What Is God-Centered Generosity?
The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. 7 Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. 8 And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work. 9 As it is written,
“He has distributed freely, he has given to the poor; his righteousness endures forever.”
10 He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. 11 You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. 12 For the ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints but is also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God. 13 By their approval of this service, they will glorify God because of your submission that comes from your confession of the gospel of Christ, and the generosity of your contribution for them and for all others, 14 while they long for you and pray for you, because of the surpassing grace of God upon you. 15 Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!
This is the word of the Lord, 2 Corinthians Chapter 9, verses 6–15, and today, like last week, we are gonna talk about money.
Last week we looked closely at the teaching of Jesus in Matthew 6, and we saw that money and our hearts are closely connected, and that the biggest hurdle to our giving is the anxiety that our giving — rather than keeping or spending — will make us miserable. And we saw that Jesus confronts that anxiety by reminding us that God is our heavenly Father and he cares for us. And when we understand that, it creates a paradigm-shift in our giving because it causes us to look up, and to think about giving from God’s perspective.
So we’re gonna talk more about that today, but first I want to spend some time putting all of this in context — what is this ROOTED initiative again? Why now? What does it look like a year from now, and so forth?
I want to touch on these things by looking at five questions. And this is gonna take a minute, but I think it’s important. Here are the five questions:
What are we doing?
Why are we doing it?
Why are we doing it now?
What is it going to cost?
What do we do next?
What are we doing?
We are taking the step as a church where we go from having been a church planted to becoming a church rooted. This rootedness involves three things: 1) we freshly embrace the vision; 2) we invest in our footprint; and 3) we commit to give. And these three things combined have a three-part goal: 1) we want to enjoy God — we wanna have more of him, and our cities to have more of him through us; 2) we want all of our covenant members to be all-in; and 3) we want to raise $5 million dollars over the next two years.
Why are we doing it?
Because we want to have an active, living presence in the Twin Cities, and a lasting impact. We want to be a church that truly makes disciples — a church that multiplies and matures worshipers, servants, and missionaries of Jesus who live faithfully in the home, the church, and the world … and then we want to multiply more churches in these cities who do the same.
We want to saturate these Twin Cities with healthy local churches — truth-telling outposts — and altogether we want Jesus to be impossible to ignore in the Twin Cities long after we’re gone. The secret to all of this, really, is the glory of Jesus. That’s the point. Let’s go back to the first sermon. This is all because Jesus is worthy! We want to be a church that is a faithful witness for him.
Why are we doing this now?
Let me answer this first in general. I want to just step back for minute, and say something about all churches everywhere. After what we’ve all been through in 2020, the next two years are likely the most crucial years we will experience in a generation. I think that’s true for most churches everywhere that the pandemic has touched, but I think it’s especially true for churches in the Twin Cities, like us. This is a fork-in-the-road kind of season. After a year of just constantly reacting, as we are finally now at a place where we can look ahead, we don’t wanna sit back on our heels. Now is the time to say: This is what God has called us to, and this is where we’re going (and the pastors are saying this because that’s what leadership does).
We all knew — going back to the fall of 2019 when we were in the process of purchasing this building — we knew then and we said that there were renovations to do, and of course now in light of 2020, we could just put all this off for another five years and muddle through until then. But the pastors believe that the timing and coalescing of all these things is providential. We know the kind of church that we want to be. We know our mission and vision. We know where we want to go, the question is who is going. Who here is in? That’s an important aspect of the ROOTED initiative. Who wants to be part of the next chapter of Cities Church?
There’s no better time to ask that question, so we are.
What is it going to cost?
This is the question of commitment. The first commitment is to be here, and if we’re here, it means we commit to give to what God is doing here, and the goal for that is $5 million dollars over the next two years. Okay, so why that number?
That number, $5 million dollars, is the total number that includes both our ministry budget over two years and funds that would allow us to make “game-changer renovations” to this building. For the ministry budget, this year our budget is $1 million and we’re planning the same thing for the following year. So that’s $2 million dollars total, which leaves us with $3 million dollars for renovations.
And the way we get to a number like that is by looking at several pieces, like:
What are the renovations this building needs?
What renovations would most support our ministry?
What is a plausible / sensible / reasonable range for our church?
All these things have to inform one another, and the pastors have chartered a renovation task force and a capital task force who have been working on these things for months. And through several meetings, and talking with many of you, and working with an architect, we have a good idea about the kind of renovations most needed and the ones of most functional impact. Based upon that research, here’s the list:
We want to improve the space for our ministry to children and families, which means better classrooms, updated check-in logistics, and better security;
We want to improve the fellowship hall and other classroom spaces, to make them better venues for discipleship gatherings and counseling meetings;
We want to improve the bathrooms to make them have more than one stall, and to make them easier to get to; because that just a loving thing to do,
We want to improve the foyer space that connects these two buildings so that it doesn’t create traffic jams, but could even be wide enough to have conversations in, where we could encourage one another;
We want to improve the entrances to this building to make them more welcoming to people who pass by: we need better handicap accessibility; we need it easier to get in here with a wheelchair or a stroller;
We want to make needed exterior repairs that will, at the most basic level, keep this building together, and also we wanna showcase its beauty and we wanna signify to these cities that our church is a church alive and we’re here to stay;
And we want to improve and increase the seating capacity of this room where we worship, because worship is the heartbeat of our church.
These things are the kinds of renovations we wanna do, and they’re renovations that will maximize our ministry to make disciples.
When it comes to money, money can only do physical things. That’s it. No matter where it goes, the only thing money can do is buy physical things. Say you give your money to global missions, (which we do), well, that money is not buying the regeneration of souls, it’s buying food for a missionary … and through that means and other means, the missionary is able to share the gospel, which the Spirit will use to regenerate souls.
All money can do is buy physical things, like buildings, and childcare space and meeting rooms, and chairs — which are all physical, and all a means toward making a physical environment where spiritual work happens. We cannot buy the miracle, but we can buy the room where the word is preached and praises are sung, and miracles happen.
And on page 24 of the vision guidebook, we have some conceptual drawings of physical renovations — and those drawings are there, first, to help you imagine how these things could look, but I want you to take a step deeper and imagine the spiritual work that could happen in those spaces.
According to the information gathered by the renovation task force, we can do a significant number of these renovations for $3 million dollars — and there’s a range of maximum ideal and minimum acceptance — and we can’t know more details here until we know more precisely the kind of funds we’re working with.
So God willing, by his grace, if we meet our goal of $5 million dollars, then we can begin the congregational process of together deciding and approving the renovation details.
One way to say it is that as a church we want to give to the vision and future of our church, which includes renovations; but we’re not giving to a carpet color. We raise the funds in light of vision, and then get into renovation details — not the other way around.
What do we do next?
For this ROOTED initiative, the pastors are asking you to be rooted here, which means three things:
Freshly embrace the vision;
Invest in our footprint;
Commit to give.
And the resource we have for that commitment to give is the Commitment Card. And we’re asking that all of our members, everyone who is part of our church, take this card, and seek the Father on what is the total number for you to give to Cities Church over the next two years. Pray and seek his will, and we’re asking that you land on a number, and that you tell us that number by filling out this card. This will be your commitment or your pledge.
And then next Sunday, March 28, at the close of our service, I’m gonna ask who is rooted here — I’m gonna ask you to make that commitment. Following the biblical pattern of bringing offerings, we’re gonna come forward during a song and make our commitment by putting our cards in a basket.
And I realize, happily, and in the middle of our asking you to be rooted here, we are in the process of sending out our fourth church plant. God willing, Mike Schumann and team will launch out this fall — and so what if you’re part of that? What do you do if you’re a member at Cities now but we’re commissioning you out to church plant in six months?
Well, we still ask that you make a commitment to ROOTED and give to ROOTED, and then once we officially start the new church, just redirect your giving to that church. If you are being sent out with one of our church plants, you cannot embrace the vision of our church better than that. Now the conventional wisdom is that when you want to raise funds, you don’t send out new churches — but we are … because it’s our vision, and our vision matters most. Look, it really is all about the glory of Jesus.
Okay, so I’ve spent a lot of time on this, but it’s important information, and if you have more questions, there’s an FAQ on page 52 of the guidebook — you can check that out — or come up and talk with me after the service.
Three Truths About God-Centered Generosity
And now I want us to transition back to where we started, to 2 Corinthians 9, and we’re going to consider three truths about giving from God’s perspective. Remember from last week, God is our Father and he cares for us. Therefore we are not anxious, and that means we can look up in our giving. We can think about what God thinks when it comes to our giving. That’s what we’re gonna do for the rest of our time.
Here are three truths about God-centered generosity.
#1. God accepts acceptable offerings.
Now I know this sounds super simple, but my hope here is that we understand afresh how amazing this is. The fact that we, as creatures, can give something to God, the Creator, and that he would receive it — that is far from simple. It is mind-boggling.
Because God is God.
As the Scriptures testify, we believe in one living, sovereign, and all-glorious God, eternally existing in three infinitely excellent Persons: God the Father, fountain of all being; God the Son, eternally begotten, not made, without beginning, being of one essence with the Father; and God the Holy Spirit, proceeding in the full, divine essence, as a Person, eternally from the Father and the Son.
We worship one God in trinity and the trinity in unity, neither blending their persons nor diving their essence. Yahweh, God’s declared name, is the triune God, fully and completely God.
Different from Us
And to be fully and completely God is different from being human. There is a vast, unimaginable difference between being God and being us. Being the Creator and being created is not the same. In God’s holiness, and in his unlike-us-ness, a fundamental difference from us he that he never needs anything. Never.
Acts 17:24:
The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.
God is absolutely independent, and everything else is dependent upon him. Like Job says, “In [God’s] hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind” (Job 12:10). Or like God himself says in Job Chapter 41 (which Paul quotes in Romans) — Who has given to me, [God says] that I should repay him? Whatever is under the whole heaven is mine. (Job 41:11). Paul adds in praise: From him and through him and to him are all things.
And if we attempt to relate to God as if that’s not true, it’s repulsive. God says, Psalm 50:
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 — [which he is not, nor ever will be, but even if we was just for example, he says] — I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine.
God does not need anything. He doesn’t need us.
Giving to God?
And yet we open the Bible, and right away in Genesis 4, in one of the earliest interactions between God and man, we read about two brothers who give something to God.
These two brothers, Cain and Abel, bring an offering to God. Why do they do this?
We don’t really know. There are no laws to do this. According to what’s revealed in the Scriptures at this point, God had not commanded them to do this. But here they are, and they come to this God who literally, just three chapters before, by his words created everything that exists. He just made everything that is, and now they’re going to give him something.
How does this make sense? These two brothers give something to God, and then in Genesis 4, verse 4, we read:
And the LORD had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard.
And we read this verse, and it raises a question — and this question shows you how man-centered we are — because we read this and we think: Why did God not regard Cain’s offering?
What?! The question is: Why DID God regard Abel’s?
Why does this God — who just made everything and doesn’t need anything — why does he receive Abel and his gift?
How it is that there is such a thing as an acceptable offering to a God who is all-sufficient and unchanging?
WE can give to HIM — and he react in favor?! That’s what the word “regard” or “accept” means. Another way to say it: we can please him.
And the only reason such a thing exists is because God, in his unchanging nature, is gracious and merciful and he has a disposition of delight that is exercised in response to our faith in him.
That’s why Hebrews 11, verse 6 says, “And without faith it is impossible to please him…” And in Hebrews 11, in the Hall of Faith, do you know the first Old Testament example of faith?
By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain… (Hebrews 11:4)
So, the first truth about God-centered generosity is that God — who is wholly greater and separate from us, and who needs nothing — he is so good in his very nature that he unchangeably exercises pleasure in response to our faith in him, which is what giving is.
If you give to God in the faith of who he is — that you believe he exists and rewards those who seek him — if you give to him in faith, his irrevocable, trustworthy response is acceptance … regard. He is pleased.
Our Plastic Donuts
He is pleased by our plastic donuts. Thank you, Jeff Anderson, for that illustration. We know every illustration is imperfect, but they can still help, and this one helps me.
Jeff was at home, in his living room, when his two-year-old daughter was playing with her plastic kitchen set. And she brought Jeff, her dad, a little plastic donut. And because his posture toward her is delight, and she was acting out of the genuineness of her heart as his two-year-old daughter, he accepted the plastic donut; he gobbled it up; and he exercised his delight. And his little girl saw it. And you know what she did? He went got another plastic donut. And she gave it again — why? Because she enjoyed in the joy of her father. She looked up!
God accepts our acceptable offerings — and how are we not amazed? We see this all throughout the Bible, and it still happens today. In Philippians 4:18, Paul calls financial gifts to the church “a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God.”
And the first thing we should think is: what a good God!
The God who needs nothing and gives us everything, is pleased when we give to him in faith.
#2. God accepts gifts decided in our hearts.
So the criterion of acceptability has to do with faith in God — that’s base-level. And then in 2 Corinthians 8–9 Paul gives us more instructions.
For the context here, Paul has been collecting funds from several churches for the struggling church in Jerusalem. He talks about this in Romans 15, and also in 1 Corinthians 16. He has told the Corinthian church to set aside the money, and now he’s preparing to receive it — and it’s really important to Paul that they understand giving. It must be “a willing gift, not an exaction.” And a willing gift means, as Paul says in verse 7, “Each one must give as he has decided in his own heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion…”
Other English translations say, “Each one must give as he has made up his own mind.” To make up your mind. To decide in your heart. It’s the same idea, and it means that whatever you give, you are making that decision, which is both the decision to give and the amount to give.
You decide how much you give, and that decision is based upon your ability. That’s what Paul says in Chapter 8, verse 12: an offering is acceptable “according to what a person has, not according to what he does not have.” And this is a principle we see in the Old Testament.
If you didn’t own a herd, God didn’t expect a bull. But if you don’t have a herd, how about a goat? Or a sheep? If you didn’t have any of them, how about a pigeon?
Give according to what you have, and when it comes to what you have, the amount matters. And here, I just want to dispel the notion that “it doesn’t really matter how much you give because it’s the heart that counts.” “It’s the heart that matters, not the amount.”
Well, that’s not true, because it’s precisely the amount that engages the heart.
When it comes to every other thing in life, the amounts matter to us. Your mortgage. Your rent. That couch you’re looking to buy. Whether or not to get the small or medium at Jamba Juice — it costs my family $60 bucks at Jamba Juice; we can all eat at Chipotle for $40 bucks!
We all have amounts that matter to us, the question is whether giving to God is included in that.
According to what you have, the amount you give matters, and you determine that amount in your heart.
These are the instructions of the apostle Paul — Chapter 8, verse 12; chapter 9, verse 7: We each give according to what he have, and that giving is decided in our own hearts, not reluctantly or under compulsion…”
And this should be exciting to us, but I realize that it’s easy for us to read this and see it as a concession not to give, because we think, “Welp, I don’t really have anything to give.” Or we say: “You know, my heart feels some reluctance, I’m not super cheerful, so …”
But, brothers and sisters, I want to humbly exhort you here, and I say this as someone who knows it too well from his own heart: A lot of times we look for reasons not to give. You know how this goes, when there is an opportunity to be generous, the self-talk immediately becomes arguing ourselves out of giving, and somehow, pretty quickly, we can state the reasons why we shouldn’t give.
What if instead of looking for ways not to give, we looked for ways to give? And if our hearts feel clunky, what if instead of using that as an excuse not to give, we prayed, God, help my heart!?
How can I here — based upon my ability — how can I be generous?
Do we look for reasons not to be generous, or do we wanna be generous?
And here’s the part that blows my mind: if you want to be generous, God will make you generous. God is able to make all grace abound to you. He will supply and multiply your seed for sowing. He will increase the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way.
That’s what Paul says.
God accepts gifts we decide in our our hearts — and that comes from our confession of the gospel of Christ. This is God-centered, gospel-driven generosity. Paul says in Chapter 8, verse 9:
For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich. And this leads to the third truth about God-centered generosity.
#3. God is the cheerfullest giver of all.
Do you see how this goes? All our giving is only because of God’s giving. It’s easy for us to get stuck looking down. We get stuck on our hearts. Stuck on the amount. Just stuck on our ability. But the main theme of this passage, and of giving, is not our ability, but God’s. We look up!
The God who made everything and who needs nothing, this God, our heavenly Father, he loves cheerful givers because he himself is the cheerfullest of all givers, and he gives according to his ability. How much?
God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.
Our giving is only because of his giving, because of his surpassing grace upon us — which produces thanksgiving to him. Do you see how vertical this is? We’re looking up! And so it’s fitting that Paul ends this passage on giving with verse 15. And this is how we end the sermon.
We talked about generosity last week, and this week, and we conclude this way: Thanks be to God! Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!
And that brings us to the Table.
The Table
At this Table we give thanks for the ultimate inexpressible gift of Jesus Christ. God has not merely given us grace, he has given us himself. Through the death of Jesus in our place, he has paid the debt of our sin, he has declared us rich in righteousness, and he has welcomed us into his fellowship.
This morning, if you’re here and you trust in Jesus, if you have put your faith in Jesus, we invite you now to receive this bread and cup. Give him thanks!
His body is the true bread. The blood is the true cup. Let us serve you.
