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Guys, welcome to Point Community Church. Um, if you're a visitor here, uh my name is Alex. I'm normally leading worship, so this is uh it's not usual for me to preach. This is my third time uh to get to teach. I'm actually really excited about it. So this is a little bit unusual, but uh I'm so grateful that we have a team like Landon and Brenna and Adam and Todd and Jesse that just led us so so well. I'm super grateful for them. Uh thank you, Landon. Thank you, Brennan. You guys did an awesome job. Um yes. Please. Yes. Well, it's always uh, you know, this is the third time for me um to teach you guys, and it's always such a privilege, especially because um at this church, there's like I'm looking around at this room and like I'm seeing my elders, and I'm seeing people that like teach me on a week-to-week basis. And if you're Aaron Negron, you're actually both of those things, okay? He uh so you know it's a little humbling. There's people in here that have been walking with Jesus longer than I've been alive, and so uh, you know, I come to this role as teacher with a lot of uh a lot of humility and say thank you guys for letting me um thank you for letting me do this and entrust me with it because I know that any any number of you guys come up here and teach um this this body. So thank you for letting me do this. Um this week is the final week of our Managers of Grace series. If you haven't been here for the last two weeks, Nick has done a really, really awesome job uh of teaching us on what it means to give God our time and our talents and our treasure. And and in fact, last week I thought was particularly good. So if you weren't here last week, you need to go to our website at pointausin.org and listen to Nick's lesson that he gave last week because it gives a whole lot of context to what we're doing today. And also, he did such a great job explaining the text where Jesus says, Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Um In fact, Nick did such a good job that I really didn't want uh to preach on this topic this morning because I was like, dang it, Nick taught everything that there is to teach about money. What am I gonna add to it? And so I called him after uh student ministry on Sunday night, and I was like, Nick, I want to bail. I don't have anything else to say, you did such a good job. So kudos. But Nick definitely talked me down off the ledge, which I'm glad because he kind of talked me through, okay, no, listen, there's more to say. It's still gonna be good, and I'm glad he did because from what I've learned and from preparing uh this lesson this week, I'm actually really, really excited about what God has taught me and what I get to teach you guys this morning. Um, we're gonna be talking about radical generosity, okay? Radical generosity, stuff that goes beyond the norm or beyond the expected, stuff that's uh not extreme, but just like past what you would think of that would be normative. Radical generosity. Now I first began uh to formulate the talk, I first began to study and prepare. I was originally given this task of giving us as a church community practical ways, like practical examples of what it looks like to give for us, okay? And so the more I thought and I prayed and I was like, okay, Lord, how am I gonna how am I gonna teach us what this looks like? Uh, God struck me with this thought. And the thought is that um kingdom giving, giving in God's kingdom isn't practical, okay? Kingdom giving isn't practical. Kingdom giving is radical. Okay, so what do I mean by that? We learned earlier this year, actually like a month or two ago, in our series on 1 Corinthians, which we're gonna be continuing next week, that to be a follower of Jesus means to look foolish to the world around us, okay? It means that people are gonna think we're stupid, essentially. And the Lord clearly says this in chapter 1, right at the beginning of the book of 1 Corinthians. And this is what uh God says to us through the Apostle Paul in verse 18 and 19. He says, The message of the cross is foolishness, it's foolishness to those who are perishing, but it is God's power to us who are being saved. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and I will set aside the understanding of the experts. So, if we believe, um, as followers of Jesus, just like Nick said the last two weeks, that our time and our talents and our treasure, three T's, if you notice, we're really good at alliteration here, time, talents, and treasure, if they're gifts from God, if they're actually belong to Him and not us, then we believe something that's directly against the values of the world around us. It goes in direct contradiction to the people that we live around. Um it's like a different operating system, if you will, okay? Our lives should be lived in such a way that it doesn't compute with the world around us. So the world we live in says mine, right? Does anybody in here have a toddler or ever had a toddler? Or if you're going to have a toddler, you're going to hear the word mine a lot more than uh you ever thought possible. Okay, you're gonna get used to the word mine, okay? Because it's part of the human heart, okay? We get something, we have to grab onto it and seize it. This is mine, I deserve it, I want to keep it, I want to hoard it and protect it, okay? The world says this is mine, and Christians, we know, we can say, because we know the truth, this is God's, okay? These two worldviews should produce two very different looking lives, right? Now, to be sure, I just want to say this on the outset: the world we live in, okay, um, there are a ton of people who are very charitable and generous, okay? Christians are not the only people that give of their money, like for charitable reasons. Um, there's folks who genuinely feel passionate about a cause and will give time and money to support it. Um there are people that just have money and time to spare, and so it doesn't really cost them much to give. They'll give. Um, there are people that make charity makes them feel good, or volunteering makes them feel good. Um people maybe it's motivated by a sense of guilt, whether within themselves, or maybe somebody outside of them is making them feel guilty for not giving, or making them feel guilty for not volunteering their time. But one thing that I think is really rare, okay, all of that is true, but what it's really rare for us to see is giving that is to a point where someone's personal life is hampered, where their personal life is made more difficult, or giving to a point where their personal sense of security, their security is threatened. Because if this life is all there is, right, if people believe this life is all that we're ever gonna have, it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense to give past what is gonna hamper your needs, or to give to a place that makes you uncomfortable. Because if all we are gonna have is this moment and we can't take it with us, then why wouldn't we want to spend as much as possible on ourselves? Does that make sense? That's actually a consistent worldview, okay? So if someone doesn't believe that there's a world to come and they live selfishly, they're behaving consistently with their worldview. But we as Christians know the truth, okay? We have a completely different worldview. We know that this life is not all there is, okay? This foolish belief that this life is only a very small moment before eternity, okay? We know this truth. And we know that our money, our possessions, and our time that we hoard, okay? If we hoard onto these things in this life and we keep them for ourselves, ultimately we know they're lost. Okay? We don't get to keep that. Things that we that we hoard for ourselves and and you know, selfishly keep are stuff that we leave behind when we move on. But we also know that the possessions and the time and the and the gifts and talents that we generously give away in this life are actually the only things that we'll really be keeping. We're sending that stuff ahead of us to the life to come. It's an investment in God's kingdom, okay? The time we spend serving, living, and giving for Jesus is time lived with the knowledge that we're going to live forever. Radical generosity means giving in a way that only makes sense if we believe that there's a world to come. Does that make sense? Radical generosity, the generosity of the kingdom should be that it does not make any sense unless we believe that there is a world to come. And Jesus says it this way, and I think Nick actually shared this as well. This is from Matthew 6. Don't collect for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But collect for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves don't break in and steal, for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Okay, so what we give as followers of Jesus to the kingdom is not lost, okay? The wealth we lose, the temporary time, the wealth we lose, is not gone forever. The time we spend faithfully serving in secret, away from where people can see, is not time that's lost to us. And the reason is who is it that we're really serving, okay? Who is it that we're really giving to ultimately when we give? When we serve? Yeah, we're ultimately doing it for Jesus, right? That's exactly right. Jesus says in Matthew 25, I assure you, whatever you did for the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me, okay? Jesus is actually the ultimate recipient of our generosity. And we actually uh we actually have an awesome example of people living in this way right here in the Bible. This comes from the book of 2 Corinthians, okay? 2 Corinthians chapter 8. We're introduced to the church in Macedonia. Okay, so that might sound a little unfamiliar. We're like, I know nothing about the church in Macedonia. Apparently it existed. Okay, you actually know a lot more than you think, because when Paul says the church in Macedonia, what he's talking about is this region that actually contained the churches of Philippi, which is where we get the book of Philippians, the church at Thessalonica, which is where we get 1 and 2 Thessalonians, and the church in Berea, which is a small part of the book of Acts. So actually, we're pretty well acquainted with the churches in Macedonia. In fact, we just did a whole series on the book of Philippians, which is about one of these churches. We know these churches really well, and we also know that Paul really, really loves them a lot. If you ever read Philippians or the books of Thessalonians, it's really clear to see these particular churches had a really special place in Paul's heart. And so, this is what Paul's writing about these churches in Macedonia here in 2 Corinthians chapter 8. This is what he says. Oh, by the way, he's writing to the church in Corinth. He's writing to the Corinthian church about the church of Macedonia. All right, cool. We got it. We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God granted to the churches of Macedonia. During a severe testing by affliction, their abundance of joy and their deep poverty overflowed into the wealth of their generosity. I testify that on their own, according to their ability and beyond their ability, they begged us insistently for the privilege of sharing in the ministry to the saints. And not just as we had hoped. Instead, they gave themselves especially to the Lord and then to us by God's will. Okay, so the background of this passage. Essentially, uh, Paul had been with these churches in Macedonia, and he had taken up a collection. There's three churches in this story, it's a little complicated. I'm going to explain it. The churches in Macedonia took up a collection for the church in Jerusalem, which was going through really severe persecution and trial. Okay? So Paul takes this money from the church in Macedonia that they had given for the church in Jerusalem, and now he's telling the church in Corinth about it. Make sense? Yes. Okay. Totally a little complicated. So there's a few words in this passage that actually I didn't know the real meaning behind them until I dug in. Uh I know I'm not a Greek master, but I've got this awesome software that Nick gave me called Lagos, and it tells me, it just tells me what the words mean. It's awesome. You know, I don't even have to go to college for it. Uh so there's a couple of words in the original Greek that are actually really, really, they really, really help us understand what this passage is actually saying. So the the word that Paul uses for affliction, okay, when Paul says during a severe testing by affliction, the word is flipsios. It's got a T H L in there. Philipsios, cannot say it three times fast. I tried last night. It means an oppressive state, an oppressive state of physical, mental, social, or economic adversity. And the word for deep poverty is ptokea, that's a P and a T together. Ptokeia means essentially that you're at a level where you have to beg to survive. Okay? It means like the absolute most destitute you can possibly be. You're begging for food. Um, so the church in Macedonia was in deep, deep poverty and adversity, okay? They were begging for their food and they were in oppressive adversity, is what the word of God says. That's what these words mean. So the churches and the people in Macedonia were suffering really, really terribly. So the question is, what's their motivation to give so extravagantly? What's their motivation? Now, one thing we know is that they probably weren't giving a lot of actual money in the eyes of the world. And the reason we know that is because they didn't have any, right? They didn't have any money. So they weren't, their motivation was not uh, we can actually tangibly meet all the needs of this church in Jerusalem, okay? They were not writing million denarius checks to the church in Jerusalem. They didn't, they didn't have it, okay? So the motivation was clearly not to meet all the substantial needs of the church in Jerusalem. They probably couldn't even really make a dent in it, okay? And we also know that they weren't giving out of guilt because this isn't an offering or uh a love offering that Paul forced or manipulated them into making. It says they begged insistently, okay? If they're having to beg insistently, it means Paul was pushing back against them and saying, uh, it's okay, you're good, you really don't have to do this. And they wouldn't let him take no for an answer. They begged insistently that Paul would give them the privilege, the privilege of giving the little money that they had away. So this church was not motivated by guilt. The church in Macedonia was motivated by joy. They're an example, not because of the actual amount they gave, okay? The example isn't check out how much bling the church in Macedonia gave to the church in Jerusalem. Because that's not what God is pleased with. What God is pleased with is the heart and the sacrificial spirit behind their giving. That's what Paul was so impressed by. They gave to the point where it was painful for them. It cost them something. And they did it for the sole purpose that there was joy in their giving and there was joy on the receiving end of their giving. They begged for the privilege of giving. I mean, I don't I don't know how often we actually think about it like that. Do we think like, don't rob me of the joy that I get to give? Like, don't tell me not to, because I'm going to. I'm gonna chase out opportunities to be generous, okay? That was convicting for me. I mean, how how countercultural is that sort of attitude to seek out opportunities to give? Because the truth is when we're motivated by guilt, we're motivated by pressure that we feel, we're gonna give the absolute minimum that we feel is required to either make us feel not guilty or to satisfy some obligations that we feel are put on us, the expectations that people have. Okay, this is not the picture of generosity that exists in the New Covenant. This is not the New Testament type of generosity that we're being called to. It's to assuage guilt or to ease our conscience. Okay, it's not what we see from the church in Macedonia, and it's absolutely not what we want from you guys here at point either. Um let's read on. This is actually what Paul says in the next chapter in the book of 2 Corinthians. This is in chapter 9, verse 6 through 9. Paul says this. Remember this the person who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly. The person who sows generously will also reap generously. Each person should do as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or out of necessity. For God loves a cheerful giver, and God is able to make every grace overflow to you, so that in every way, always having everything you need, you may excel in every good work. Not reluctantly, not out of necessity, what he has decided in his heart. It's not a guilt offering or a tax, but it's a joyful sacrifice made freely, okay? So he says, not out of necessity. It's like if I stood up here and I was like, point can't afford our energy bills, you have to give this week, or we're never meeting again, okay? That's not what we're doing. We're not gonna ever do that. That's called compelling you to give out of necessity. And if we're trying to ring it out, if people try to ring out of you to give, to make you reluctant, but you do it to get them off your back, okay, that is never, ever, ever God's heart, okay? God's not interested in our cranky tithe. He's not interested in our bitter 10%, okay? The reason is we're invited to live a life free from love of money, from being its slave, you know, a life spent just thinking and living only for ourselves, which is a life that, let's be real, everyone in here knows. When you're focused on yourself and you're focused on accruing money and you're putting your security in it, so anxious, okay? It's so riddled with fear and anxiety, okay? God is wanting to free us from that. We're invited to give and serve radically because God is actually after our souls. And the way to our souls to be free from the chains of essentially financial obsession is actually generosity. Ben Elvira shared this uh scripture with me on Monday night, and I think it so, so well sums up uh God's heart. This is from Psalm 51, and this is uh the Lord speaking through David, King David, verse 16, it says, You do not want a sacrifice, or I would give it. You're not pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifice pleasing to God is a broken spirit. God, you will not despise a broken and humbled heart. So God was never and has never and will never be really interested in actually like, he's not primarily interested in the thing that we're giving. Okay, does that make sense? He does not, and he never did, and he never will, need our money. Okay, God has no need of anything, he's not served by human hands. He created every atom in the universe, and it's all under his control, and he holds it together by the word of his power, okay? God doesn't actually have a need for our money, but God is very, very much interested in us, in our heart and our soul, and our affections. And because he's a loving father, he wants to break the chains. He wants to break our chains. So when God calls us to give and to live generously, what's he really looking for? What's God really looking for? Generosity is about more than the amount. Generosity is about the heart, okay? God's not about the amount, God's about your heart. So generosity is. And I think we need stories of what this looks like, okay? It's really easy to give to give a theoretical uh explanation or a talk that's like, you know, this is the high level of what you're supposed to do, but when we never see it applied, I think sometimes it feels a little overwhelming. We're like, okay, great. I'm supposed to give generously. What does that mean? Okay, so I think we need stories and examples to inspire us. And, you know, the first one I think of is uh in Scripture. It's Mark 12, when Jesus and his disciples, they're they're all at the temple, they're at the temple in Jerusalem, and they're standing next to the part of the temple where it's like the offering boxes. Okay, they're all sitting, they're watching the people come, give their offerings, and you know, the Pharisees are of course there, and they're dropping in gigantic checks. You know, they've probably got bags of money with the little S symbol on them, and they're just like, hey, everybody, check this out. Drop it in, funk, you know, they're getting lots of recognition, and uh Jesus is probably just watching them, thinking his thoughts. But then they see, thinking his godly thoughts, they see this little old widow woman walking up, okay, in the middle of this whole scene, she's walking up and she puts in these two really tiny coins, okay? The coins that she puts in are called a lepton. Lepton, another Greek word that I don't know how to say right. But she puts two of these in, and how much they were worth, each one of them was the equivalent of six minutes of a daily wage. Okay, so 12 minutes of work is what she was able to put in the offering box. And m a lot of us here either work uh an hourly wage or have worked an hourly wage, so you know about what that is. Um minimum wage, 12 minutes is, you know, buck fifty, you know, and maybe if you're really lucky and you work at like mighty fine or something and you have a way higher hourly wage, it's 15. Okay, max, okay, the maximum amount is like the equivalent of three bucks, okay? That's what this uh that's what this lady's putting in the offering box. Basically three bucks or less. And Jesus says that this is essentially everything this woman has, okay? This is he said all she had to live on, okay. Jesus said this sacrifice, this woman's sacrifice, was worth far more than any of the big, flashy, showy, impressive offerings that all these other guys and and and women were loudly giving. Pharisees were getting all the credit and all the acclaim. They were getting libraries named after them and stuff. But Jesus said that this sacrifice was far more valuable to the heart of his father. Why? Because of its incredible sacrificial value to this woman. It cost her something to give this money, okay? It cost her a lot. And God said, her three dollars is worth more than his three thousand because of what it cost her and what it meant to her to give it to me. You know, I think uh the guy named John Wesley, he was a preacher uh a couple hundred years ago. He was actually an English guy, but he's really well known in America because he traveled around our country preaching the gospel. This guy was amazing. He was such an awesome man of God. It's said that he preached 40,000 sermons in his life. So I calculated that. For every sermon I've preached, he's preached 13,000. So he's a little he was a little bit more accurate or uh active than I was. Um this guy's brought a lot of people to knowledge of Jesus. He brought a lot of people to the kingdom of God. I mean, he rode around America basically on a horse, like preaching the gospel in all these different towns. I mean, he was a hard, hard worker for the Lord. And uh he actually was incredibly well known, and because of that, he had the capacity to make a ton of money, okay? So back in the day it was pretty common for uh like sermons to be reprinted, preacher sermons to be reprinted and sold. And so for that, he was uh he had a ton of royalties coming in every year, John Wesley did. Basically the equivalent of about $200,000 in today's money, okay? It's it's that's a lot. I think anybody in this room would agree $200,000 is a lot. And I was reading that and I'm like, I mean, this guy works so hard, he probably deserves to at least buy himself like a nice certa or something. It's like, I get it, okay? But I know he's generous, I was thinking, okay, it would be pretty generous. So this guy gave away half his money, right? $100,000. You know, that's so generous. The question is, like, what do you what do you think that John Wesley lived on? $20,000, the equivalent of $20,000, okay? Like, he gave away 90% of his money every year. Like, um, when he first started uh making his money, when he wasn't making a lot, he set what he needed to live on, and then for the rest of his life he gave away everything that he made over that. Everything, even as it continued to climb. His standard of living never went up. John Wesley said this. He said, Money never stays with me. It would burn me if it did. I throw it out of my hands as soon as possible, lest it should find its way into my heart. So this is a man who know he knows the power that stuff has over us, right? And he and he knew that the the inner workings of his heart, if he held on to that money, it would start to love it. It would start to want more of it, it would start to worship it. And he knew that, and so he decided to make war against that sin. He decided to war against that compulsion of his heart by giving radically, being radically generous. But the thing is, like, radical giving isn't just about money, okay? I'm not standing up here. This is not just a talk on giving money. Like, we also have other things to offer the Lord radically. And I think about a man named Jim Elliott, who's a personal hero of mine. If you know who he is, it's probably because you've either uh seen the movie End of the Spear or read the book by his wife, Through the Gates of Splendor, Shadow the Almighty. Jim Elliott, um, he died at the age of 28, okay? That's a year younger than me. He died at the age of 28. He was killed along with four other uh men. They were missionaries in Ecuador to the Huarani tribe. They were also called the Aukas, which means savage, okay? This is a very uh very uh remote tribe in Ecuador. And one of the days they were they were making contact with this tribe and they were standing in a river, and some of the guys came out and basically killed them. They they stabbed them to death with spears. That's why it's called end of the spear. Um and immediately after these men were killed, almost immediately their wives went right back to where they were, and they started to continue the mission work that these men had started. And because of that work, lots and lots of these men and women in Ecuador actually came to faith in Jesus. Like the Christian faith is is one of the religions in this era, uh, this area, because of the work that Jim Elliott and his friends and their families did. And I'm like 28, 28 years old, okay? Those years he sacrificed, the years he didn't get with his wife and child. I think they had a daughter at the time, a newborn daughter. He gave up those years, but the years that he gave up were not wasted. He was radically generous, not only with like his money, but with the most valuable thing that he possibly had to offer, which was his life, his years, his time. He counted his own life as nothing compared to the joy of serving Jesus. He did not travel to the remote jungle of Ecuador because he felt guilty. He didn't do it to make God like him more. He didn't do it out of a sense of obligation. The reason he went was because he'd seen a glimpse of how amazing and worthy and loving Jesus Christ is. Jesus, who made himself nothing, Philippians 2 says, found in human likeness, taking the form of a servant, in humility subjecting himself to a shameful and painful death on a cross, and not only that, but who suffered and bore and carried the wrath of God against us for our sin, of all humanity's sin, for our rebellion and to heal our brokenness. Like radical giving is in response to that, okay? Radical service is a response to that. John Wesley did not give away 90% of his money as a seed of faith so he would get some more back, okay? He did not name it and claim it. He was not buying $5,000 suits riding around rural America, okay? He had seen a glimpse of Jesus. He'd seen a glimpse of Jesus and how much more valuable he is. Jesus who made himself nothing, being found in human likeness, taking the form of a servant, humbly subjecting himself to death. Okay, this is our Savior. This is our God, and this is our example. Ask yourself the question, what is what is it, okay, what does this mean for me? What is God calling me to? What would radical generosity mean for my life? And the truth is, I can't I can't tell you because it's different for everybody. I don't know what the Lord has put on your heart to do. I know that there are families in this church that have felt and have answered the call to adopt, to take uh children that don't have a home, and to invite them into our and into their family just like God has done to us. That's pretty radical. That's a lifetime commitment to care for another human being or multiple human beings. Maybe God's calling you to uh join our team that's going to plan a church soon, okay? Because we believe our mission is not to grow the kingdom of point, it's to see the kingdom of God grow. Maybe God's calling you to leave the comfort of this and to go take a risk and try to plan a church somewhere else in the greater Austin area. That's awesome. That's risky, that's radical. Maybe God's calling you to go on a one-week short-term mission trip. That's really scary. Like, just to be frank, it's scary to go to Indonesia and to preach the gospel to Muslims and Hindus. Okay? That's risky. And if you're not serving, if you're not giving anything to anyone, that might be radical to start doing. Okay? Because remember, look, look at this lady at the temple. Three dollars. Okay? She gave three dollars, and God said that is worth far more to me because of what it cost her, because of what she risked to do it. Okay? We can look at John Wesley and Jim Elliott and be like, I can never be like that. First of all, it's not true. But second of all, God's asking you, like, take a step, man. Like, what is radical for us? This is so hard for me. I remember the first time I started giving financially, I was terrified. Okay? I understand. Um, but God is calling us to walk out in faith and trust him. Maybe it's like serving on a service team at point. Like, come on, man. We want you. We want you to experience the joy and the freedom of what it means to radically serve and to radically give. Remember, it's about it's about your heart, it's not about the amount, right?

unknown 31:09

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SPEAKER_00 31:09

S. Lewis said this in Mere Christianity, which I have quoted in every sermon I've ever given. Uh he says this, I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I'm afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our spending on comforts, luxuries, amusements is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we're probably giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they being our expenditures are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do, because our charitable expenditure excludes them. It's the gospel of Jesus that motivates us to live these lives of radical generosity. It's not, you know, me being up here and being like, you know, America, you know, we're a lot richer than these other people, so you should be giving, okay? It's, you know, compared to these people, you have a lot more capacity. So really, um, you know, you should give. Okay, that's called guilt. And our benchmark is not other human beings, okay? Our benchmark is not to compare our service, our sacrifice to other people. Our benchmark and our example is Jesus Christ. Okay? Jesus was the most sacrificially generous and loving person who has ever been or ever will be. Laid down the riches of heaven. He came to the earth, which he sustains by the power of his word. Hebrews, it's awesome. Jesus sustains creation. Okay, he came to it, and he died. He allowed himself to be killed and experienced the pain of separation from his father as he bore our sin so that you and I would not have to. He paid the penalty for it. And this is what's crazy. It would have been awesome if Jesus was like, I have paid your penalty, and now you can come to heaven and be my servants forever. It'll be awesome. I'll have a lot of stuff for you to do. There'll be great snacks. Don't worry. Come serve me. I'll be a really good boss, okay? That is not, that is not what Jesus did. Okay? He invites us into his family, okay? They invite us to be adopted brothers and sisters of Jesus to inherit the kingdom of God, to receive riches, and to be co-heirs with Jesus Christ. And I can't even tell you all of that means. Oh no, is it beyond my understanding? That is radical generosity that God would give those who are responsible for the death of his son an invitation to sit at the table and be served by him. Okay? The word says that Jesus is going to serve us at the table. Like, that's insane. So if Jesus Christ, if he's our benchmark, it's pretty silly for me to stand up and say, 10%? Yeah, that's what God's calling you to. 10%, you're good. Because I don't think that's what Jesus meant when he said, pick up your cross and follow me. I don't think that's what he meant. You know, Jesus, he did become poor for us, but it's not the end of the narrative. Okay? Revelations chapter 5, Revelation 5. That's what it says in verse 11. Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne, and also of the living creatures and of the elders. Their number was countless thousands, plus thousands of thousands. They said with a loud voice, The Lamb who was slaughtered is worthy to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing. I heard every creature in heaven, on earth, under the earth, on the sea, and everything in them say, Blessing and honor and glory and dominion to the one seated on the throne, to the Lamb forever and ever. Four living creatures said, Amen, and the elders fell down and worshipped. We who have been purchased by Jesus, followers of Jesus, Christians, one day in the flesh, with our two eyes, we will stand around the throne of God, literally, and we will gaze and see the face of God. That is our future. So I have, you know, we at point, we have far more important things to be talking about and doing than telling you guys what percentage of your pre-tax payroll check is morally acceptable to give to the church. Okay? We have way more important stuff to be worried about than that. And all of us here have far more to give than most of us dare to do. I'm including myself in that. I think we're missing out because of it. Just look at the holes in the hands and feet of Jesus, and the wound in his side, and the body that was broken for us, okay? That is the radical generosity of God. And that's what we look to. Alright, let's pray. Father, we love you, and we can do nothing apart from you. That anything that we that we do is um that is fruit, that will bear fruit is a gift from your Spirit, God, that you've enabled us to do, God. So we we ask you, Lord, not we're not asking um for anything other than you to teach us to be faithful. Teach us what it means to be generous, teach us what it means to follow the example of our Lord Jesus, and to give of ourselves, knowing with confidence that this life is not all there is, and because of that we can give without fear, knowing that you will care for us, God, and knowing that you will use what we give to glorify your name and build a kingdom and God, that it will not be lost to us. Lord, I pray that you'd give us wisdom and insight in how you're calling us to serve you as individuals, how you're calling us to sacrifice for the kingdom of God. We love you, Lord. We pray this in Jesus' name.