Excel in the Grace of Giving (Week 1)
Sunday, November 6, 2011
• Set up half of the pipe, send coins down
• This is God sending down His blessings to us and to others
• Except that’s not quite the whole picture
• Ask for a volunteer
• You be God. (give them the jar of coins)
• Set up top half of the pipe with Y-joint in middle
• Meanwhile, you give me some blessings and encourage me to share those blessings with others (Volunteer pours some coins into a smaller jar)
• So God keeps sharing blessings with people (Volunteer keeps putting coins in the top of the pipe)
• Meanwhile, I as His child am encouraged to share blessings with others also (start putting coins in middle of the pipe through Y-joint)
• The blessings of God come to us by grace, by gift
• We are companions of this grace
• We are coworkers, encouraged by God to join Him in this sharing with others.
• How many of you are thinking putting coins down this pipe looks fun? Oddly relaxing?
• That’s the kid in us.
• And that’s kind of how stewardship can work: God shows us what He’s doing—then invites us to try it out
• (Volunteer sits down)
• Borrowing a phrase from another preacher: “The stewardship invitation is not about moral obligation to pay God back or even to express gratitude, but to engage with God in love in the world” (William Loader).
• I think it still has to do with returning a portion of what God has given us.
• I think our offerings are still a way of expressing thanks to God.
• But the whole idea of being companions of God in the grace of giving—that idea is revolutionary to me.
• It’s amazing to think that God is inviting us to be stewards of our time, talent, and treasure, invites us to be good stewards, because He wants us to be His coworkers in sharing blessings with the world
• So it’s really about our neighbor, about taking part in God blessing our neighbors, blessing them materially, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
• Notice in 2 Corinthians chapter 8, notice how Paul is encouraging the Corinthians to give to the church in Jerusalem. Jerusalem was going through a famine, and so Paul had been raising funds from all of the churches in the region, raising support for the Christians in Jerusalem.
• Notice how Paul spurs on the Corinthians by telling them about the faith and action of another church—the Macedonians. The Macedonians who begged to be a part of the collection for Jerusalem. The Macedonians who saw that they could be a part of something bigger than themselves, they could be part of what God was doing for the Church—big “C,” the Church of all the brothers and sisters in the faith.
• Stewardship was about loving their neighbors.
• Using the example of the Macedonians, Paul is urging the Corinthians to follow through on the commitment they had already made to Jerusalem, encouraging them to finish the collection and send it to Jerusalem.
• He commends them, compliments them, recognizes how the Spirit of God was already working in them through their faith, speech, knowledge, complete earnestness and love. The Corinthians were excelling in all of these ways.
• But now Paul encourages them to also excel in the grace of giving, the gift of giving, to excel in being God’s companions in passing on blessings to others.
• In other words, excel at putting coins in the pipe.
• So according to this pipe image, why do Christians give?
• Do we give because that makes us better Christians?
• No, God’s already delivering the blessing of salvation! That blessing comes from Him.
• It’s the grace of giving. It’s God’s graciousness.
It’s always about the gifts from God.
• So do we give because we need to make up the difference between what God provides and what’s still needed?
• No, because notice that God continues to give blessings whether or not I take part.
• I mean, notice what Paul is saying to the Corinthians. He’s saying that the Macedonians and others are already giving to support Jerusalem. He doesn’t lay it on the Corinthians that they make or break the operation.
• So according to this image of the coins in the pipe, why do Christians give?
• It’s fun.
• We’re being invited to be a part of something fun, beautiful, incredible that God is already doing.
• We’re being invited to be God’s companions.
• We’re being invited to be a part of God’s mission to love all people.
• We’re being transformed into people who are part of God’s mission.
• Now if I keep my jar of coins to myself, if I decide that
I’m not going share, I’m not going to join in the game,
I suppose there’s a sin there.
• I might be selfish, greedy, not trusting God
• There could be a lot of sinful reasons for holding onto the coins in my jar.
• For those sinful reasons, I need God to shower His forgiveness on me.
• And if this talk about stewardship has conjured up guilt for you, if you’re thinking about some sin that stands between you and sharing with others, well, then be assured that there is plenty of forgiveness for you in Jesus Christ.
• Jesus Christ died for all of our sins—even our sin of keeping the coins to ourselves, keeping His blessings to ourselves.
• Jesus Christ conquered death and rose again so that there’s this gift of salvation, there’s a gift of eternal life that we don’t need to earn.
• It’s a free gift.
• And being a good steward doesn’t earn you a bigger piece of eternity. You’ve got eternity through what Jesus did and what Jesus is doing in you.
• But when we think about the Corinthians keeping their coins to themselves, Paul isn’t condemning them. In fact, Paul even says, “I am not commanding you.” This isn’t Paul shaking his finger at those Corinthians.
• No, what we see Paul saying in 2 Corinthians chapter 8 is that the Corinthians are missing out if they keep their coins to themselves, they’re missing out on being a part of what God is doing
• They’re missing out on being a part of that movement in the Church—big “C” church—the movement bringing funds from all over the region to support the Christians in Jerusalem. If they keep their coins to themselves, they won’t be a part of this incredible thing, this thing that God’s invited them to be a part of.
• They won’t get the fun of putting the coins down the pipe.
• That’s the same for us—God doesn’t want us to miss out on the fun of sending coins down the pipe, sending on blessings to our neighbors, doesn’t want us to miss out on being His companions in this grace, His gifts to His people.
• How many of you have heard of Compassion International?
• Support children around the world so that they get food, clothes, and education.
• You sign up to sponsor a child, pledging to sponsor them hopefully until they graduate from the program
• Well, a youth group I worked with heard about Compassion at a Christian concert, they got excited about it, and they asked me, “Pastor, can we sponsor a child? You know, the youth group together sponsor a child.”
• They pleaded with me that evening, and maybe against my better judgment, I said they could sign up. They assured me that they would take offering each week at Bible study and that’s how they’d come up with the money each month—because I explained that the funds couldn’t come from the church budget. It had to be something they did as the youth.
• Well, a couple of months passed, we were paying the pledge each month—out of the youth budget
• The offering plate would get passed, but not much was going in it—a few dollars, a few coins, and a couple of pencils since someone thought it was pencil basket.
• Finally, I had to sit down with a few key youth who had asked to do this, and I said that they’d either have to get the youth to donate more or they were going to have to stop sponsoring a child.
• After a couple more weeks of no one bringing offering, they decided that they’d have to stop.
• I told them that they’d have to write the letter to Compassion and explain that we couldn’t sponsor this child anymore.
• That was a tough lesson for those youth, but it was about following through on their commitment, following through on their pledge.
• That’s kind of what is happening here in 2 Corinthians—Paul is having to tell those Corinthian Christians that they either needed to follow through on their commitment to the Jerusalem church or that they should write a letter saying they couldn’t keep their pledge.
• Except Paul does it all much more graciously than I did with those youth.
• With the youth, I kind of laid out the Law, showed them how they weren’t meeting their commitment, told them to go out and drum up more support.
• Paul, though, paints a picture for the Corinthians. Paints a picture for them to see what it means to be companions of God, what it means to join God in loving others.
• Paul paints a picture like the pipe
• OK, so he doesn’t talk about PVC pipe and coins, but the principle is there—join in what God is already doing, be God’s partner, excel in the grace of giving
• Now I’m probably still stumbling over how best to talk about stewardship.
• I’m still learning when it comes to talking about giving and blessing others and the needs of the congregation and the chance to participate in the mission of the Church through our giving
• I’m still learning
• But I’ll tell you what: the image of getting to put coins down a pipe that God’s already using, the image of getting to join God’s work, that image that arises out of Paul’s words to the Corinthians, that image speaks volumes to me
• It speaks volumes, because it centers it back on God
• It centers it back on what God is already doing in our lives through Christ, already delivering blessings
• (Volunteer comes back up, add second volunteer)
• Remember: God’s sharing blessings with us constantly
• We’ve been invited to be a part of that process
• We can share from our coin jars, we can share with our neighbors
• But if we stop, if we hold onto our blessings—God’s still blessing others
• He doesn’t stop if we stop
• He’ll simply look for other ways to deliver blessings
• He’ll invite others to be His companions
• meanwhile, meanwhile—we’re missing out on the fun
• So excel in the grace of giving
• Join the fun (2nd volunteer starts putting coins down Y-joint)
• Excel in the grace of giving
• Join the fun of sharing your blessings so that others are blessed materially, physically, emotionally, and spiritually
• What Paul said about the Corinthians I would say about you here at Bethel: you excel in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in complete earnestness and in your love for us
• Excel now also in the grace of giving
• Celebrate that you’re God’s partners, companions, coworkers
• See yourselves right here at the Y-joint, right here getting to step and send your blessings onto others