I could tell by how bad my eyesight is getting, by how well I can see my notes in my Bible on Sunday morning. I really hope I don't have to get glasses. But I want you to think about when was the time that someone was really generous to you? Let me think of the circumstance, the first thing that's like, generosity is an interesting thing.
Generosity, it assumes sacrifice, first of all. But generosity also requires willingness, and it works inside of love. Generosity is also fun. There's fun stories about it.
I've got a picture of me about 280 pounds ago that I want to share with you. This is my big wheel three-wheeler. Let me tell you a story, but I do not know this story until a few years ago. I as a kid have vague memories of this thing, but I heard this story a few years ago.
When I think about draciousness, I think about generosity, I think about this big wheel three-wheeler. So I'm a preacher's kid too, and all the assumptions you make about preacher's kids were younger or completely true with me. But when my dad was in seminary, he was with a new world in Alexandria, and my mom and I stayed there, and I can, he drove down New Orleans twice so we can add a department down there. And one day he was like going to the drug store, whatever.
He saw this little three wheel, like big wheel. I remember the Honda's big red when I was hot. That's what this was. This was a tiny little Honda big red.
And he was like, man, you know what, Chad would really like that. And I was like 18 months old, first kid. That's really cool. He saw how much it cost.
I was like, oh man, I can't do that. There's just no way, but I really want to get that for him. That'd be really cool. I found this story out three or four years ago.
And I found out that my dad didn't eat lunch for a month to buy that. And he said the first time he had to do that, he was really happy. Then three months later when I wore the front wheel out of it. And he said, I was really glad when you got too big for those things.
I was tired of not eating lunch. But we think that graciousness and generosity, someone's been generous to a story that's involved. But graciousness and generosity, it always requires multiple parties. It's never a singular thing.
It always works in unique ways. And we're going to talk about graciousness in generosity today. We're going to talk about it from the perspective of a man named Paul. Paul wrote a third of the New Testament.
Paul was a missionary. He started churches. He traveled all over the Mediterranean basin, bringing the name of Jesus. And so we're going to jump into this specific part of Paul's ministry today and talk about just some of the kind of complications.
When we talk about resources and giving at church, it can be a little awkward sometimes. Talk about that later on. But we're going to look at what does it mean to be a gracious people and what does it mean to be a generous people and how those are much bigger values than just simply the resources that we share. And so the story is about Paul and by the church in Corinth.
He wrote two books in the Corinthians, the first Corinthians and second Corinthians. If you know that much about Scripture, I just finished devotionally reading second Corinthians a couple of weeks ago. And I'll tell you what, it was really tough. Because the book of first and second Corinthians in many ways are correction documents.
It's Paul writing to these people and it's like, listen, you need to get your act together. Like you were just kind of awkward. Like how do you feel like when you were a kid and you saw another kid getting in trouble? Like you didn't know what to do with it?
Like somebody got with me all the laughers. You know? And there's some people like I could hide. Are you felt so...
I was the kid who felt so bad for them I didn't want to deal with it. I still have this day like I've had a running conversation with a couple of guys in the gym about the office. Like I can't watch the whole first two seasons. Because I just feel so bad for my...
I feel so bad for rough situations. Like my anxiety level picked up especially reading second Corinthians. But the Corinthian church was really unique. The Corinthian church was probably one of the first churches to ever have thousands of people in it.
The Corinthian church had just many different distinctives in it. And the Corinthian church was a healthy church in the long run. But we're going to jump into the story of what Paul's doing in. But think about this.
This is what I've kind of processed over the last week or so. What benefit do we gain by being a gracious people and by being generous people? What benefit is there to us? Paul already tells us that if we call ourselves Christians, that a graciousness in generosity that they're not optional extras in life, but that they are the heart and soul of who Jesus is.
How Jesus was gracious to us and generous to us. And so simply just responding to that. Our greatest participation we have in the Christian life and the life of Jesus and what Jesus did for this world is by us being gracious and generous. Anyway, he gave us our salvation.
So we're just going to jump into scripture. First Corinthians chapter 16, one through four. The words will be behind me on the screen. And what we'll get into this story is this bigger long-term story of Paul in the Corinthian church and graciousness of generosity.
So this is from 1 Corinthians 16. So Paul writes, now regarding your question about the money being collected for God's people in Jerusalem. You should follow the same procedure I gave to the churches in Galatia. And on the first day of the week, you should put aside a portion of the money you have earned.
Don't wait till I get there and then try to collect it all at once. When I come, I will write letters of recommendation for the messengers you choose to deliver your gift to Jerusalem. And if it seems appropriate for me to go along, they can travel with me. Paul giving you some basic housekeeping here.
But this collection is interesting. This collection, Paul was raising money for over 10 years for the church in Jerusalem, for the mother church. And we're talking more later on about why this collection was necessary. But we hear about it in the book of Acts.
We read about this collection in 1st and 2nd Corinthians. We read about the collection in the book of Galatians. Another letter Paul wrote to another church. We find out that the church that Paul came out of, it's called Antioch, a town almost around where Syria is now.
They took up an offer even before this, and sent to the Jerusalem church. So for 10 years, part of Paul's ministry was raising this money all over the known Christian world of time for the Jerusalem church. Now, Corinth is an interesting part of this because Corinth was a really wealthy town. And Corinth was a wealthy town for a couple of reasons.
The first is that they were situated in between on an isthimoth. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. I've got to try to off-practice that all week long. So if I didn't, it just sounds like what I'm talking about.
But this isthimoth, and the ocean was on both sides. And to make the journey shorter across Greece and this huge peninsula, for hundreds of years, there had been a trackway, a stone trackway that went about four miles. And they would literally drag the boats ashore, and they built a four mile road out of stone. And they estimate between, took 100 to 160 men, and they would literally pull these boats over a mountain and down to save time for a journey.
And so Corinth was very wealthy. Maintained two ports in a big city. And it was just, if you were going to trade, you were going to have to deal with Corinth. Corinth also had an early version of the Olympics.
This is several hundred years after the historic Olympic Games were used to about the isthimoth games, and what they were called. And they were there. And because of that, the Corinthian economy was just flush with tourist dollars all the time. That to live in Corinth was to be wealthy.
And think about your familiar favorite phrases of what does it mean for someone to have a lot of money. I learned a new in the summer. It came from the venerable governor's UEP on when he said somebody had enough money to burn a wet mule. I don't know how much money that is or how that would work, but apparently it's a lot of money.
In the first century, you would say, well, there's wealthy as a Corinthian. That was the joke that people would make to describe wealth, like to be a wealthy person was to be seen as Corinthian. And so this church, there's a reason Paul is talking about this to them so much. Also, the Corinthian church, many other places, the church was under tremendous persecution.
And persecution looked differently in different places, but in Corinth, we know from scripture from Paul's writings that the city treasurer of Corinth was a Christian, was part of the Corinthian church. Think about this, like a wealthiest city outside of Rome probably, and the city treasurer was part of the Christian church there, 20 years after Jesus died and rose from the dead. We also know that the synagogue leader from the Jewish synagogue in Corinth also converted and became a Christian. So like influential people in Corinth were Christians and were public Christians.
Like this really changes the game. And Paul had a long standing relationship, so he's being very direct with him. Like this is not by accident that he's being that deliberate in his instruction. So we're going to fast forward a few more years down the road.
And we're going to see Paul's tone is going to change a little bit. But 2 Corinthians chapter 8, and this is where we pick this up, pick up the story. Now I want you to know, not also, this is after I said 7 chapters of him telling me they need to behave. Okay, so imagine like you've written a letter that's like super awkward, telling people that they need to act better and I can change this, change this, change this, change this, and let's talk about this collection.
Now I want you to know, your brothers and sisters, what God and his kindness has done through the churches in Macedonia, they're being tested by many troubles. They're very poor, but they are also filled with abundant joy, which is overflowed in rich generosity. I can testify that they gave not only what they could afford, but far more. They did it out of their own free will.
They begged us again and again for the privilege of sharing in this gift for the believers in Jerusalem. They even did more than we had hoped for their first action was to give themselves to the Lord and to us, just as God wanted them to do. In graciousness and generosity, in many ways, they're two sides of the same coin. They're the same word, the same idea, it's just the expression of them.
But generosity is our outward processing of our inward understanding of grace. And so what Paul is talking about with the Corinthians here, specifically with the Macedonians, is he's kind of pitting them against somebody, but that's not what's important. What's important is the way we internalize this and ask these, what do we do when things get rough? What kind of attitudes do we take?
When life kind of sinks all hits you at once, what do we do? And Paul's asking some questions. Macedonians, first of all, the Macedonian area has never been wealthy. There's no agriculture, no farming.
Like the Macedonians where we're Alexander the Great came from, they're good at fighting. And here's the Macedonian church, in a poor area that is facing persecution. And typically when we're at a point in time where life begins to get really tight and tough, we would start assessing things, we would start kind of holding things up a little bit, we would begin to kind of prepare ourselves for the long haul. What we see the Macedonians here doing is not acting in ways where things are scarce, but they're choosing to act abundantly.
They're making a statement about who they trust. They're making a statement about how they see how the world really works. They're seeing themselves, not just as feminine area, but they're realizing that they are part of a bigger picture of a bigger plan. They've been dealing with famine and they're not worried about that.
They've been dealing with persecution. And oftentimes, like I said, persecution takes on different forms. What we see with both the Macedonians, but also with the Jerusalem churches, this is an economic persecution. This is not like lions and like flame and like being burned alive.
Like this is a very different kind of persecution. And they're faced with all this. And they're not hoarding and they're not holding on, but instead they're saying, you know, there's something bigger going on and we really want to be part of this. Regardless of what we're going through right now, we want to be part of this collection of this global relationship of the church.
So graciousness, I just continue on the story in 2 Corinthians 8, 6, 7. And so, Paul says, we've urged Titus to encourage your giving in the first place, to return to you and encourage you to finish this ministry of giving. Since you excel in so many ways in your faith, your gifted speakers, your knowledge, your enthusiasm, and your love from us, I want you to excel also in this gracious action of giving. You see, Paul in 2 Corinthians, he's talking with him, he's not really using words that define money.
He's not talking about money. He uses language of business, of the marketplace. But he also is using language of patronage, what does it mean for someone to support someone else in what they do? But what's more interesting is this marketplace conversation.
Now, he's using the language of business. He's taking something that's the current thing. It's like, this is a business-minded town. These are business-minded people.
He's making something that they're very, very well-versed in. He shifts this marketplace conversation into a whole life conversation about what each person does, what they've been given. He's inviting them into this cycle of generosity. You're really good at a lot of things.
You're commendable in this. You're commendable in this. You're commendable in this. You're commendable in this.
And in this, in this, in this, in this, finish this out and be commendable in everything. Because I know that you are a good and you are a great people. So this whole idea of graciousness in generosity is about a posture, not of individualization of just this one person. But instead, it's inviting them, but inviting us into a world where people actually and really and truly need each other.
Paul removes this from being one-sided. It makes it multi-sided. In chapter 9, when he continues, we really see this idea fleshed out much more. This is what he says.
We're going to be one through two, and then also six through nine. Paul says, I really don't need to write to you about this ministry of giving for the believers in Jerusalem. For I know how eager you are to help, I've been boasting to the churches in Macedonia that you and Greece were ready to send an offering a year ago. In fact, it was your enthusiasm that stirred up many of the Macedonian believers to begin giving.
In verse 6, remember, a farmer who plants only a few seeds will get a small crop. But the one who plants generously will get a generous crop. You must decide in your heart how much to give. And don't give reluctantly or in response to pressure for God loves a person who forgives cheerfully.
And God will generously provide all you need. Then you will always have everything you need and 20 left over to share with others. As the scriptures say, they share freely and give generously to the poor, and their good deeds will be remembered forever. This is about eagerness now.
Paul is talking about this eagerness. Now the Jerusalem Church. And the reason they need a collection, we read early in Acts at the Jerusalem Church at the very beginning, but kind of again liquidating assets to take care of everyone. The Jerusalem Church is a Jewish church.
These are Jewish Christians. And Paul, in almost 95% of his ministry, was all towards non-Jewish Christians, or Gentiles, the word we read about in the Bible. But all over the world, when Jewish people converted, they moved to Jerusalem. So the Jerusalem Church grew rapidly and rapidly and rapidly.
And then it became a place where they became very well known. They took care of their widows. And if in our world now, being a widow is very different from being a widow 2000 years ago. And so what you saw was Jewish Christian widows all across the world would begin trying to move to Jerusalem, because I knew they could be cared for in Jerusalem.
So Jerusalem Church network of caretaking was just gigantic. But then Jerusalem Church also was facing tremendous economic persecution to where if they were a shopkeeper, that their business would just literally be blacklisted in the local economy. And it got the point to where between their growth and their care for other people, but also the specific persecution they were being faced with, where they did not have the ability to earn money anymore. Paul realized there's, I can heal this rift between the Jewish Church and the non-Jewish Church.
If these Gentile churches will show their affection and their love and their care and their desire for the bigger picture. So this Jerusalem collection was going to help the Jerusalem Church, but also as Paul's attempt to heal a bridge and to possibly heal the first like split of unity that we see in the Church and it's in Scripture. So this is a very, very important thing. And Paul talks about the ministry of giving to the Corinthians, the ministry of giving.
And it's the same word he actually, if we read into this, it's not the ministry, giving, he says the worship of giving. And Greek, the word is liturgy. If you grew up in a Catholic Church or a Episcopal or a more fancy Methodist Church or used the word liturgy, the work of the people, like that's what Paul is saying, this is a participation that is an act of worship. And he applauds the Corinthians eagerness and their readiness and their exceptional interest in being part of things.
See, Paul talks about graciousness and generosity being an act of all people, not a concept for loners, but something that assumes participation. Now about the awkwardness side of this. So Paul, I mean, he's been, for an entire letter, has been telling them this, he's been telling them, he's been telling them, he's been telling them, he's been telling them, he's been telling them, he's been telling them, he's been telling them, he's been saying, fix this, fix this, fix this, fix this, fix this, and all of a sudden, like it changes shape. And he begins commending them for what they're good at.
But there's also another layer of awkwardness here. So Paul, he came to Corinth, we talked about Patrick and already the Corinthian Church and because it had important people and wealthy people and fluent people, there's a lot of tension between them and Paul because they wanted to be Paul's patron. That there's the Scripture almost alludes to the fact that the more wealthy people in the Corinthian Church were like, there's some infighting between, well, let me pay his bills and he can come live in my house and he can talk in my house after dinner every night. And how Paul instead came into Corinth and found two other Jewish tent makers literally, and because of these games, these ismith games, that there was a large need for tents in Canopies and Paul supported himself for years inside the church in Corinth.
And while other churches occasionally sent Paul money to fund his ministry, Paul never took a cent from the church in Corinth, he repeated this over and over and over. So just the fact that he jumps into this giving conversation with them is really awkward because he's avoided this topic with the Corinthian Church more than anything else. But I kind of like that awkwardness there because it also speaks to the awkwardness that we think about when we have resource and giving conversations in church. That we get kind of nervous sometime.
I honestly, you know, we've always said here at Foundry, we want to be honest with each other. I need to repent for not talking about this enough with y'all anyway. And Jesus tells us many things about what giving does and about the relationship of money to us, that this idea of being a gracious people and a generous people, this is much bigger than just an offering. That's when we took it up before the sermon started because this is more important than offering.
This is more important than a budget. This is an issue of heart and it's an issue of heart in a positive way. The graciousness and generosity is our individual response to who Jesus is, but it's also our corporate response to who Jesus is. And it's a response of the highest order.
You'll hear me say that giving is that last step of discipleship. I don't think it's an uncommon saying for Paul to list the things that the Corinthian Church was fantastic at and then finally invite them to finish the deal by talking about their giving. Giving is tough. It's us expressing ourself to Jesus and saying, you know what you have everything I have.
I love the story of the widow's might. We find the gospels where Jesus is sitting with his disciples outside of temple and the Pharisees come and are leaving large gifts and talk about how they make a lot of sound when they drop it in this in the collection bucket there and then a woman comes who's a widow with the whole economic instability of a widow and says that she drops two coins. If you go up in church, you hear this, the story of the widow's might. The two smallest coins in the Roman economy and they're equal to 15 minutes of work.
And the picture that Jesus tells us here is the story is written so we see the largest amount of money you can imagine and the smallest amount of money you can imagine and Jesus brings into it's a story of the heart. See this graciousness and generosity matter because it exposes our heart. It shows what we think about what God can do. That the amount is not so much the issue but the action is the issue.
The story of the widow's might never doubt what God can do with little things. That's the gospel math. That's the math of Jesus, the math of kingdom. Never doubt what God can do with small things.
And Jesus talks about money more than anything else in the New Testament because he knows it has the greatest ability to control us than anything else. The graciousness and generosity is a characteristic of our individual heart but also the heart of us as guys people. Our small things can create one big thing. And I would hate for you to miss out on what can be one of the best ways and one of the best feelings and one of the best responses and one of the best emotions to what does it mean to be part of what God is doing.
So if you've never been to Foundry before you're like, well, show me the first Sunday and the preacher talks about money. I'm never going to come here again. What I hope you hear is that we as a church that we desire to be honest and we desire to be truthful. We desire to see things in a bigger way than we might originally.
If you've been here a lot, I hope you see that this is the characters of our heart as we grow. That as we have gone from a group of 12 people in my backyard over a barbecue pit to around 185 on a Sunday about 400 once a month, he'll be here that we want to begin seeing with bigger eyes and bigger hearts and bigger minds. And we want to see what else God is asking us to do. Not what we can get, but what we have the ability to give.
You know, Paul in his words to the Corinthians, he's telling them, I want you to go to the next level and I want you to experience Jesus and experience God in a new way. I think that's the word that he can give us. He says, I want you to see things even bigger than you see them right now. And for us, the church, the next few months are going to be really busy.
They're going to be really wild. They're going to see us waiting for the land we bought a few months ago to finally dry out, to finally put that parking lot in, we already had the money for it, to finally begin to move, to finally begin talking about our new home. There's a lot of practicality, there's a lot of nervous conversations, but I also truly believe that Jesus is opening things up saying, this season can be gigantic for you. And it has nothing to do with your pocketbook.
It has everything to do with your heart and your soul and your mind and who I am to you. The last few weeks begin realizing I think the next six weeks might be some of the most spiritually formative for us at church since we started and I begin changing my routines to begin able to listen to God more. And I don't want anything to stand in the way between me and him personally. And as your leader, I'm for to say the same thing to you.
I don't want anything to stand in the way of what Jesus wants to do for you. And that means us inviting any spot that we might want to hide from him. That means us inviting him into that. And this is just simply one of those spots.
So Jesus, thank you for coming into every place, every part of our being, every shape, every form, every ounce of our soul. Jesus, thank you for sending us leaders who thousands of years ago had awkward conversations, but who also believed in a bigger world, believed in bigger things and bigger participation. And Jesus, what we ask you for is simply just a glimpse of that world, a glimpse of the things that you're calling us to. Jesus, thank you for being extravagant.
Thank you for being gracious. Thank you for being generous. Help us to see that that that is a whole life approach to living, not just one part, not just our resource, but also our time and our love and our relationships and the way that we treat people, the way that we interact with complete strangers, the way we interact with our best friends, the way we interact with people who absolutely drive us crazy, the way that our hearts break for things that we know very well and for things we've just heard of for the first time. Jesus, I pray for each of us to experience your graciousness and your generosity.
That the things that we have that we've been holding back, the things we're scared to let you know about, scared what others know about. Jesus, I pray that we can put those at your feet. We can come to you for healing. We can come to you in honesty and in truthfulness.
That no matter where we are, that we know that you were simply big enough. And our littlest things and our biggest things you are big enough.