The Lost Art of Generosity: Part 1
SERMON TRANSCRIPT
Well, we are, as you can see, around tables today and there is no lunch afterwards and you're probably like, what is happening right now? Was this just for Morning Blend? No, though it does help. We wanted you guys to sit around tables for Morning Blend but we are going to be around tables to encourage and provide opportunity to prime the pump, to ready your hearts and minds, to engage with this series and to do so in community. So we're gonna be around tables for the next four weeks, this week and four more weeks. I know some of you are like, oh my goodness, will I not be here for the next four weeks? Oh, I love that. Some of you are like, yes, this is the best. Yeah, we need to. We're gonna have time either before the message or after the message, maybe during the message, where we're gonna give you each week a prompt or a question that you are gonna discuss around your table. And so as much as it is an individual faith that we have, we also recognize that it's a communal practice that we live in Christ together and we wanna encourage that with this. And so in our series, we are starting the series, The Lost Art of Generosity. While generosity is present in our world today, generosity as Jesus lived it and taught it, practiced it, that's harder to come by. And so this series is gonna take a look at Jesus's words about generosity. From a distance, generosity sounds like a difficult practice to embody regularly every day, and it is at first, but it quickly becomes one of the most joy-filled of all of Jesus's practices. And so our prayer for this series in the coming weeks is that you discover the great joy that Jesus is referring to, not just the good feelings that occur when we are generous, but the deep joy that comes from participating in the inner life of God himself, who is the most generous being in all the universe. I'll continue to share more about our series in just a moment, but let's pause right now to have our first discussion moment. So here it is, it's on the screen, we'll give it to you. Whether you were the giver or the recipient, share about a time when you experienced the joy of generosity. Whether you were the giver or the recipient, share around your table. So we have like three to five minutes. We won't have time to go into your full story, so maybe keep it short and just say, "Hey, in this moment in time, this guy did this for me, "and I really loved it, and it was amazing." It can be that short. If you're around a table with just the two of you, feel free to share your whole heart if you want to. But introduce yourself if you haven't. Be really quick, three to five minutes, and then I'll gather us back up. Ready, set, go.
We're gonna start in verse 19. It says this, this is Jesus speaking. It says, "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth "where moths and vermin destroy "and where thieves break in and steal, "but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven "where moths and vermin do not destroy "and where thieves do not break in and steal." Notice here that Jesus doesn't speak against storing up things. Are there any collectors in here? People who love collecting something, maybe? Yes? Okay, I see a couple hands raised. Good. I'm curious about what those are. I have some collectors in my family. My grandpa was a huge collector. He collected stamps and coins. I didn't know, I was a kid when I really found out about this and didn't come to appreciate it 'cause he passed away when I was younger, but he was kind of an expert, and people would send coins and stamps, mail 'em over to him and be like, "What do I have?" And he would go through people and give them estimates. So he was really into stamps and I think foreign coins. On my other side of the family, my cousin, this was also when I was little, I remember walking into, he had a two-bedroom house, and I kid you not, from floor to ceiling, you could not see a wall. It was covered in action figures. Like the biggest collection I've ever seen. The whole two-bedroom house was just for the collection. He was living by himself. But he had, it was amazing. And as a kid, I was like, "This is awesome. "This is better than a toy store. "Look at all these toys." But I learned that I couldn't play with them. They were all boxed up and graded and everything.
So those might be some extreme sides of collecting, but there is an innate desire in us to store things up. Jesus doesn't rebuke that. Rather, he speaks to where we should store things up. He says, "Not on earth, where moth and rust destroy, "where everything can be lost so quickly, "but store up your treasures in heaven." Now, we read that, and we think, "Eternal treasure storehouse." Of, hey, when I, the way I live my life as a Christian, one day when God, the Bible says I get my own house, he's building a house for me, I'm going to have a treasure room somewhere, and there's all these treasures that I've accumulated from being a good Christian. Maybe you don't think that, but we can kind of think that way. Of, hey, I got this place, I am getting all these things in the future. It's a future investment. And that's not necessarily wrong, but that's not the whole picture that Jesus is saying here. You see, this phrase, "in heaven," at that time as Jesus meant it, is also saying, "in God and what he is doing on earth." Store up your treasures in God and what he is doing on earth. That paints a little different picture. That helps shift our mindset from a future that we cannot see and may not feel responsible to interact with. That's a future, it's over there, I'll get to that one day when I die, get to experience all these treasures in heaven. It shifts that to, this is a future that I get to participate in. Storing up my treasures in heaven and what God is doing right now on earth. It's more present, it's more tangible for us. And it can change our heart towards stewarding what we have and giving what we have. Because for Jesus, money is all about our hearts. Verse 21 says, "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." According to Jesus, our hearts follow our money. We often think of it the opposite way, that our money follows our heart. And that can be true, that we can spend money on what we love. But Jesus is saying it works both ways. We come to love, maybe even obsess over or be controlled by what we spend our money on. This one can be tricky, it doesn't start necessarily as an obsession. Maybe it can be slower developing and we can obsess over something that is a good thing but it becomes too much and it takes the place of God in our hearts. Maybe it's something like, hey, you bought a house. That's amazing. But all of a sudden, all the money that you're pouring into that house, that thing can become an idol over God. You care about that house more than you care about God. That takes up more of your time, more of your heart. You are more controlling and acting out of fear and greed over that than listening to God. When we store up on earth, two things become key motivators and get a hold of our hearts, fear and greed. Our hearts are racked by fear because we know that we could lose it all in a moment. Or our hearts are motivated by greed because we feel like we may never have enough.
So we want more and more and more just in case, if I just have more, I'll be that much more safe, that much more able to provide for my family. But Jesus, he never wants us to operate out of fear or greed. And he has an alternative way of storing things up in heaven or with him and what he is doing here on earth. And in order to do that, we need a certain perspective. It says in verse 22, "The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness?" What is Jesus talking about here? Do we all need to have surgery to have 20/20 vision so we can all see perfectly? No, though that is helpful at times. "The eye is the lamp of the body." In the Greek here, these phrases, the people would have understood this, a healthy eye means you are generous. An unhealthy eye means you are stingy. Jesus is saying there are two ways of looking at the world. This is the crux of our message today. There are two ways of looking at the world. Again, in the old world, they would have said good eye, bad eye. Today, we would say something like the abundance mindset and a scarcity mindset. In an abundance mindset, we see God as Father, a provider. We see ourselves as His child. We see life as a gift given to us. We see that in this world, God has provided more than enough. It says elsewhere in Jesus' teachings, "Look at the lilies of the field, the birds of the air. If God has given them what they need, how much more will He give us?" The result of this is that we are grateful towards God and generous towards our neighbors. If we see the world in this way, we see God as our Father who provides for us, we are His children, He's going to take care of us, life is a gift, and this world has more than enough, then we are grateful, and we are able to be generous to other people because we know and trust that God is good and He will provide. Now, the other mindset, scarcity mindset, that God is not our Father and not our provider, that you are on your own. It's a dog-eat-dog world out here, and you better do what you need to do to take care of yourself. It does not matter what it means to other people. That life on earth is a dangerous place and that there are scarce resources. There's not enough to go around, so I've got to take care of mine. And again, it doesn't matter because there's not enough, so I better take care of... It's responsible. We can even guise this in wisdom and say, "God has told me to provide for my family. I'm sorry if that means it's not providing for your family, but I've got to take care of me." The result of this is a heart that is consumed by fear and greed. I want to keep this up here for a second. In the old world, they're using this healthy eye or unhealthy eye, right? The healthy eye, an eye of abundance. We see the world in this way. We live in this way. We are free to live in this way. With the unhealthy eye, you can see how that person is consumed by fear and greed, and there is no room for God in there. We want to have a healthy view of this world. And the scarcity mindset, this unhealthy eye, is an unhealthy view of the world. You know, the church isn't immune to this temptation or exempt from dealing with this. As a church, we must be a place that fights to have an abundance mindset, which can't be hard. We as a church have, you may not know this, but Spring Valley has bills to pay. We have to keep the lights on, the air conditioning, the heat in the winter, and we can be prone to be stingy and have a scarcity mindset. "God, there's not enough. There may not be enough this month. What does that mean? Maybe we can't do this ministry. Maybe we can't love these people like we're supposed to." Those thoughts are just because we're pastors, doesn't mean that we totally see it, we totally get it, we're good, we're locked in. It is hard. We can look to the future with this fear and greed and say, "I don't know, God. I don't know if there's going to be enough." And all of a sudden, we're operating ministry out of fear and greed. Instead of looking at our situation, trusting God that he will provide and there's abundance. And to be very real with you, in times of economic uncertainty and things like inflation, tithing is often the first thing to go. People sacrifice their tithing because, again, they view, "I got to take care of me first. God, you'll take care of the church. You'll figure that out, but I got to figure out me first." And I'm not saying that--again, I struggle with that too. So what I'm saying is to share that we have to fight against this mentality, this scarcity mindset.
We cannot view generosity in those moments when things get tough. Like tithing, we cannot view it as optional or extra because it isn't. These two mindsets, the good eye and the bad eye, they aren't necessarily determined by what a person has either. Let's take this a step further. Two people can have the same exact situation, the same job, the same income, the same family responsibilities, same bills and everything, but see the world in radically different ways. That can be true of two people who make very little by the world's standards and struggle to pay everything, to, again, by the world's standards, struggle to live. But there can be a person in that situation who has an abundance mindset, who is thankful and sees God as providing for their every need, even if it's just enough that God is providing. There can be a person who is in that place and is struggling, saying there's not enough and living in a scarcity mindset. It can be true of two people who make a lot by the world's standards, who have more than enough, who have never known what it is to need anything, and they can still struggle with having a scarcity mindset. So let me ask you, church, how do you see the world? How do you see the world? If you had an absolute assurance that God would provide enough for you, how would that change your relationship to money and generosity? If you trust God's vision of abundance and see Him as your Father provider, how would that change things? If you live like that, let's flesh out this concept a bit more. If you have a healthy eye, and you believe that there is abundance in this world, and Jesus' teachings start to make sense when He says, "Don't worry. There's no need for anxiousness. I have you. I've got you." Seek first the kingdom of God. Again, not seek first making sure your life is good and then seek the kingdom of God. No, seek first the kingdom of God. If we have an abundant mindset, that makes sense. If it says, "Give and it will be given to you," if we have an abundant mindset, that makes sense too. If we have a scarcity mindset, that verse does not--we don't understand that. But at the end of an abundant mindset, we are free to be generous. In the scarcity mindset, Jesus' teachings sound foolish in today's world. All that He talks about generosity and money, they do not add up. That is not what the world says. And at the end of a scarcity mindset is being enslaved by fear and greed.
And this leads us to how Jesus finishes this teaching, which is why He says, verse 24, "No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money." Jesus is even more clear by posing this question, "Who will you serve? Money or God?" The word here for money is the word "mammon," which is an ancient Syrian god of wealth. So this is Jesus' way of saying money is like a rival god. Which god are you going to serve, the god of money or the god of the universe, the king of kings, Yahweh? We want so badly to believe that money is neutral. And technically, it is, but it's kind of like nuclear energy, capable of great good, but also devastating destruction and absolute evil. For Jesus, wealth is powerful, and the sway it has in our hearts is a work in influence of the enemy. The god of mammon is behind so much in our world. Whole industries are run by the worship of mammon, the worship of money. War, racism, ecological devastation, sexual exploitation, to name a few.
As we look at the words of Jesus in verse 24, he is informing us that it is impossible to serve both God and money, because mammon will take over our hearts. So how do we resist? How do we resist this temptation that money has, the sway over our hearts? How do we have that healthy eye and live out the abundant mindset? This is what Jesus is teaching his disciples here. And Jesus, you guys know this, is a brilliant communicator and teacher. So in just these short verses, he is teaching on three different levels. He's teaching at the head level, the knowledge, the ideas that he's saying, our heart, he's addressing the feelings that we have, and he's also teaching our hands, what to do, our behavior. So the first one, what he teaches us to understand is how to see God and our lives in his world. He's telling them where good life is to be found and who God is. You see, biblical generosity doesn't start with tithing or giving to the poor. We'll get to those. Those are good practices. It starts with who God is. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, the Trinity, a Trinity of self-giving. Our God is a heavenly Father. I talked about earlier the idea of a heavenly Father who provides. For those of you who have kids, or even if you were a kid, you had an age where you didn't worry about certain things. Our kids don't worry about food on the table, medical bills. They're not worrying about like, "Hey, Mom, Dad, we have a medical bill showing up for my six-month appointment," whatever. They don't worry about those type of things. Why? Because they trust that as parents, we are providing for them.
It's the same way that God takes care of us. We see the triune God, and there's generosity woven throughout Scripture. From day one of creation, God is giving, is blessing. All the way up to Jesus. God gave his only Son. Jesus gave his life. God and Jesus give the Holy Spirit to us. We serve a generous God, the most generous God. And do we trust him? Do we live free to give as he has given to us? That's the idea. That's the head knowledge. Secondly, our hearts. He's teaching the disciples about the architecture of our hearts. He's telling us, if we get our relationship to money right, it will set our hearts free. If we follow Jesus and live like him, it should change our whole view on money. That's why it's more than just tithing or radical acts of generosity. Really good things, but it's more than that. It's also about the freedom to buy coffee or a meal for a friend. About having people over and providing them dinner. About being quick to forgive, as forgiveness is an expression of giving, of generosity. It's not just about our behavior. It's about our inner nature being formed to be like Jesus. Our hearts being shaped like his. And then thirdly, it's about the practice of generosity. Listen, the generosity that Jesus lived, that he calls us to live, is just that. It's a life. It's not a one-time thing. It's not a random, "Hey, I did that last year. I was super generous to that one person. I'm good for a while." It's not just when we have extra, and so we're like, "Hey, I have some to spare. Now I'll think about being generous." It is a practice. It needs to be a regular practice, a lifelong practice. Practicing generosity will make you into a more generous person.
Here's the reality. You can't leave today and instantly remove all the fear and greed that you face. Like, "Oh, I just learned about abundant mindset and scarcity mindset. I'm no longer going to be afraid." It just doesn't work that way. That fear and greed is still in you. You have to work that out with God. But you can, after leaving today, you can sponsor a child. You can buy someone lunch this week. You can give away a regular amount of your monthly income with special attention to the poor and the church and the gospel. You can practice being generous. And as you practice being generous on a regular rhythm, that grip that greed and fear has in your heart will begin to dissipate. And through this practice, God can change our hearts and habits. John Mark Comer, he says this, "Generosity is a practice by which we index our hearts from scarcity mindset to the abundance mindset of Jesus." We turn from fear to trust. As we give, this is what happens, we turn from fear to trust. We turn from worry to peace, trusting, knowing that God has provided for us. We turn from desire to enjoyment, always wanting more and never being satisfied to enjoying what God has given us. We turn from grasping to gratitude, and we turn from misery to joy. I know that all of us in this room, we want to be on that right side of things. And that comes through a regular practice of generosity. I want you to think of the most generous person you know. I know this from the story that you shared this morning around the table. But let me ask you this, were they joyful? Are they generally a joyful person? I think, yes, it's almost safe to say that, I'm not guaranteeing that every one of your people is joyful, but it's pretty common that people who are living a generous life are also a very joyful people. It's been said that it will cost you, literally, it will cost you to put Jesus' teaching into practice, but you will get more back than what you put in, because there is more joy in giving than in receiving. I'd encourage you this week to begin exercising that muscle of generosity. Put it into practice. If you need something practical, here's something small. Set aside maybe like $5, or pray about that amount. Maybe you can give more. And ask God this week for an opportunity to bless someone. Put that money in your wallet and just be praying, "God, show me somewhere, somebody this week, that I can give this $5." And then just keep your eyes open. See what opportunity God brings your way. We're not trying to solve global poverty or be heroic in any way. We're just trying to tap into that flow of the spirit of living a generous life, being more ready to give than to be stingy. If you need some ideas, again, keep money in your pocket, or buy someone in line behind you a coffee or a lunch, pay for someone's bill anonymously, drop off groceries or gift someone that you know who is in need, send cash digitally to help a friend with medical bills or expenses that they can't currently pay, buy a gift for someone just to encourage them and bless them, or give away something that you have. But spend time this week reflecting on how you see the world and what might need to change in order to see God as your Father provider, and having a good eye and living a life with an abundant mindset.
Let’s pray. God, thank you for your words and your instruction. As difficult as they may seem to live out, God, we know that this is the life that you would call us to. And God, we want to pray this. As our provider, you hold all things in endless, fearless supply. Help us to live in that trust and rest in your extravagance. Help us to know that we can freely give in the manner that we have received, selflessly, daringly, and lovingly. We recognize that all we have is from you, and we know that you are an abundant God. Help us, free us from that grip that fear and greed has on our hearts, and help us to be an expression of your love by giving to those around us. Pray this in your name. Amen.