Generous People Shine Brighter |11.10.24| Money Shouldn’t Make You Miserable pt.2
Matthew 6:22-23
Pastor Drew Williams
One thing that I have loved since moving here a few years ago is how dark it gets at night, especially earlier this time of year, and you can see all the stars. We live right outside of town, kind of out in the country, and just all the stars just fill the sky.(…) And even though it’s so dark outside, once your eyes kind of adjust to the darkness, you start to realize that all those little pinpricks of light are actually illuminating the surroundings around you, and it’s kind of incredible how much you can see, even on a night that doesn’t have a moon. It makes me think of when I was younger, we had a storm come through and knock out power for our entire neighborhood, and there was not a light on anywhere. There’s no lights on in the house, no lights outside the house, in the distance, no other houses or businesses. We didn’t even have the little indicator light at the bottom corner of like a TV or on the oven. There’s just no light anywhere.
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But when my dad grabbed out a candle,(…) and he lit a match,
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and then lit his candle,
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even that little bit of light filled the entire living room with warm glow, and all of a sudden I could see the room, and I could see my parents, I could see my brother.(…) And as we walked through the house with the candle, the light from the candle would bring to life every single room as we entered it.
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And as we’ll see in today’s passage, this theme of light and dark has something to do according to Jesus with our life, with generosity, and with how we view our stuff.(…) Last week we started a message series called Money Shouldn’t Make You Miserable. And we looked at the part of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus speaks directly about our relationship with our stuff, calling it our stored up things. And as it turns out, our relationship with our possessions(…) determines a lot about our lives. When we store up wealth and possessions, we end up devoting our time and attention to worrying about them, to protecting them, to trying to get them.(…) But ultimately, these things will let us down.(…) So Jesus says, don’t store up for yourselves treasures on earth.(…) Instead, Jesus urges us to store up a different kind of treasure. We might call sky stuff, or more commonly, treasures in heaven.
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Last week we talked about how this kind of treasure isn’t a future bank account that we build up and then access later after we die.(…) Sky stuff, treasures in heaven, isn’t something we accumulate at all.(…) It’s something that we spend.
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It’s time that we spend with someone who’s lonely. It’s the generosity that we show to those in need. And it’s in these moments that we bridge heaven and earth in our lives for ourselves and for others.(…) That’s the kind of treasure worth storing up. And so Jesus is urging us to be people who chase after sky stuff, God stuff.(…) Because if we really believe that God is an infinitely abundant provider,
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and it will transform your heart.(…) And so today we’re gonna move into that next teaching about money in our longer passage. And it comes in a form of a riddle. Now on its own, it might sound weird, doesn’t really make sense, but in the context of generosity, it starts to become clearer. Now here’s how the riddle starts, right? It says, “Your eye is the lamp of your body.”(…) Now remember, this is a riddle. And so to understand it, we actually need to look at the Greek word behind it that’s usually translated as good eye or healthy eye. So I’m gonna teach you a little bit of Greek today. It’s a word play that has two meanings and both of which are intended here. And this riddle takes us all the way back to the beginning of the Bible, to the very first image of God’s infinite life and presence in Genesis chapter one, and that is light.
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Now I’m really thankful to the teaching of Tim Mackey. He’s a Bible scholar, he’s a pastor. I’ve leaned on him a lot for my preparation for this message series. And here’s how Tim describes this image of light. He says, “Humanity,” this is a quote from Tim, “created in God’s image is like a lamp,(…) “embodying God’s light and shining into darkness, “just as God did on day one of creation.”(…) And so let’s dive into the idea of good eyes, bad eyes, light and dark. And we’re gonna read that shorter section again from Matthew chapter six, verses 22 through 33. These are the words of Jesus and he says this.
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“The eye is the lamp of the body.(…) “So if your eye is healthy,(…) “your whole body will be full of light. “But if your eye is unhealthy, “your whole body will be full of darkness. “If then the light in you is darkness,
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“how great is the darkness.”
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Now, remember I said it’s a riddle and it starts with a figure of speech that the eye is the lamp of the body. It’s a metaphor, it’s meant to communicate a deeper truth. Nowadays we would say something like, your eyes are the windows to your soul, right?
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When we think about, when you look someone face to face, you look them the eyes, you actually get an inner glimpse at who they are as an inner character. And maybe you’ve noticed that about someone before, someone with bright eyes seems to be more open, more connective, more able to be a personable person, right? But someone who has shifty eyes, well, maybe they’re a little less trustworthy.
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So this is the same thing, this riddle says that the eyes are the lamp of the body. They’re the source of light that light up the whole house of your body, your whole life.(…) Now this was a common figure of speech in ancient Jewish thought. Proverbs chapter 15 says that, “The light of the eyes brings joy to the heart.” It’s kind of like when someone tastes something delicious for the first time and we say that their eyes light up, right?(…) The light of the eyes brings joy to the heart. Bright eyes are meant to communicate vitality,(…) energy, life.(…) And all the way back at the beginning of the Bible, God himself is the one who brings light to the darkness when he says, “Let there be light.” And so humans made in the image of God, made to reflect God are meant to be little lamps that bring light to the world.(…) And so our riddle, that was in Matthew chapter six, it states that if your eye is healthy,
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which is the Greek word, hoplous,(…) then your body will be full of light. Now hoplous can have two meanings and both are intended here. Usually we translate hoplous as good or healthy, but the one translation of hoplous, the first meaning is single as opposed to multiple.(…) The second meaning is complete or whole as opposed to divided.
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And so when a riddle says that if your eye is hoplous, it’s trying to make us think of if your eye is singular, if your eye is whole.
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Now I can tell from the glazed looks on all of your faces, this isn’t really helping us understand how this connects with treasure and generosity yet, but don’t worry, there’s more clues to the other parts of scripture. I’m gonna bounce around a lot here. There’s another word in scripture that comes from the same root word as hoplous, it’s hoplotes,(…) and I’ll see if I can get here quick enough. Romans chapter 12 says this, it says,(…) let the one who gives, let the giver give a generosity, let the one who gives give with hoplotes. And then if we keep going in second Corinthians chapter eight, wow, I just went right there, that’s awesome.(…) Second Corinthians chapter eight says that, he’s talking about the Macedonians and he says that they were abundant in joy. Even in their extreme poverty, they overflowed in a wealth of hoplotes.
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And then in James chapter one, James says that if anyone lacks wisdom, let them ask God who gives hoplotes(…) and it will be given to you. And so we’re starting to see that hoplotes is talking about a manner of giving, right?(…) It means to give with singular intent,(…) to give wholeheartedly or sincerely, to give generously.
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And Jesus says that when your eye, the lamp with which you shine, when your eye is generous,
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then your whole body will radiate with light.
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But if your eye is unhealthy or bad, then your whole body will be full of darkness. This is Jesus calling back to an Old Testament figure of speech where it compares good eyes and bad eyes in ancient Jewish thinking. And the good eye and the bad eye is talking about someone who is generous or stingy.
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In Proverbs chapter 22,(…) if you look it up, you’ll see that it says, “Those who are generous are blessed, “for they share their bread with the poor.” But the actual Hebrew is translated as, “The one who is good of eye is blessed “because he gives his food to the poor.”(…) The next chapter in Proverbs 23, there’s a warning not to eat bread with someone who has a bad eye. Don’t desire his delicacies for even though he says, “Eat and drink, his heart is not with you.”
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This reminds me of, like for instance, you’re having a bunch of people over for a meal and you throw out a real big spread and it’s like the food is so good. A couple of weeks we’re gonna have Thanksgiving, it’s gonna be like this. You have a bunch of people over, lots of food. It’s a celebration, it’s good. Your heart is happy until you start to notice that one person who’s taking thirds and fourths of your favorite item. And you start to think, wait a second, I was gonna have those as leftovers. He’s eating all of my leftovers. How dare he? And so you say, eat and drink, but inside you’re like, don’t take the.
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And it’s like, your heart is not with you.
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Or for those of you who are married, maybe you’ve had this experience, you’ve gone out to dinner with a spouse at a restaurant and your spouse says the thing I don’t ever wanna hear, hey, what if we share tonight?
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Wouldn’t that be great if we shared? We could get two different things that we could share. And in my head, I’m just thinking, but that bacon, cheeseburger and fries are mine. Get your own.(…) And so the thing I think is it’s on. I’m gonna protect these fries myself and make sure I get the fries because you sharing means that you’re gonna take.
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I’m proving that my treasure is actually on my plate.
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I’m trusting in my plate treasure to satisfy me, to provide for me, to be what I need it to be.(…) I’m looking at the world through a stingy eye, a heart of stinginess. But if I really just trusted the economy of God, and that’s what Jesus is trying to give us to do, he’s trying to say the economy of God is different though. If I really trusted the bringer of light and generosity, I would know there’s always more in the kingdom of God.
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If we took those two examples and taught them as parables, we would say don’t worry about your guests overeating because you can always get more the next time you’re at the grocery store.
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Don’t worry about running out of fries at dinner because you can always order another plate of fries.
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Jesus is trying to ask, are we looking at the world with a stingy eye(…) or with a generous eye?
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Now Jesus uses this figure’s speech one more time in Matthew chapter 20, and he’s telling this parable about a farmer(…) who hires day laborers to help with the work. And he agrees to a certain set to pay them for their work for the whole day. And so he gets people first thing in the morning, but there’s more work, he’s got to get more people. So it goes out at noon, gets some more people, and there’s still more work. And right before the end of the day, he gets even more people who just worked the last hour of the day. And so it comes time to pay everyone their daily wage. And the people who showed up most recently get paid first and he hands them each 100 bucks. And so the people who were there at the beginning of the day said that’s what he agreed for the whole day’s worth of work. Maybe he meant $100 per hour instead of $100 per day. This is great! But then they get up to get paid and he pays them the same thing that they had agreed to, $100.
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And they start to complain. What? Why are we getting paid the same as those people? We’ve done way more work than what those people did. And this is what the owner says in Matthew chapter 20. He says, “Are you envious because I’m generous?”
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He actually says, “Do you have a bad eye(…) because I have a good eye?(…) Is my generosity exposing your stinginess?”
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See, we’re starting to see in our passage in chapter six, the meaning of the riddle that Jesus gives us. If you have a good eye, if you are generous, then your whole body will radiate with light.(…) Everything about you will shine just the way that God intended you for. But if you have a bad eye, a stingy eye, then your whole body will be full of darkness. And therefore, if the light that you were created to shine is actually darkness,(…) how great is the darkness?
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Remember, this is meant to be bringing us back to the core image at the beginning of the Bible, which is light versus dark. And so Tim Mackey puts it this way, I wanna quote him. Tim Mackey says, “Light is the primary image of divine presence,
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is the primary image of divine generosity and care. Because light is required for humanity to flourish.”
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The fact that the sun shines light on the earth and warms it just the perfect amount for our entire existence to happen is meant to show us God’s generosity.
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Whenever we see light, we’re meant to think generosity.
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And since we are created in the image of God, since we’re meant to be reflections of God, then generosity is a core part of what we were created to shine out to the world.
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But if we take that light that we are meant to be, and instead we project it out as darkness,
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because of our stinginess, because of our greed, that’s the ultimate tragedy. We’re not shining the light of God, we’re not shining the generosity of God. We’ve closed off that light.
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We’ve blown out the candle.(…) Now everything around us is in darkness.(…) And how great is that darkness?(…) Because generosity not only shines the light from us to light up the world around us, it also shines in and lights up our whole body.
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But greed and stinginess cuts off that light, leaves us in dark, leaves everything around us in the dark, leaves our body as a darkened husk of what we were meant to be, what we were designed to be.
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Now I don’t know if you remember last week how our larger section of scripture started. Jesus is telling us that having stored up stuff on earth, it isn’t secure. And so he’s telling us to seek out sky stuff, to store up sky stuff, God stuff, treasures in heaven.
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And so we ask, well, how do you know if someone’s treasure is truly in heaven? How do I know if my treasure is in heaven, like Jesus encourages us?
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Well, sky treasure, according to Jesus,(…) means that you’ll be really generous with your earth treasure,(…) because you know that your earth treasure can’t provide your ultimate security or joy.(…) That’s not the thing your life is built on.
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When you know that the stuff that we have here are our money, our possessions, it’s not secure,
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we can’t bank on it,(…) but we don’t have to worry, because we’re learning how to trust God. We’re learning how to trust that he’s been providing for us. We’re learning how to trust that he will continue(…) to provide for us. And so that enables us to generously join his work, rather than stingily clutching what we have, cutting off connection to the world around us.
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Generosity shines a light into the darkness around us, and generosity creates opportunity.
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Because if we tell someone, just like we said earlier, he drank, yeah, I’m having you over. If we say that and we actually mean it, we actually wanna generously give to them. It creates opportunity. That’s a first step towards friendship, and friendship is the first step towards who knows what. The opportunities are endless after that.
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Or if I invest in God’s work through the church by financially giving, because I really truly wanna reach more people for Jesus, that creates opportunities for Jesus’ name to be taken even further. Whether it’s through a program here, whether it’s out in our community, whether it’s outside of this community to bless people in other parts of the country and the world. Look what God has done already. And so imagine what God is still planning on doing by working through our generosity.
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So if we listen to Jesus’ wisdom here,
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we can learn how our lives can shine brighter in the image of God.
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And who doesn’t want their life to shine brighter?
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Don’t you want your life to shine brighter?
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Well, Jesus says,(…) give generously.
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Because generous lives bring God’s light into the world.
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It’s what we were created for. It’s part of the character of God that we were meant to reflect. Generous lives bring God’s light into the world, and generous people carry God’s power into the world.(…) Because generosity creates opportunities that keep going and going. And generous gifts reveal God’s grace to the world. And because it’s God’s grace, it spills over into the people around us that need it most, and it helps them feel the warmth and light of God’s presence.
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Generosity creates opportunities and it keeps going and going. The best example I have of this is something that just happened to me just a week ago.
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After church last Sunday, Megan and I decided that we would take the kids out to a diner for lunch after church. Sometimes it’s just easier than going home and then starting cooking. You all know what I’m talking about. And so we went there, we’d been there before, we liked this place, but they seemed a little understaffed that day. And after we got seated, I overheard our waitress telling someone else that someone else had just quit. And that’s why they were a little more busy that day. And I had seen her before, but she seemed extra frazzled, extra tired today. And so after we ordered our food and we were waiting for our order, I overheard her telling another table there, like, “Oh, how are you doing?” And she’s like, “Yeah, I’m just, I’m really tired.”
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Because I had seen her before, she had waited on us before when we had been there previously, but I had never seen her just so tired that she could barely even smile, you know, I noticed. And so we had our meal as a great meal and so we were getting ready to pack up. And I asked for a couple boxes and she came back with the boxes
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and the biggest smile on her face that I’ve ever seen.
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And she said, “Okay, so are you all set?(…) Good, okay.
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Everything’s been taken care of, you’re good to go.”
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And I looked at Megan, I was like, “Wait, what?
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Everything’s been taken care of, you’re all set.”
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Someone else had paid for our meal without telling us.
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And I had looked around when we got there, but I didn’t recognize anyone there earlier.(…) And so I’m assuming it was one of you and I just wanna say thank you because I was stunned. I didn’t know how to respond to that, that had never happened to Megan and I before. But I’m telling you, not just because of the generosity that Megan and I received,(…) but because of how it influenced our waitress as well.(…) She had just had a hard day, it seemed, and just being a messenger(…) for the good news of generosity lit her up(…) with the biggest smile I’ve ever seen. And this is true because generous people shine brighter.(…) That is just a truth.(…) See, I was stunned in receiving generosity,(…) but it also made me excited to then share it. So I got to leave one of the larger tips I’ve ever left in my life. It was still less than what our bill would have been, but it was a cool big tip to be able to give because I had been given generosity. I get to keep giving it and it keeps going. And I know it’s keeping going because I’m telling you about it right now, but generosity just keeps going and going. And it overflows because that’s how God works.
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See, someone else’s generosity had turned around the whole day for a waitress just by getting to share the news with us. And then that let us be generous back to her
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and it keeps going.
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This is what we are created for. Jesus wants us to not get cut off from his light and his life just because we’re clutching onto our stuff.(…) The life of following Jesus is a life of generosity here and now.
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Following Jesus isn’t just about learning more about Jesus so that we can act good and then someday have eternal life later on in heaven.
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Jesus invites his followers to become apprentices here and now in this life to do the things he did so that he can transform us to become more and more like him in every area of our life. And we want to become more like Jesus.(…) We don’t want to just get to heaven, we want to bring heaven here. That’s why we pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” We want to bring it here now.
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The point of following Jesus isn’t just to receive abundant life, it’s to share it.(…) The point of following Jesus is not just to get to heaven, it’s to bring heaven here. The point of following Jesus is not just to learn that God gives us grace and forgiveness and love, but to trust that truth and then share what we’ve been given so that others can experience it as well.
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See, Jesus is inviting us to practice generosity. That’s why that’s one of the spiritual habits that we talk about here at New Life Often, the spiritual habit of generosity. We want to practice that spiritual habit because that’s what God uses in one way to transform us a little bit more, more into Jesus,(…) more to be more like Jesus in our lives. And I think he’s actually inviting us to practice generosity this week.(…) And so I want to encourage you to take action on what he’s showing to us.(…) I want to encourage you clearly this week to give financially to God’s work, whether that’s here through the church or some other way, but I want to encourage you to give financially because generosity makes us shine the way we’re created for. And so I want to encourage you, test it out.
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Test it this week.(…) Remember that Jesus tells us that where we put our treasure,
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forms our heart.(…) And giving, specifically giving financially, is the only thing that God tells us is such a proven framework of his kingdom that he actually tells us to test him in it.(…) There’s a passage in Malachi chapter three.(…) It’s a prophecy in the Old Testament where God tells his people to engage in the practice of the tithe and to test him in his promises, to see that he won’t pour down an overflowing blessing.
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Jesus reaffirms this later in Luke chapter six. He says the same promise. He says, “Give and it will be given to you. “A good measure pressed down, shaken together, “running over.”
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Generosity is a character trait of God.
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It’s one that we were created to reflect.(…) And so when we practice the spiritual habit of generosity, when we commit ourselves to do the things Jesus tells us,(…) it transforms our heart.(…) It transforms our lives to become more like to him.
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Now, I don’t know what God is inviting you to give,
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but that’s my incursion for you this week.
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Ask him,(…) ask him, what is God inviting you to give this week?
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Maybe you’ve never given to God’s work through our church. And so maybe he’s inviting you to test it out.
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Maybe you already do give to God’s work in our church. And maybe God’s inviting you to reconsider the amount you give or reconsider the regularity you give. But what is God inviting you to give? And I don’t know, I can’t answer that for you. That’s between you and God,(…) but ask him and then do what he tells you to.
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Test him,(…) experience your heart change,(…) because we’ve been blessed beyond what we can imagine through the generosity of God. He’s given us everything we have.(…) And he’s inviting you to join him in his work,
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to join him in his life,(…) shining our light through generous acts. And little by little, we actually get to be a part of revealing the kingdom of God here on earth.
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Isn’t that good news?
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Amen.