11-19-23 Grace-Tucson Sermon

2 Corinthians 9:8-15 Pastor Nathan P. Kassulke

Godly Giving, Pentecost 25 Sunday, November 19, 2023 “Confident Generosity”

How much confidence do you place on the assurances of a salesperson? Aren’t you often a little wary of the claims made when someone is trying to sell you a product or a service? They say things like, “This vacuum will never lose suction.” “We will leave your house cleaner after tearing out and replacing the tile than it was before we started.” “This car will get you both amazing fuel efficiency and incredible reliability for many years.” We want to believe these things. We want them to be true, but wonder whether we can trust the used car salesman.

I can certainly think of examples when I spent money without being very confident that I was going to be happy with the purchase. Confidence doesn’t sound like: “I hope the car will be reliable. I hope the product or service meets my expectations.” When I spend, I want to get my money’s worth, but sometimes it is hard to be confident.

I don’t want to give the impression that we ought to think about the offerings that we give in the exact same way that we think about our other spending. Not at all. God is not a salesperson trying to convince us to make a purchase. His promises are not the same as a sales pitch or a purchase guarantee. But sometimes the way that we think about those other purchases can cloud the way that we think about placing our hardearned money into a collection plate or setting up an automatic withdrawal from our bank account to the church. Maybe we get an uneasy feeling when that time comes in the service, or when we look at our bank statement. Maybe we wonder whether we get our money’s worth. Maybe we worry about the opportunity cost—what we could do with our money if we didn’t spend it on our offerings.

If you’ve been with us for the last two weeks, you’ve already heard some of the encouragement that the Apostle Paul gave to the Corinthian Christians concerning a special offering they were preparing to undertake. For two whole chapters of the book that God inspired Paul to write, this letter to the Corinthians, Paul describes their generosity in ways that are extremely valuable for us to take to heart. And before us in our sermon today are the final verses of that two-chapter section about Godly Giving. Listen to how Paul reminds the Corinthians how they can give with Confident Generosity.

The Text: 2 Corinthians 9:8–15 (EHV) 8God is able to make all grace overflow to you, so that in all things, at all times, having all that you need, you will overflow in every good work. 9As it is written: He scattered; he gave to the poor.

His righteousness remains forever.

10And he who provides seed to the sower and bread for food will provide and multiply your seed for

sowing, and will increase the harvest of your righteousness. 11You will be made rich in every way so that you may be generous in every way, which produces thanksgiving to God through us.

12To be sure, the administration of this service is not only making up for what is lacking among the

saints, but it is also overflowing in many prayers of thanksgiving to God. 13By proving yourselves in this service, many people are glorifying God, as they see the obedience shown in your confession of the gospel of Christ, and the generosity shown in your sharing with them and all people. 14At the same time as they pray for you, they also express their longing for you, because of the extraordinary measure of God’s grace given to you. 15Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!

There is no doubt these are amazing promises. How extravagant does it sound when God is assuring us about all things and all times and having all we need? And he means every word of it. God knows that we might at times wonder whether giving to church will just make us poorer than otherwise. He knows how tightly the sinful nature clings to material possessions, even trusting in them and not in him. In just the verses before this, we were told how God loves a cheerful giver giving what he has decided in his heart to give, and God anticipates all the objections we might have. How long can I keep that up? Won’t these

offerings eventually bankrupt me? I want to be generous, but I’m just not sure I can. I have all sorts of other responsibilities!

God promises the opposite of our fears. He promises “in all things, at all times, having all that you need, you will overflow in every good work.” And that’s not a message that is new for God’s people. In fact, Paul quotes a verse from Psalm 112 in the ancient Greek translation. That verse says, “He scattered; he gave to the poor. His righteousness remains forever.” And that verse is not about God as you might suspect at first glance. It’s about you. It’s about the generous Christian responding to God’s goodness by doing good works. He is scattering, like scattering seed out in a field, he is giving to those who need his gifts, the poor.

The righteous acts of God’s people last not just for moments or even for lifetimes, but echo through eternity according to God’s rich grace.

And that rich grace of God is exactly what is in focus throughout as Paul discusses our godly giving. Why can we trust these promises in spite of our sinful doubts and fears? Because God stands behind the promises.

“God is able to make all grace overflow to you.” The same one who provides seed and bread, the Creator of the Universe, will multiply your seed. He will give you what you need to continue to sow generously. He did not even spare his own Son, but gave him up for us. He kept that great promise. You can trust him to keep his promise to bless your offerings and to bless every good work that flows out of love for him.

That’s worth repeating. Here’s another way to say it. God took all of the times that we have been uncertain about serving him and placed them on Jesus, who never felt that way. He took our sinful fear and placed it on Jesus. And what did Jesus do with it? He took it to the cross and suffered the consequences of not taking God at his Word and not listening to his promises. And as a great exchange, Jesus gave us his perfect life, a life of complete confidence in God and absolute trust in God. And now in faith, he invites us to live like that, like him.

And living like Jesus, in any and every aspect of our lives—but the focus here is on how we give our offerings and use our money to serve others—living like Jesus has incredible results. Our offerings don’t automatically make us financially wealthy. There is a difference between having all we need and all we might at times want. But the results are real. For the Corinthians, they could have confidence that their offerings would meet the needs of their poor brothers and sisters in Christ in Jerusalem. And that would inspire prayers of thanksgiving. It would lead to many glorifying God. Listen again to how Paul describe it: By proving yourselves in this service, many people are glorifying God, as they see the obedience shown in your confession of the gospel of Christ, and the generosity shown in your sharing with them and all people.

What a marvelous description of the relationship between our faith and salvation—your confession of the gospel of Christ –and the good works that flow out of it, like the generosity of our gifts. We never want to get those confused, and Paul lays them out so eloquently. It’s not our generosity that saves us, it is God’s generosity. It is not our work that earns salvation, it is the work of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. What leads us to heaven is not our gifts; that is God’s gift to us. But his generosity, his work, his gift, inspire us to be more and more like him. These things lead us to offer our lives in service to God by loving and serving the people around us. And we can have full confidence that God will provide everything we need, and that he will bless the generosity that we show.

Paul wraps up this section with a verse that will get more of our focus in just a few days as we gather again ahead of the national holiday of Thanksgiving. He says, “Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!”

Yes, thanks be to God, whose generosity is so overwhelming that it is contagious—it inspires generosity in us and in others. Thanks be to God for carefully instructing our coordinated generosity, our interest in planning and carefully considering our gifts, and as a church family in striving to spend those gifts to God’s glory and for the good of many. And thanks be to God who gives us promise after amazing promise so that our generosity can be confident. We cannot possibly out-give God’s grace. May God bless us to be confident, to be generous, yes, to be godly givers.