off. Anybody remember that? Okay? Hopefully you don't. Okay. Um that's how it was when I was growing up. I saw this, and and so I thought, hey, this is pretty cool. As a kid, I was like, Oh, yeah, check the box. Great, I did this. And even if I didn't do all of them, I would check the box because it made me feel good. And then I'd just put it, put it in the offering plate and like, look at me, I did my deed for the week, right? I've done my duty, I've read my Bible, I've given my money. Now, here's the problem. This is a dangerous way to see our giving because our hearts can be very disconnected from just going through some ritual. It can be just something that we do because it's a habit, which, by the way, it's a good habit to give. But if it's just a habit, it's disconnected from our hearts. The question is, why are we doing what? Why are we giving? Why are we doing what we're doing, right? And so uh we don't want to turn giving into a rule that has to be enforced. It does some weird things in churches when they start turning giving into a rule. Um, and this is why I think Paul was very careful in verse 8, he'd already said, This is not a command. And now he's saying, this is my opinion, because he's saying that all generous giving, giving is actually voluntary. It should be voluntary. It should be something, in fact, even in the next chapter, chapter 9, he says you should decide in your own heart what to give, not under compulsion, because God loves a cheerful giver. I want to be able to give with a glad heart. Anybody else want to do that? I want to be able to give and be happy about it, not like, oh man, yeah, they shamed me into it, they guilted me into it. Oh, I better give, or I'm gonna get you know kicked out of the church, or God's not gonna like me, or whatever it is that they've used. I've heard spiritual leaders use phrases and use methodology to try to get people to give to support their vision that we're unbiblical and ungodly. And what I'm telling you this morning is that giving, generous giving, is not supposed to be a rule. It's supposed to be something that's a response, a response to God's love. Now, just just so I can pull back the curtain for a second. Uh, if you've read the Old Testament, you may have heard the word tithe. Or maybe if you've been in church, you've heard the word tithe. The word tithe literally means 10%. Okay? Means 10%. In the Old Testament, that is the first uh, you know, 30 books of the Bible, it's about two-thirds of the scripture, uh, this idea of tithing was given by God to help God's people give resources so that his his nation, the people of Israel, could could function. They could function in terms of the worship they were doing at the temple, they could they could support the priests and those worship leaders and all the things that went on there. Because the the Jewish nation was a theocracy, meaning that God was at the top and that they were all under his leadership, and so he had this system. So, in essence, the tithe was basically a tax. Everybody loves taxes, right? It's like, oh yeah, this is good. Uh so and they would, this is what they would do. Twice a year, they would give 10% of all they had. Twice a year. So if you're doing the math here, is it 10% or more? More, right? It's 10% when you add 10% plus 10%, that's 20%. And then when they came to the temple to actually do their worship, acts of worship, they would give another temple tax, and it would roughly work out to every year the people of Israel would give about 25% of their income to the people of God, these guys entrusted to take these resources and then work with them. Now, what would happen if I stood up here on Sunday morning and said, All right, everybody, you're gonna give 25% of your income to the church this year. Next week there'll be two of us here, right? All right? I say that, I'm joking, but you guys know what I'm saying. Like, this is something that in the United States we struggle with giving anyway, but if we started like mandating some rule like, hey, look, you gotta give this much, listen, voluntary giving is the best form of giving because God wants us to wrestle with it in our hearts and determine what it is that He wants us to give and then to obey Him. If not, leaders can make you feel coerced, they can feel you make you feel manipulated, afraid, or ashamed. And it can create this disconnectedness. But also, if you do check the box and you give, you can just turn it into a bill that you pay, just like every other online bill you pay. And you can also become very self-righteous. Hey, God, look at me. I give, I give my 10%. Look at me, I'm awesome. And that's not so giving is not supposed to create pride, it's supposed to create worship and dependence on God and saying, God, you're good, and because you've given me everything, I'm just gonna give a little bit back to you. And so that there's a completely different mindset. And in fact, the the tithe is a model, not a mandate. It's a model. The tithe is the ceiling, not the floor, if you will. So it's a great starting point, but it's not where we we end. Uh I I wish this were not the case, but statistically, uh, we've learned that the more people make, the less they give. The more people make in their paycheck, the less that they give away. Uh percentage-wise. Why is that? Because the more you have, the more it continues to grip your heart. It's harder to let go of you. If I had $10 and said, hey, give one dollar away of your $10. Okay, that's not a big deal, one dollar. What if you had $100,000? And I said, okay, God wants to see you give 10%, or God wrestle you wrestle with that out with God, and you decide you're gonna get 10%. Oh, it's a little harder, isn't it? You see, our hearts get connected to these things, and we have to wrestle through these things, and the question isn't, again, the amount, the question is the attitude. The question isn't how much am I giving? The question is what's my attitude and posture towards giving. Because God is not locked in on that amount. He wants to know are our hearts fully his. As we said last week, they first gave themselves to God, and then they were generous with their stuff. When you are submitted to God, your hand and your heart opened before God. But that's the way it works. It's God first, and then the horizontal, the giving, the response to Him. The second thing that Paul addresses here that's a barrier, and that first one takes a little while to get through, but the second one is notice what happens when he gets to verse 11. He's already alluded to this a little bit, but he says, But now finish the task as well, that just as there was eagerness to desire it, so there may also be completion from what you have. So what is Paul addressing here? He's addressing the fact that they said they were gonna give, and then they haven't followed through. Now, I know none of you in this room have ever struggled with this, but for the Corinthians, they had this idea that, hey, we're gonna give, we're gonna support this work, we feel compelled to give in the moment. They were, their emotions were stirred, they got excited about it, and they're like, we're gonna give, we're gonna help these Christian believers in Jerusalem. But then push came to shove, hardships came, life starts happening, and guess what? Well, maybe we weren't gonna give that much. We don't really know all the reasons why they were struggling to give, but we do know that there's a pretty good chance that they got distracted by life. They just got, it just kind of left their radar. And this isn't just about giving, is it? Every single week I come here, I know you guys think because I'm the preacher that I stand up here that I'm I don't walk away with like things to work on, to do. I mean, I've always said that this is uh to me, it's kind of like inviting you into my therapy session because every week I have to wrestle with the text and ask God to show me what he wants me to do. And so by the time I get here, I'm like, man, I've got a lot of work to do, God. I need to release some things, I need to surrender some things, I need your help more than I even can imagine. Because God's word tenderizes my heart. And I love that. But it's real easy to get emotional or feel conviction and then to walk away and get distracted and not follow through. And in our lives, just know this every commitment you make will be tested. Uh, talking about Zach being here today, planting churches, let me just tell you, I don't know all of the theology wrapped around this, but every time I've watched a church planner come to Austin, Texas and say, hey, we're gonna plant a church, we're gonna follow God, they get to see some incredible things, but they also have to deal with a lot of hardships. This, the I mentioned earlier that we had a um a conference this week where we had some church planners in the room, and part of that conference was actually just to pull back the curtain and get honest about what's really going on behind the scenes because sometimes people see a church and they go, Oh, that church is doing so well. Guys, I want you to know when you make a commitment to follow Jesus, things typically don't get easier, they get harder. They get harder. We don't follow a God who says, follow me into easy. He says, Follow me into hard stuff, but I will be with you in it. And you will see me in ways you've never seen me before. Can I tell you there were times when Jade and I, my wife and I, we've we've sat and we've prayed about commitments to giving. And we're like sensing God was giving us a number. And I can remember going, I don't know how we're gonna do this, God. We were given to a giving camp, uh, a building campaign at one point, uh, above and beyond what we give weekly to our to our church. We were we were wrestling with that. When we were planting a church, we were given a gift offering on the front end to help us buy the equipment to start the church. Um, just because I'm a pastor doesn't mean that I get an exempt status from giving. I still give and I wrestle with it, and God has to work in my heart. And there's been moments where we've come to a number, and then we've looked at it and said, okay, how are we gonna give that? We don't know, God, but this is what we sense you're saying. And we're gonna step forward, and you know what? We've always been tempted to not follow through. Things come up. I mean, I've got six kiddos, and they eat a lot. And I'm like, God, are we gonna be able to do this? How's this gonna work? Uh, there's things that come up, and so many times in our life we can move on before following through. There's a parable that Jesus tells in Matthew 21 where he talks about two sons. And he says that the two sons are there, and the father says, I want you to go into my vineyard and to work. And one of them says, Sure, I'll go work in your vineyard, Father, but then he never does. And then there's another son that says, I'm not going to work in your vineyard. And then he actually changes his heart and he goes and works. And Jesus says, Which one obeys? Which one is truly righteous? Which one did the right thing? And we would all know, right? That's the one who actually followed through. So saying things is different than actually doing them. So we commit and we ask God for the help to follow through. In fact, Paul, even in 1 Corinthians chapter 16, gave some practical instructions on this. He said in 1 Corinthians 16, this was before when he very first started this collection, he said, on the first day of the week, set aside some money. Set aside some resources and put those aside first thing. So let me just get practical with you from my own heart. For us, when we get paid and my paycheck hits the bank account, one of the first things that I do is I go straight online to our city online deal and I give. Why? Because I want God to know you're not gonna get my leftovers. You're not gonna get my scraps. Now, again, I understand that some people maybe that's not you yet. That's not where you are. And this is not a moral bar to jump over, but I'm just telling you from my own heart, I give first. I want God to say, I want to say to God that the amount is not the issue, the heart attitude is the issue, and God, I'm gonna give first so that I can stay faithful and consistent in that, so that I don't get swayed into sucking in, you know, get sucked into saying, oh, I need this or I need that or need this. No, God, I'm gonna give you first. And it's hard sometimes, but I want to follow through, and that helps me follow through, is to be consistent in giving first. But the next thing that we actually see here in the text that is a barrier for giving that they were struggling with, that I think we all can still struggle with, is notice what happens when he gets to verse 13. It is not that there may be relief for others and hardship for you, but it is a question of equality. At the present time your surplus is available for their need, so their abundance may also become available for our need, so there may be equality. As it is written, the person who gathered much did not have too much, and the person who gathered little did not have too little. So notice at first what he's saying to them. He's going, I know that you guys are afraid that if you give, what? You're not gonna have enough for yourself. I know that our culture is continuously perpetuating this idea that you need to have a lot of money and you need to make sure you've got a rainy day fund, you've got to have a savings account, you've got to have uh 401k. All those things are actually bad. Biblical and godly to be a wise saver. In fact, the scripture says that we should be like the ant who stores up, right? We should store up. We should have some reserves that are there. So if you're living paycheck to paycheck and you have no reserves, guess what typically happens when a bad situation occurs? You don't have anything to go to, so you put it on credit and then you start to dig yourselves a hole and bigger hole and a bigger hole and bigger hole, right? Anybody attested to that this morning? You've been there. So it's okay to save, it's okay to have even retirement accounts. But here's the thing in our lives, we need to understand that when God raises our income, it's not so that we can make our lives more comfortable. He raises our income so that we can be more invested in the things that matter. That we can give more to the things that really matter for eternity. Another way of saying this, Randy Alcorn's famously says, when God increases your income, it's not so that you can raise your standard of living, but that you can raise your standard of giving. It's a great phrase to lean on. I know personally that in my life, it's easy sometimes when I get a little extra money, we get a little extra this or that. Either we sell something, or maybe I get a little raise or something like that. My attention is, okay, what have we not been buying that been wanting to buy? Okay, wait. It's time for that new cell phone that I've been holding off because we couldn't, but now I can. And what happens in this is you play this game where luxuries become necessities. You guys, I know this is hurt, this is painful, isn't it? Because in America, we have all these things at our fingertips. It's like what's what's really a luxury for the world is it becomes a necessity for us. And then once we move to that status, it's really hard to go back. So we get to that certain level of car, we get to that certain level of house, we get that certain level of clothing, we get that certain level of uh mobile device, whatever it might be, and we're like, oh man, I can't go back now. And now we're locked into monthly payments or we're locked into these different ways of living that just keeps up in the ante, up in the ante. And we're like, why can't we be generous? Because we don't have any margin. Because we're playing this game, and we misunderstand God's provision that when God provides, he's not saying, okay, go buy some more stuff with that. He's saying, here's an opportunity for you to grow your investment in the eternal things. I realize this is not a popular message, but I want you to know that there is nothing in this life that will truly satisfy your heart. Because it will just be one device and the next device, it'll be one car and the next car, it'll be one house and then the next house, and then you're just gonna keep having to do it because I said this last week. Every time they ask rich people of varying levels of wealth, they ask them how much is enough, and you know what they always say? Just a little more. Because that's what happens. If we need to understand God has given us great provision to build his kingdom in heaven, not build our kingdoms on earth. That's why I get excited about being able to give to support what Zach is doing with Restore Austin, because we're helping to build the kingdom of God. We're not just building our own little kingdom and say, hey, everybody, look at us. We have this glorious thing. We get to be a part, we get to participate. It's why we give money to missionaries working around the world. It's why we give money to help support work going on in our city. Because we genuinely believe that that's the stuff that's gonna matter when it's all said and done. The final thing, and this is gonna be a little bit of a tricky one, the last nine verses of this section, from verse 16 through the end of the chapter, Paul is actually addressing a problem that had arisen. I told you earlier that they stopped giving, they didn't follow through. And probably one of the reasons they didn't follow through is because these swindlers, these crooks had come in and they claimed that they were prophets for God, but they were actually false prophets, and they started saying that Paul was really the crook, that he was really the liar, that he was really the deceiver. And so they started attacking Paul's character, and as a result, the people were like, well, maybe we shouldn't trust Paul with our money. So they got they got mistrusting. And one of the things that happens in our hearts is sometimes because we've seen situations and circumstances where leaders have abused money, we then are afraid to give money. Or let's put this even more practical, when you guys are driving down the road and you see a homeless person on the side of the road, and in your mind you play to yourself, play out to yourself, well, that guy's just gonna go buy drugs and alcohol if I give him money, right? Now, again, that may very well be the case. But I'm saying to us this morning that mistrust can build in our hearts over the homeless guy or the leader in the church, and we can use that as an excuse, we got card to play to say, God, I, you know, I don't want to give my money to something that's just gonna go to something bad. And I just want to caution us this morning about that. We need to be very wise in where we invest our resources. If you don't trust the people that you're giving your money to, you need to go have a conversation with them or you need to stop giving. If you don't trust that point community church, for example, if you give your resources here, if you don't trust that we're using those things for the kingdom, uh come, or if you even have questions about it, come and ask. Like we'd be glad to sit down and show you how it works for us. Uh, in fact, I want to tell you really quickly that at point we have a clear process to guard our hearts, hearts, and our minds and the money and the resources brought in here because uh when we were planting a church in in uh Round Rock, um that was back in 2007. I remember right after we got there, there was a church that was going through a major upheaval because the pastor there had embezzled a million dollars. Yeah, can you imagine? I I could not even believe how that that even happened. And and they'd embezzled this money and had actually been buying horse ranches with it. Because that's what we all need, right? It's a horse ranch. So, if you have one, I'd love to use yours, but I don't need it. Uh, buy my own. Um, so here's the deal. He'd been he'd been he'd been embezzling money and then taking it and buying these horse ranches. And listen, money has a way of messing with us. Money is not evil. The love of money causes problems. But I want you to know that even spiritual leaders can struggle with the love of money. In fact, I've learned to go into the mission field, being in other contexts, that sometimes putting Western dollars into places where it's poor can really jack up their system. Like it can really cause problems for these people to want to take money and have resources that they don't need and it creates a mess. That doesn't mean we stop giving, though. We just have to have good systems and structures and accountability, and we have to find the right people with integrity, right, to give those resources to. And so here at Point, I want you to know that we as elders, the leaders, understand that we don't own anything, that God owns it all. That we don't own this church building, we don't own this land, that we don't own whatever is brought here, that it's God's. So that's the foundation point for us. And that within that, we're stewards of that, and we're gonna give an account before God about what we've done with his stuff. And that goes for you personally, but that's as a church, that's how we feel about it. So our elders and our staff, we we have a prayerful budgeting process where we actually sit down every year and we budget out the year, and we think, God, here's what we see you're leading us to do, here's what it's gonna take to do that. And so our staff and our elders pray through that process, and then we create a budget, and then our elders they pick that budget apart, they look at those different pieces that are there, and we say, okay, here's what we feel like God is leading us to do in terms of money. And what's crazy about that budget is because we don't have those dollars in the bank. We're assuming that God's gonna provide those dollars through you. And what's so amazing is every year we get to watch God do that. It's a miracle. God's people collectively coming together. And I want you to know then after we start that budget, we have careful oversight in spending. I don't have access to the bank accounts. I can't just go spend whatever I want. Okay? Because I need accountability and we want our church to be held accountable and be and we want to have safeguards in place. And so I have to go to the elders. If we're gonna spend money on something, I go to them, we get permission to go spend money on different items, whatever those might be. And another thing I want to just say here is that we don't know what you guys give. We don't know what you what you give, and so I don't dig through the offering plate every week and say, oh, yep, I'm gonna be nice to them this week. Yep, oh man. I don't see them in here. I guess uh guess they're on the naughty list, right? That's not how it works. We don't want our hearts to be attached to that. I have no idea what you give or what you don't give. Because I don't want my heart in that mess. But I do know this, it's between you and God. It's voluntary, and then as you give, God supports his work. So I I didn't really want to land on the practical, pragmatic pieces today. I want to land our time on the person of Jesus because I think he's the only one who can really set us free and help us overcome these barriers. We've already talked about verse 9 in chapter 8, but I just want to kind of close out with this concept and this idea that Jesus really can free us up to be generous. So let me just give you some of the thoughts that I had this week as I wrestled with this text. First, know this in the area of it making um giving into a rule, how does Jesus help set us free from turning giving into a rule? Well, at a simple level, when Jesus came to earth, he didn't come preaching the law. That was the Old Testament. Jesus came preaching the kingdom, and his kingdom is one of love. And the motivator for giving, generous giving, is one of love. You know why? Because we give to what we love. And when we love people, we will give. And when we love God's kingdom, we will give towards it. When we love, I can tell you what you care about, what you love, what you prioritize based on looking at your debit card statement, your credit card statement, your bank account. I'm not gonna do that, just in case you're wondering. So um, but if we looked at that, we would know what was important to us, right? Because it's where we invest our money. As the scripture says, your treasure is where your heart is. And where your treasure is, your heart will be also. So, first just know that Jesus came not to preach rules, but he came to preach a kingdom of love. And his spirit, when he comes inside us, he transforms the way we view money and he helps us overcome this barrier and becomes us become generous and overcome selfishness and pride. Uh, the other thing that Jesus does is that Jesus didn't start the process of redeeming us, but then stop. So, in this area of not following through, Jesus is the ultimate at following through with something hard. He is the ultimate example. Are you with me? In Hebrews it says that for the joy set before him, he endured the cross. He endured the cross. And we know before Jesus went to the cross and died for our sins, that the scripture would tell us that he was praying and it was like he was sweating drops of blood because he was he was agonizing over what he was about to do. But you know what he did? He pressed through and he followed through. He committed and he was all in. So he shows us what it looks like. And you know why he was all in, guys? Because he loved his father and he loved us. He loved his father and he loved us. That's why he was in. The third thing, Jesus didn't cling to his heavenly riches, but he emptied himself to come and to rescue us. Jesus could have just sat up there in heaven and thought, this is beautiful, this is great, this is awesome. I'm just gonna sit up here and enjoy. But what did he do? He stepped out, he sacrificed, he emptied himself, he became poor so that we might become rich. That's the Jesus that we serve, that's the Jesus that we worship. For Jesus is the ultimate leader of integrity. And so when we give to the things of him, we give to his church because it is his church, he owns it, not us. When we give to him, we are giving to the ultimate leader of integrity. And we can know that when we give, it's to help other people come to know him, to have a personal relationship with him. And finally, maybe this one will hit home for you as it did with me. When we're struggling with generosity, when we're struggling and wrestling with being, with wanting to give, what do we do? Well, we know that Jesus came to die to set us free from idolatry, to set us free from clinging on to stuff that won't last, to set us free from greed and hoarding, and grabbing on, trying to hold this stuff on our own. Jesus came to set us free. So maybe you're thinking today, man, I'm really struggling with generosity. Or maybe you're just saying, I'm not real sure, I won't even talk about this. Listen, God's grace is available today for us so that we can actually have this conversation and we can step in and know that our worth and value is not tied to how much we give. It's not. It's not tied to how much you put in the offering plate. You cannot change your God's view of you by what you put in the offering plate. He loves you. And what we do and we give, whether that's here or whether it's giving somewhere else, and and by the way, if you really genuinely don't feel like you are called by God and you don't have any interest in giving here, that that's between you and God. But just be faithful to give. Give and invest. Be generous because you will be blessed. And I can't wait till we get to the week four of this because we get to talk about the some of the blessings that we experience when we are generous people. Let's pray.