A Generous God Creates a Generous People

0:53How many of you grew up reading the Berenstain Bears series? Okay, good number in the room. We had dozens of those books at home. I really love those books. One of those books is called The Berenstain Bears Learn to Share. And in the book, that introduces the conflict pretty early in the story, the conflict in the book. And Sister Bear is sitting there with all of her stuff around her, and she says, I say inside, it's all mine, but then I wonder, is it kind?

1:29Nearly every time. Children's book dispenses the exact same advice. You should share because not sharing is mean. Well, that's not entirely untrue, but it's also unhelpful because that advice focuses on behavior and it ignores the fact that the root of all of our behavior is the heart. The heart is where all of our attitudes, it's where our motivations, it's where our desires that drive our behaviors, that all originate in the heart. So if we want our behavior to change, we have to address the root. We have to address the heart.

2:11Now, in nearly 11 years as a local church, we have never done any extended teaching on the subject of generosity. We have taught about generosity as it's come up through our studies, through books of the Bible. We've taught on it, for example, last year when we went through Ezra and Nehemiah. There's lots of passages in those books about offering and sacrificing and tithing. And so we talked about it then. The year before, for example, we went through the pastoral epistles. And when you get to 1 Timothy 6, there's a whole section on giving and generosity and how the rich should live in this present world. And so we covered it then.

2:46But we've never done any kind of extended teaching on the subject. And so we thought that this time period would be perfect for that very thing. Because this time of the year lends itself to this subject in very particular ways. The month of December. As we're focusing on the Christmas story, it naturally lends itself to conversations about generosity. And then in January, when we start the new year, it naturally lends itself to conversations about resolutions and the changes that we're going to make to put our beliefs into action in the coming year. And so that's what we're going to do. We're going to take the next seven weeks to focus on generosity. And this subject is very important because in the scripture, there is a direct correlation between generosity and blessing, between generosity and righteousness, between generosity and simply being a follower of Jesus Christ.

3:45In the book of Proverbs, chapter 22, we're told that he who is generous is blessed. In chapter 37, we read that the righteous is generous and gives. And when the early church is being described in Acts chapter 2, that very familiar passage, familiar section at the end of that chapter, one of the ways that the earliest believers are described is they had glad and generous hearts. So you see in Scripture that generosity is tied directly to blessing. It's tied to righteousness. It's tied to simply following Jesus. And so it's important for us.

4:24Generosity has been defined as the virtue of being liberal. Giving. The virtue of being liberal in giving. But I think if we're honest, very few of us would describe ourselves, or maybe we'd be described by others, as generous, as liberal in giving. Now, to be sure, some of you, some of the people in this room and in this church are some of the most generous people I've ever been around. You have been given a great amount of time, finances, resources, and you share out of your abundance.

5:01And that is wonderful. And others in the church are very generous as well. You haven't been given the same amount of time. You haven't been given the same amount of finances. You haven't been given the same amount of resources. But out of what you have been given, you give generously. So there are plenty of us who are generous, but I think for the vast majority of us, and I put myself in this category, we couldn't be described as liberal in giving.

5:29We couldn't rightly be described as generous. And what that would mean is that we're basically in line with pretty much everyone else in America. As a nation, charitable giving has been frozen at 2.1% of household income for the past 12 years. And what you have to understand about that number is that 2.1% represents all charitable giving. All giving to universities, all giving to churches, all giving to non-profits. Profits of various kinds, all giving to missionaries, all of that is rolled into 2.1%. So, churches and missionaries are not getting 2.1%. They're getting a tiny fraction of that 2.1%.

6:13By contrast, over the same time period, Americans' spending on entertainment has reached almost 5% of household income. So, what those numbers are telling us is that we spend more than twice as much entertaining ourselves as we do giving generously to any cause, not just the church or to missionaries, for example. And I think maybe we aren't more generous, at least in part, because our theology of generosity is thin. You should share because not sharing is mean.

6:54Well, friends, what I want to do today and through this series is give us a more robust foundation, a more solid foundation for generosity. And I want to begin today by looking at the Christmas story in Luke 1 and 2 through the lens of generosity. So, let's take a look there at the text. Go back to Luke 1. And I want to remind you that at the outset of Luke's gospel, we are in what theologians refer to as the 400 years of silence.

7:23So, what that means is that there was this time period between when God spoke through the prophet Malachi, which we read. Right before this, that time period between when God spoke through the prophet Malachi and the time where God spoke through the angels was roughly 400 years. There was no word from God through the prophets, no word from God through the angels, no word at all for 400 years. And so in Luke 1, we meet this man. He is a priest. His name is Zachariah. He is a very righteous man, and he's married to a godly woman named Elizabeth.

7:56And Elizabeth, just like so many other godly women in Scripture, she's barren. Her and her husband are praying fervently to have children, but so far they have no child. And so the angel of the Lord appears to Zachariah while he is serving in the temple. I want to pick up in verse 13. And look at what he says. But the angel said to him, Do not be afraid, Zachariah, for your prayer has been heard. And your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John.

8:30And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great before the Lord. And he must not drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother's womb. And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. And he will go before him, pay attention to this, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready. For the Lord, a people prepared.

9:05What the angel is saying is that the prophecies that Malachi spoke almost 400 years ago, they are going to come to pass through Zachariah and his family. Can you imagine? Zachariah is just an ordinary man, just an ordinary priest, and God is saying, These prophecies are going to come to pass through you. So I want to remind you of what God spoke through Malachi in chapter 3, verse 1. Take a look at the screen. Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. And the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts.

9:50Now take a look at how the book of Malachi ends in chapter 4. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction. Now, I want you to remember, over the past 400 years, nothing has changed in terms of the people's behavior. They are still sinning against God. They are still going after idols. They are still not obeying God's commands, just like they did during the exile. Just like they did before the exile under all of their kings, just like they did during the Exodus and the wandering years in the wilderness, just like they had always done. In other words, what I'm saying is that God's people had done nothing to deserve a messenger to come and prepare the way for the Lord. God's people had done nothing to deserve the promised Savior that was coming to save us from our sins. And yet, that is exactly what God did. He promised the people a Savior, and that Savior was coming. He promised them a messenger who would get them ready, who would prepare them for this coming Messiah, and that's what he is doing. And that's because God is generous, he is a liberal giver.

11:18So Elizabeth conceives the man who would become John the Baptist, and she stays at home for five months. And then the messenger is going to come. So, what about the Savior? Let's pick up in verse 26. In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David. And the virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you. But she was greatly troubled at the saying and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, Do not be afraid, Mary. For you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever. And of his kingdom, there will be no end.

12:26So Gabriel, the angel, has come to this ordinary woman named Mary, who is engaged to this ordinary man, this ordinary carpenter named Joseph, and tells her that she's going to conceive and bear a son. She's supposed to call him Jesus. That's a derivative of the Hebrew name Joshua. It means the Lord saves. So she's to name him Jesus, and Gabriel tells her that he is going to be the Son of the Most High. He's going to sit on David's throne. He's going to reign over Jacob's house forever. Of his kingdom, there will be no end.

13:04Now, friends, Mary is an ordinary girl. And ordinary girls, who are not queens, don't give birth to sons who sit on thrones. They don't give birth to sons who reign over houses forever. They don't give birth to sons whose kingdoms never end. But that's what's happening. Mary is taken aback by her pregnancy, to be sure, but also by the fact that she is the one whom God has chosen to give birth to the Savior. Her amazement comes out in verses 46 through 55, this passage that's known as the magnificat. It's a Latin word that's the first word of that section where she says that her soul magnifies the Lord. And why does her soul magnify the Lord? Well, it's because God is her Savior. And not just hers, but all of the people's Savior.

14:05And you see, that theme of salvation is going to come out a few months later, after Elizabeth gives birth to John. After he names his son John, Zachariah is filled with the Spirit and he begins to prophesy. I want you to join me now in verse 68. Here is Zachariah's prophecy: Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people, and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us, to show mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our father Abraham to grant us, that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holy. Holiness and righteousness before him all our days. And you, child, speaking about John, will be called the prophet of the Most High. For you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.

15:34John declares in that prophecy that God has visited and redeemed his people. He's raised up a horn of salvation for them. And you see, that redemption, that horn of salvation, that was secured through the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, the one for whom John was preparing the way. In Mark chapter 10, Jesus discusses his life and ministry and why he came. And he says, This, look at the screen. For even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

16:19See, a ransom is a price paid to release a captive. And that's why Jesus was coming. He was coming to ransom us, he was coming to pay the price, coming to pay us. Pay the debt that we owed to God because of our sin and rebellion against Him. We could never repay that debt ourselves. We needed to be redeemed. We needed to be ransomed. And so Jesus was sent to ransom us. He was sent to redeem us. He was sent to save us from our sins when we were unable to save ourselves in any way.

16:52And friends, that brings us into chapter 2, which we read right before the sermon. The time had finally come for Jesus, the Son of God, the Savior of the world, to be born. But ironically, there was no place for him to be born. There was no room in the inn or anywhere else, and so he was born in a dirty stable. He was laid in a dirty manger. There was no room for him. The king of the universe was born in a barn.

17:23As king of the universe, Jesus was materially rich. He had created all things, and because he created all things, he owned all things. He needed nothing. He had everything. And as king of the universe, Jesus was spiritually rich. He was perfect in holiness, perfect in righteousness, unblemished in any way. He was holy. But for our sake, Jesus laid aside all of his material wealth. He took the form of a servant, the poor son of a carpenter, who did. didn't even have two nickels to rub together or to pay the temple tax. He laid all of that aside. And then he laid all of his spiritual wealth aside as well. He came to serve us by emptying himself, by becoming obedient unto death, even death on a cross, taking our spiritual poverty and our sin upon his shoulders, so that we, through his riches, could become rich.

18:33From Luke 1 and 2, it is so obvious that God has been supremely generous to us. He has pursued us, he sent Jesus Christ to ransom us, and that's because God is generous. He is a liberal giver. But, friends, as we acknowledged earlier, many of us are not generous. We're not liberal givers. And I think that's because we lack that solid foundation to become that kind of people, to become a generous people who is liberal in giving. The message of the gospel, which begins with the incarnation of Jesus Christ at Christmas, that is the solid foundation that we need if we're going to become the generous people and the liberal givers that we have been called to be. Because you see, the gospel alone addresses not just our behavior. But it addresses the root. It addresses the heart, where our desires and motivations live that then lead to all of our behaviors.

19:42See, when God created us, He placed us into a perfect garden that was the picture of abundance and generosity. What did Adam and Eve lack? In addition to the very presence of God, they had all the food they could ever want. They had all of the clean drinking water they could ever want. They had clean air, space, everything they could ever want or desire. At least it seemed that way. Because as we know, sadly, Satan crept in and tempted them. And he tempted them to doubt God's character and his word. And because they began to buy into Satan's lies and to doubt God's character and his word, they rebelled against him. They became convinced that God was holding out on them, that there were good things out there that God was keeping from them in some way.

20:35And ever since then, Adam and Eve have passed down that sinful nature, that rebellious nature that doubts God's character and his word to every single one of us. And so that sinful nature manifests itself in the same kind of unbelief in our lives. And that unbelief manifests itself with respect to generosity in the form of two great barriers. Worldliness and fear. Worldliness and fear. The first great barrier to generosity is worldliness. And when I speak about worldliness, what I mean is loving God and loving this world, rather, and everything in this world more than we love God.

21:24In 1 John 2, John is writing, and there's this section in 1 John 2, verses 15 through 17, where we're being warned against worldliness. And John's point in that section is that God and the world to come will exist forever. But this world and all of its desires, those things are passing away. But you see, our sinful hearts tell us that God and his word cannot be trusted. We can't rely on his character or his promises. We have to live for this world because this world is all there is. So we can't be content. We have to go on trying to acquire more things and newer things because this world is all that there is.

22:10And friends, when we come to believe that this world is all that there is, then this life becomes an anxious, angry, never-ending pursuit for more. But whether you're 12, Or 22, or 32, or 62. Every one of us in this room has lived long enough to know that acquiring more things and newer things will never satisfy us because the newness wears off. The things rot and they rust and they fade away. They get stolen, taken from us.

23:01We've lived enough life to know that our greed can never be satisfied. Worldliness is a great barrier to generosity. The worldly person can't be generous, can't be liberal in giving, because the worldly person is convinced that hoarding time and money and possessions is the only way to be happy because this world is all there is. The other great barrier to generosity is fear. Namely, the fear that God cannot be trusted to provide for us, that we have to take care of ourselves, that the only way that we're going to have adequate food, adequate clothing, adequate shelter, adequate medical care, is if we look out for ourselves because no one else is looking out for us. Fear is a great barrier to generosity.

24:00Jesus was tempted in these very same ways. Luke actually tells us that he was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, and after 40 days of fasting, he was hungry. Which seems obvious. Because after 40 minutes of fasting, by which I mean the 40 minutes after my last meal, I am hungry. Jesus is hungry, and Satan comes to him and says, Hey, turn these stones into bread. Now, in that moment, Jesus has two choices: he can trust the Father's character and word, or he can rely on his own resources to provide for himself.

24:45And friends, you and I are tempted in similar ways. No, we can't turn stones into bread, but out of fear, we can rely on our own resources. We can rely on our own finances. We can rely on our looks, our connections, whatever we have at our disposal, when we succumb to the fear that God is not watching out for us, that he can't be trusted to care for us. You see, Jesus succeeded where we failed. He trusted in his Father's character and word. He didn't succumb to fear that says no one is looking out for us and that God cannot be trusted. Fear is a great barrier to generosity.

25:30See, the fearful person can't be generous, can't be liberal in giving, because fear tells us that hoarding time and money and resources is the only way to ensure our survival, is the only way to ensure that we will make it. But the message of the gospel overcomes these great barriers of worldliness and fear. I want you to look on the screen at Romans 8. Paul asks this question: He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

26:20Parents, for what cause? For what purpose? For which person would you give up your own child? There isn't one. There is no cause, there is no purpose, there is no person for which, for whom you would give up your own child. That's Paul's point. Church, Paul is saying here that if God did not spare his only begotten son, then of course he will graciously give us all things besides him. If you are willing to give up your own child, your time is no object. Your money is no object. Your resources are no object. If you will give up your own child, you would willingly part with anything else.

27:16And God did graciously give us His own Son. See, the gospel confronts and overcomes our worldliness. Why would we need to store up treasure here on earth? Why would we need to live in constant disappointment that this temporary life isn't all that we wanted it to be? Why would we live as though this present world is all that there is? Jesus tells us to store up treasure in heaven because it is the only thing that makes sense in light of the way the world is really set up. When we store up treasure in heaven, moth and rust can't destroy, thieves can't break in and steal. We can enjoy it forever in the new heavens, in the new earth with our great God. It's the only thing that makes sense. It confronts our worldliness.

28:16And the gospel message confronts our fears. Why are we so afraid of what the future holds? Why do we live as though God does not live? Exist and that we have to take care of ourselves because he can't be trusted to take care of us. The gospel tells us that if God willingly provided his son for our salvation, then of course he can be trusted to provide for our needs of food and clothing and shelter and everything else besides.

28:55Friends, if our theology of generosity never moves beyond what we find in children's books, you should share because not sharing is mean, then we can't be surprised if we never become generous givers. We can't be surprised if our lives aren't characterized by liberal giving. The message that we should share because not sharing is mean is a message that will not overcome our worldliness or our fear. And that's because it's a message that is fundamentally based in guilt.

29:38You see, guilt is a very powerful short-term motivator. A very powerful short-term motivator. If you operate in guilt, you will do that thing for a while. But over time, guilt is drained of its power. It cannot sustain. Anything in the long term. But, friends, the gospel message, the message of God's generous gift to us of Jesus Christ, is a message that never loses power because it's not based in guilt, it's based in grace. And God's grace alone is powerful enough to overcome those great barriers of worldliness and fear.

30:27So, friends, the challenge today and the challenge for the next seven weeks is to take the time to meditate deeply on the gospel of grace. It's to honestly confront just how large the barriers are of worldliness and fear in our lives. And it's to begin to take the steps to walk in repentance and faith so that you and I can become the generous givers that we are called to be. This will not be easy. This will not be comfortable. But I am totally convinced that it will result in a freedom and a joy that will allow us to say, along with the Apostle Paul, that we can count all things as loss for the sake of the gain of knowing Jesus Christ our Lord.

31:31We are called to be generous people because that's who a generous God creates. Let's pray. God, when we read Luke 1 and 2, we see so plainly that you are a generous God. And it is so obvious to us in these moments that if you are that generous with us, then of course we must be that generous back to you and to others. But we know that there are barriers in our lives to that kind of generosity.

32:23And so we pray, God, that through your grace and through the power of your Holy Spirit, we would overcome the barriers of worldliness and fear that have prevented us from becoming the generous people that you call us to be. I pray, God, that we would count all things as loss compared to knowing you. That you would set us free from our bondage to things and our bondage to fear so that you would be honored by our lives.

33:01So that our lives would be characterized by joy, and so that all of the people around us would desire to have the kind of freedom and joy and life that we are so obviously experiencing because we know we worship and serve a generous God. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Thank you for listening to the sermon audio from New Life Baptist Church in College Station, Texas. For more information or to support our ministry, visit us online at newlifecs.net.