Labouring Together – Multiplication
Speaker: Andrew Brown
Key Passage: 2 Cor. 9:1-14
Date: 19 July 2009
I think that one of the biggest questions that we all have to ask is ‘what do I want to achieve with my life? What kind of mark do I want to leave on this earth?
If you’re a young man or young woman, studying at college or university, or just starting a new job, your question is often ‘what am I going to achieve up ahead?’ If you’re middle-aged person and your strength and your ability are just coming together in a powerful way, then you might be tempted to ask ‘how can I contribute to our society? And if you’re an older person, with perhaps only 5-10 years of productive life left to give, your question might well be, ‘how do I leave something of value behind me? How do I leave a good legacy?’
Whichever way you look at it, ‘what is it that you hope well-wishers will stand up and say at your funeral?’ What is it that you will say when you stand before Almighty God at the Last Judgment and He asks you ‘And what did you do with your life?’
I guess I’m partly thinking this way (and forgive my morbidness) because I recently came across a list of crazy headstones, which are both good and sad in their own way. You might have heard them all before, but I’ll share them with you anyway. In a Uniontown, Pennsylvania, there’s a tombstone that reads: ‘Here lies the body of Jonathan Blake. Stepped on the gas instead of the brake.’ In Silver City, Nevada: ‘Here lays The Kid. We planted him raw. He was quick on the trigger, but slow on the draw.’
There’s a lawyer’s tombstone in England: ‘Sir John Strange. Here lies an honest lawyer, and that is Strange.’ How do you like this one? ‘Here lies Ezekiel Aikle, Age 102. Only The Good Die Young.’ I quite like this one from 1880: ‘Under the sod and under the trees, Lies the body of Jonathan Pease. He is not here, there’s only the pod. Pease shelled out and went to God.’ But my old time favourite is Spike Milligan’s that simply says in Gaelic “I told you I was ill!“ (Those of you who know Spike will appreciate his sense of humour).
Now all these words are good in a way because they’re funny, but they are also kind of ‘sad’ because I wonder if our own lives will add up to much more than these. I mean what is it that you and I were born for and how are we going to achieve it? Most of you want to leave this world a better place than when you found it, but how are you actually going to do it?
1. Well I believe that what our text is saying to us today is that giving is the spiritual key. Giving helps us translate our God-given potential into reality. Giving, whether it is of our time, our talents, our ability or wealth, is what helps us make a worthwhile contribution to God’s world.
Take a look at the Corinthians in our reading for example. They were a reasonably wealthy group. They were intelligent and prosperous. They were one of the very few churches not affected by persecution in the Roman Empire, but they were also a church that had turned right in upon itself. Bickering and false teaching was upsetting people. They were getting positively grumpy with each other in their confined nest, but what does Paul see in them instead?
What Paul sees is their tremendous potential for good, if they would only turn their gaze outwards, and away from themselves and seek to meet the needs of others. What Paul sees is that they have the enormous potential to help the poor Christians of Jerusalem who are going through a tough time of famine so he calls upon the Christians in Corinth to rise to this pressing challenge. He asks them to show leadership in giving to others. And it’s a call that we all have to grapple with -to what degree are you willing to give?
For instance just this week I have been reading the biography of Martin Luther King written by his wife, Coretta. I’d been debating whether I actually wanted to read it, but eventually I felt the Lord tapping me on the shoulder, so I thought I’d better. Talk about an eye opener!
You see, as many of you know the USA of the 1950’s was heavily segregated. In the south most shops had two entrances. Blacks had to use the back door, and whites would use the front. Blacks getting on to a bus had to pay their fare at the front counter, walk right along the outside of the bus to the rear door and then sit down from the back seat forwards. Whites simply sat down from the front and if there weren’t enough seats on the bus for them all, then the black people simply had to stand up.
But one day a black woman by the name of Rosa Parks in Montgomery, Alabama, felt too tired to stand up and she was thrown into jail as a result. That night hundreds gathered at a local church to plan a bus boycott. They elected Martin Luther King as their leader even though he wasn’t present. When he arrived later on he was offered leadership of this fledgling movement. The crucial question was ‘would he accept?’
Now Martin was a bright, well-educated Pastor. He had done well to get his current church appointment. He had a wife and a young family to look after. He could have settled for a comfortable existence preaching and pastoring his congregation and that would have been all right. It would have been ‘enough.’ I mean who really wants to be thrown into prison on numerous occasions, be vilified in the national press, be harassed by the police, and have their own home firebombed while their family is inside? But when Martin said, “Yes” to their request and gave his life away to others, that’s when his true greatness began.
The doctors who did his autopsy after his assassination at the age of 39 reported that MLK had the heart of a 60 year old, such had been the stress of leading the civil rights movement, but what the USA and indeed the world remembers him for today is how he challenged the black and white communities of the USA to re-evaluate their heart attitudes towards each other in the light of Jesus Christ. Why he even received a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. As the old saying goes “No man was ever honoured for what he received. Honour is the reward for what he gave.”
Now maybe you can think of other heroes like Mother Teresa ministering to the sick and dying in Calcutta or Sir Edmund Hilary building schools and medical clinics for his beloved Sherpa in Nepal, but the good and the great work they all achieved didn’t begin until they started to give. Therefore you need to give for giving is the key to make the most of the rest of your life.
2. For the Bible says that when you give there are four main beneficiaries. Four distinct groups benefit when you give. Can you think of who they are? I’ll mention them in the order that Paul lists them in our reading.
1. For a start there is you -the giver (v8-11). Strange as it may sound you benefit by giving. You are a recipient. Does that sound good? 2 Cor. 9:8 says “And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. (9) As it is written: “He has scattered abroad his gifts to the poor; his righteousness endures forever.” (10) Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. (11) You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.”
What this means is two things. Firstly when you give, God will give you more in order to keep giving. If you have proven yourself trustworthy with what God has given you, then He will give you even more to give away. This is the divine economy.
Remember what the woman said in the ‘Handful of Rice’ video two weeks ago? “We have given to God, but we have always had enough.” God gives more often to givers. It simply makes sense. After all, why would God give you more if you were only going to hoard it for yourself? But if you can wisely give away what He has given you, then God will trust you with more to share with His world. As John Bunyan once said, “A man there was and they called him mad; the more he gave, the more he had.”
The second thing is that giving changes you. It changes your character. You become more generous so that even if God did not give you more to give, you are able to give more from the little that you have because of who you have become in the process.
In fact there is story about a wise woman travelling in the mountains who once found a precious stone. The next day she met another traveller who was hungry, and she opened her bag to share her food. The hungry traveller saw the precious stone and asked if he could have it. She gave it to him without hesitation. The traveller left, rejoicing in his good fortune. He knew the stone was worth enough to keep him in food for a lifetime.
But only a few days later he went back to return the stone to the same woman who give it to him. “I’ve been thinking,” he said, “I know how valuable the stone is, but I’m giving it back to you in the hope that you can give me something even more valuable in return. I want you to give me what you have within you that has enabled you to give away this stone.” The fact is that giving changes us inside and it makes us better people.
As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another with out helping himself.”
2. But the second person who benefits from giving is the recipient and this comes out in verse 12. By giving you meet real needs. You help others in a very real way.
I think that one of the most precious experiences of my life was to be there in Kotave in the Solomon Islands when they opened the new girls dormitory that you built. The people, especially the girls, were so, so happy. They were dancing and singing hymns praising God. The Solomon Islanders live on the value of a can of baked beans each day, but because of you, 40 new girls are able to get a trades and biblical training each year. Real people’s lives are significantly improved when you give. When you give real things change.
3. Thirdly God benefits (v11-12). He gets the glory when you give. As verses 11-12 say “Through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God. (12) This service that you perform is not only supplying the needs of God’s people but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God.”
I wonder, have you ever thought that whenever you give something to someone else someone somewhere will be praising God for you? Last year, for example, we collected over 130 Christmas boxes for Operation Christmas Child. It was a tremendous effort! Remember the amazing sight as we collected the boxes together up the front? Do you remember the video we showed you of the kid’s faces when they opened up presents just like ours? It was a delight to see their enormous smiles at Christmas.
Well, you renewed their hope and faith in God. You told them that Christmas that God cares enough about them that people like you would do something good like that. Your giving opened doors that enabled others to give thanks to God.
4. And finally giving benefits the whole Church (v13-14) –that’s church with a capital ‘C’, not just our church. 2 Corinthians 9:13 says, “(13) Because of the service by which you have proved yourselves, men will praise God for the obedience that accompanies your confession of the gospel of Christ, and for your generosity in sharing with them and with everyone else. (14) And in their prayers for you their hearts will go out to you, because of the surpassing grace God has given you.”
You know giving restores people’s faith in Christians as well as in God. It encourages people that the church in general is on the right track. They did a survey in the USA about 5 years back. George Barna asked non-church goers ‘what are the most important things you would look for in a church?’ Two thirds of them said a commitment to help the poor and needy.
So when you give you are an inspiration to your Christian brothers and sisters, and also a witness to the world at large that you are following Christ. Your giving helps to earn their love and respect for the church of Jesus Christ.
C. Now as you have probably gathered the point of today’s message is to encourage you to give. Giving as you have seen has a spiritual multiplier effect that means blessings not only for yourself, but also for the recipients, for God and for His church in general. As a church you are all great givers so let’s put our giving to work in the Tranzsend Appeal that we will be collecting in as a special offering next Sunday.
But before you give your final amounts to that appeal can I please make a few comments?
Firstly if you do not want to give to others, can I challenge you to at least give $1 to this? That might be all that some of you can afford right now, but for some of you, you need to give because this is an issue of the heart. You have robbed yourself and others have missed out because you did not want to give in the past. Why not give at least $1 to this appeal so that you can begin to experience a positive change in your life?
Secondly part of the idea behind this appeal is that we sacrifice. Therefore please do not take money out of your regular church offering and put it in the appeal. Sometimes it appears that whenever we have a special offering our regular offerings drop a little. I’m not sure that this is true giving. It is just robbing Peter to pay Paul, so ask God what He would have you give over and above your regular giving to this appeal.
And thirdly I just want to say “thank you.” Thank you for changing lives. Thank you for helping this world to hear the good news of Jesus that it do desperately needs to hear. In a moment we are going to see a clip called multiplication. It highlights the lives that you can touch, in fact the lives that you have already touched through supporting Tranzsend and it shows how your giving has gone on and on to impact others. As you watch and reflect remember that “You make a living by what you get out of life; but you make a life by what you give.”
[Multiplication DVD]
Prayer –thanks that you demonstrated ultimate giving by sending your Son.
To God be the Glory
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