Quiet Generosity
Notes
Transcript
Handout
Big Idea: Jesus addresses our motivation behind our generosity. We have to recognize the immediate daily tension of the underlying reasons of why we seek Jesus and why we choose to follow Him. Our hope is to move from the perspective of Christianity that begins with the idea of “what about me,” then settles for “what’s in it for me” to know the reward of following Jesus “is not about me.”
Me:
I love the act of going to a dealership to buy a new car…said no one ever...
We:
Talk about how wrong motives always come out at some point and it always makes us feel slimy if we are the target of someone else’s agenda or hidden motives.
Straight talk for just a second...Pastors, churches and individual believers have been caught so many times in their wrong motives and this has done a ton of damage.
While those wrong motives are seen in a thousand different ways (abusive pastors, sex scandals, hypocritical Christians…etc.), there has perhaps been no more visible representation of those wrong motives on display than in the area of Christian generosity.
How many have heard stories or been at churches where people are manipulated to giving or where the tithing has been used as some form of weapon pursuing the agenda or wrong motives of the church? Maybe that is a personal story or maybe its just one of the many instances that were serious enough to garner national attention.
How many of you know someone that won’t step foot in a church today because they think that all churches want is your money? Yeah I actually know quite a few people who that is their story.
The good news is that this was a major issue in Jesus’ day and He didn’t shy away from the topic. So…welcome to the Sermon on the Mount.
Up to this point...
Explain Jesus addressing our attitudes
Explain Jesus addressing our relationships
Jesus is now moving on to a new block of teaching as He addresses our motivations.
Talk about the fact that we don’t talk about giving often…
At a lot of churches, the surgeon generals warning that goes before most sermons about giving is that you would simply sit back and be ready to pay attention next week. I actually want to invite you to do the opposite of that today if you are a visitor. I see this as an opportunity to hopefully correct some negative thoughts and ideas that have been perpetuated by the Church at large around this issue. What you will see at the end of this is that this isn’t actually about needing your money at all…We believe that Jesus’ words about money and generosity are actually really good news for all of our life…not just our pocketbooks.
God:
“Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven.
“So when you give to the poor, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be honored by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full.
“But when you give to the poor, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing,
so that your giving will be in secret; and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.
Now, If you’ve been here throughout this whole Waypoints sermon series, or…if you just know the Sermon on The Mount pretty well then you may be thinking what the heck right now. Because just 33 verses prior to this one (or about five weeks ago) we read and explored this statement at the end of the section of the beatitudes.
“Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.
Is Jesus contradicting Himself?
Jesus is pointing out something about our motives.
Everything in our life is transactional. Explain…goods and services, favor for favor, etc.
We wouldn’t probably put it quite as philosophical as that though. Instead we say: Nothing in life is free.
And honestly that is sort of true in a lot of areas. Jesus is telling us, however, that if we approach our generosity with the same mindset that our motivations will always be wrong.
Jesus has already talked to us about our motives though. Do you remember:
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Explain this briefly.
And Jesus had some Pharisees in the crowd who definitely had wrong motives. And so, Jesus uses their actions as a sort of template to show us what these wrong motives look like when we live them out. You can’t really measure motives in peoples hearts but Jesus is telling us that if these motives exist in our heart that they won’t stay there. They will make themselves known as we practice generosity.
“So when you give to the poor, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be honored by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full.
That may sound like a single action but there are actually three actions and each of these build on one another revealing wrong motives.
trumpet - do temple offering plate thing =
This is about forcibly drawing attention to our good deeds.
The instagram picture...
The humble brag...
Do the bricks of donors at the church in Colorado thing I saw...
Only are involved in projects where you can be the hero.
We do this as we fail to reproduce ourselves through our leadership and so we solidify our spot as being the sole expert on things so that you have to be needed.
hypocrites - play actor
This is about taking on a role that is not true to our character.
Do the ‘assault on food service worker after church’ meme
That is sort of funny but the sad reality is that we actually do this in a lot of ways.
We will make scathing and often broad stroke comments about issues of homelessness, extreme poverty, struggling single parent homes, or mental issues that we have not spent any amount of time studying instead of getting our hands dirty as we dive into issues that actually involve real people. Because of these broad generalizations and buying someone else’s narrative, we can justify our inactivity and lack of generosity in these areas.
I think about the issue of the foreigner and the immigrant which…FYI…God has a lot to say about in His word and rarely does what He has commanded of His people fall in line with the immigration policies of any country.
I’ll tell you what made me stop and reconsider a lot of my own thinking on this issue. It was a youth pastor at our previous church who adopted a little girl from Haiti. As we were talking about their adoption, the topic of immigration came up and I was honestly taken aback by a very simple question that I was sort of shocked that I had never considered before. He asked me:
What are the lengths you would go to provide a good life, safety, an education, or just the certainty of food on the table if it were your children at risk?
All of a sudden the issue of immigration that I had painted as so black and white had several shades of gray introduced into it. Questions of legality and doing it the right way took a back seat to the consideration of the lengths I would go to in order to provide safety, food, and the chance at flourishing for my own children. I’m not saying I know what the right answer is to this question. I’m just saying that if we’ve bought the party narrative of the conservative or the progressive or if we’ve reduced this down to what our government has defined as legal or illegal when it comes to the issue of the foreigner or the immigrant than we have probably justified inaction and a lack of generosity when God has actually called His people to great generosity in this area.
These are just a couple of examples but the point is this: If we have justified a lack of generosity in an area that God shows great concern for in His word and yet we claim to be His followers…we have in fact become hypocrites.
Synagogues & Streets - A projection of our deeds into the world.
This is about perpetuating a false image of ourselves to the world.
I thought about including a picture from the internet of a men’s or women’s Bible study. What you will see is a group of smiling beautiful people dressed in expensive clothing sitting around a trendy cafe with Bibles open and apparently laughing about something. Do you know the pictures I am talking about.
We are smack dab in the middle of what is being called the age of sexy Christianity. And it is KILLING kingdom progress wherever it goes. There isn’t anything wrong with that picture…don’t get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with beautiful people following God, hot coffee, or a neat and tidy life. The problem is that we have equated following God to those things. Its the unstated feeling that the people in those images don’t have marriage problems or fight about sex or money with their spouse. That they don’t have crappy bosses or children that are wiling out and doing crazy things. Its that the people in those photos always have a clean house with well behaved kids and never have health problems or financial issues.
The real problem is when buy the lie that if our lives don’t look like the ones in those pictures that we aren’t genuine followers of Jesus. The sinister lie of so-called ‘sexy christianity’ is in the prosperity Gospel. The reality is that the propensity for the prosperity Gospel exists in all of us. It causes us to take any good thing that God has given us, equate it with our faithfulness as some sort of reward that is meant to terminate in merely our enjoyment. This is a false image of our lives and a hurtful image for us to portray Christianity as.
And so just as He has done every week, Jesus begins to call his followers to a higher kingdom ethic. Here is what Jesus says:
“But when you give to the poor, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing,
In the context of everything that we have seen so far in Jesus’ teaching, we see that:
This isn’t about not being seen as much as it is about not being see with the wrong motives.
Yes God wants to bless you and the world through your generosity and we will talk about that in a moment but more than that, God is inviting you to trust him in.
Jesus is reminding us about a critical truth at the core of our generosity. It is that our generosity is directly tied to our identity and our relationship to stuff.
First Identity:
Do you see yourself as a beloved child of the Father?
If so, then rest easy. Your father knows your needs Jesus would say. Jesus would tell us to consider the birds…they don’t sow or harvest and they don’t store up food in storehouses and yet your father cares for them and ensures they have food to eat. Aren’t you much more valuable to your Father than birds? He also reminds us of how beautifully clothed the lillies of the field are and yet they are only here for a short time and then they die…aren’t you more valuable then them.
Instead…your father knows what you need and will care for you…Do you trust him.
Secondly, its about our relationship to stuff.
It is not about what you own, its about what owns you.
Jesus gives this amazing object lessons to His disciples one day:
And He sat down opposite the treasury, and began observing how the people were putting money into the treasury; and many rich people were putting in large sums.
A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which amount to a cent.
Calling His disciples to Him, He said to them, “Truly I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the contributors to the treasury;
for they all put in out of their surplus, but she, out of her poverty, put in all she owned, all she had to live on.”
Your stuff, your house, your job, your title, your friendships do not give you significance. If we live with that mentality…that relationship to our stuff...Jesus is telling us that we are incapable of having pure motives in our generosity because we will always be seeking recompense for our generous actions…most often in the form of recognition for our seeming altruism.
Instead:
The generous life that God is after is in the person who realizes that they don’t own anything but instead are stewards of everything.
Here is how the Psalmist would say it in Psalm 50:7-15
“Hear, O my people, and I will speak; O Israel, I will testify against you. I am God, your God.
Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you; your burnt offerings are continually before me.
I will not accept a bull from your house or goats from your folds.
For every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills.
I know all the birds of the hills, and all that moves in the field is mine.
“If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine.
Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats?
Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and perform your vows to the Most High,
and call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.”
Explain as you go through…it had become about how elaborate their gifts and sacrifices were and yet their hearts were far from God…they did not have the heart of the widows mite.
God owns the flocks on a thousand hills. God is still paving streets with gold. Have you ever though about that. The foundations…the unseen common building blocks of God’s kingdom are made of the things that some people toil their whole lives away to get. This isn’t to make us marvel at this kingdoms beauty. I think it is meant to make a statement. It is that God has taken this thing that, if we are not careful, we can value more than anything else and he has made it commonplace and put it under our feet in His kingdom.
More than anything, God values the heart of a faithful steward.
It is not money that God needs to change the world. He has plenty of that. No. God needs people with a heart transformed by the Gospel.
Heart transformation can’t be bought nor can it be faked…it must be cultivated over a lifetime of faith as we trust in God as the good Father who provides for His children.
So again...
The generous life that God is after is in the person who realizes that they don’t own anything but instead are stewards of everything.
This allows us to live radically generous lives where we are open handed with everything…Yes that means our money and how we give here at the church...but it means so much more. It means our time, it means our talents, it means our homes, it means our kind words of encouragement, it means our skills, our trades, our jobs, it means our families. It looks like people who sacrificially open their homes to the widows and orphans and those overlooked by society. It looks like your voices as you engage in civil discourse to leverage the resources of our cities and governments for the greatest good. It looks like your influence and leadership to disciple the second, third, and fourth generation to live radically generous and open-handed lives. It looks like a church where needs are met without question because that’s how Jesus operated. This looks like Jesus’ kingdom people living radically generous lives outside of the church in the mundane places and tasks where you will likely never even see a thank you for your generosity.
This type of life is only possible if we don’t see ourselves of owners of stuff. This only happens as we stand on guard watching for anything that might, instead, own us. This only happens as we realize that everything we have (everything in that list I read off a second ago) has been given to us by God and is simply a resource that we are to steward for His kingdom.
Only when we see stuff that way can we reject the mentality that sees our generosity as transactional.
This is the root of genuine God-honoring generosity…and it is in this that Jesus says there is great reward.
so that your giving will be in secret; and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.
I believe there are three rewards that we get from God.
1. There are heavenly rewards that we will not see or even understand as valuable this side of the new creation.
For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw,
each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work.
If any man’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward.
And
And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory.
Man, I don’t even know what a crown of glory is. Honestly we don’t know what those rewards will look like or even what makes them so valuable beyond the fact that Jesus tells us they are. That is a reality and an economy that we can’t even begin to understand this side of living in it. There will be a day, however, in which I believe the value of those rewards will be made known to us. What is certain is that those rewards are based on past actions and there will be a day when we reap the rewards of the humble and generous life.
2. There are earthly rewards in the here and now.
“Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in My house, and test Me now in this,” says the Lord of hosts, “if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows.
Jesus echoes this in
“Give, and it will be given to you. They will pour into your lap a good measure—pressed down, shaken together, and running over. For by your standard of measure it will be measured to you in return.”
Tell story of why Danielle and I have put intentional steps and goals for our generosity.
I think most promising for us, however, is a type of reward that we all want more than anything else but often times don’t know how to voice it.
3. There is the reward of a renewed creation.
I believe this is the reward that Jesus most wants his followers to pursue. Jesus came and lived the example of the radically generous life.
Question: If Bill Gates gave you a thousand dollars…is he truly being generous…? I guess (shrugging)?
I’ve said this before, but what does the God of the universe give (the one who owns the cattle on a thousand hills and everything else) that could be considered radically generous? He gives His own son…He gives up his life…his own body and blood shed for you and me.
The reward that Jesus got was a new life and everlasting glory seated with the Father and the keys to a new kingdom with his people. This was the reward that allowed him to lay his life down for people who could never repay him in the most radical act of generosity ever. It was through this most radical act of generosity that Jesus opened the way for a new redeemed creation full of His kingdom citizens. It was this act of radical generosity that would go on to change the world.
This radical act of generosity is both the reward and the keys to our ability to live the radically generous life.
No…we don’t follow Jesus because of what we can get from him in the form of blessing. No…we aren’t generous because of what we receive in return for our generosity. We follow Jesus because of what he has already given…His life. Living in light of this new identity is the heart transforming power that allows us to live out truly open-handed generosity.
And so, generosity becomes one of the highest forms of our worship in response to what Jesus gave to us.
So the question I want to leave you with this week is:
Do we follow Jesus because of what we get from Him or because of what He has already given ?
That may seem like mere semantics but that attitude is the difference between living a transactional generosity verses a truly open-handed and God honoring generosity. And the difference in that is in regularly going back to the Gospel and seeing what Jesus has given us. It is in returning to the shed blood and the broken body tormented on a Roman cross for our sins and brokenness and living in light of that we are propelled towards radical God-honoring generosity. And that generosity is an act of worship. Going back to that in remembrance changes not only how we see our stuff but how we see our entire lives.
And so, we are going to have the opportunity here in a moment as we come to the bread and the cup to return in remembrance of that ultimate act of generosity shown by Jesus.
This isn’t something to be taken lightly. This isn’t something to be taken with wrong motives. The Bible makes it clear also, that we are not to take this with unrepentant or un-confessed sin in our lives. There may be someone here even in this room that you need to approach to right a wrong.
The Bible also makes it clear that this is something to be done in community as a commited community of baptized believers and so if you are not a member of the church we would ask that you abstain from that at this time and so if your next step of faith is baptism then we would love to begin working that out with you. Or if you are unsure of where you fall on that, then there are going to be opportunities here in the very near future to have that conversation and be certain of where you are at.
And so, while the music plays and while we bring our children’s church back out front, I would ask you to take a few moments in prayer to examine your own heart…go back to God in remembrance, repentance, and confession, and prepare to take the bread and the cup here in a moment.
Once your children have come out, if you are going to partake in this with us then I would invite you to come grab one of the cups on the table and then I will come back up to lead us through the taking of this.
Allow for a few moments for our children to be brought out. Take the stage again while the music is playing.
If you haven’t already, go ahead and grab one of the cups off of the table.
Wait for everyone to be seated.
Walk them through the process: Because we have never done this together before and because you may come from a church that has done it differently in the past, I wanted to take a second to just explain how we are going to do this here. Read a passage, pray, we will eat the bread. Read a passage, pray, drink the fruit of the vine. And then I will close us out in prayer and we will be dismissed.
While they were eating, Jesus took some bread, and after a blessing, He broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is My body.”
Pray -
Eat the bread
And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you;
for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins.
Pray -
Drink the cup.
Pray & Dismiss