A Biblical Model for Giving, Part 1
2 Corinthians 8:1-3
Well, we have a wonderful privilege this morning of returning to our study of 2 Corinthians. As you know, we have digressed a little bit from the text in order to lay a foundation for chapters 8 and 9. And now we come back to the text itself. And I confess to you that I am most happy, most fulfilled and most blessed when I am studying the actual text of a passage. And this has been a great week, filled with anticipation as I come to share with you what is in this eighth chapter of 2 Corinthians. By necessity this morning we're going to be dealing with some of the introductory material, but you're going to get a great feel for what is coming in the richness of this wonderful section from Paul to his beloved Corinthians.
Before we look at the text and discuss some of the background, let me ask you a rhetorical question, you don't have to answer it out loud. When you think about coming to church what aspect do you look forward to most? Now that might be somewhat of an indicator of where you're at spiritually, but I'm not really driving at that. Let's assume that it's something noble, not like being seen in your new dress or seeing somebody you really wanted to see because you want to sell them a policy and life insurance, or you wanted to drive your new car and you had an opportunity, or you were looking right through church to taking the family to a new place for dinner...not that kind of thing. But assuming the best, assuming it had something to do with the ministry here in the worship center or something to do with a class or something to do with some kind of spiritual reality, what is it that you look forward to most?
Some of you might say, "Well, you know, I like the sermon." I hope there's a few who would say that. Some of you might say, "Well I really like the music, the music moves my heart and lifts my spirits." And somebody might say, "Well I enjoy the fellowship. We sort of sit in the same place and we have made a lot of wonderful friends and we share our lives together and prayer requests and answers to prayer and it's just good to be there." And I can imagine you would all sort of line up somewhere along that line of lists. Some of you might say, "I just enjoy being distanced from the pressures of life and just being open to the Lord," and etc., etc.
But let me suggest something to you. If you really understand Scripture and you really understand what God has promised, the thing you should most look forward to is the offering. Any of you think of that? Well that's really what you ought to look forward to most because according to Scripture it is a direct pipeline to blessing. In fact, every Christian should be eager, anxious, thrilled about the opportunity to give at the offering if based only on two statements that Jesus made. If there was nothing else in the Bible but those two statements, they ought to cause us to line up for the offering. They ought to cause us to be generous and abundant and sacrificial.
Let me give you just those two statements. Statement number one is recorded in Luke 6:38. Jesus said this, "Give and it shall be given to you, good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over they will pour into your lap for by your standard of measure it will be measured to you."
Now some people might think that that's purely an Old Testament principle, an Old Testament idea that when you give God pours out blessing in return. But it is not. You find the same principle in 2 Corinthians chapter 9 and verse 6. "He who sows sparingly shall reap sparingly. He who sows bountifully shall real bountifully." It's the same principle. God is going to measure out to you in accord with what you've measured out in your giving. And if you give a lot, you receive a lot. And what you receive is good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over and it will pour into your lap.
Now the symbolism there is taken from the ancient Middle Eastern grain market. And people would literally go into the grain market ready to receive a lap full of grain. Here's how it worked. Both men and women wore rather a loose material garment that went all the say down to their feet and it was belted with a sash. When they went into the grain market they would simply pull some of that garment up through the sash and they would make it sort of a bloused effect. They would take two hands and pull that up and they would create by that a huge pocket and that's why the Bible says it will be poured into your lap because that's exactly what would happen. They would fill that garment with grain.
We have that very thing specifically noted for us in the wonderful story of Ruth back in Ruth chapter 3. I'll just read you verse 15. It says, "Give me the cloak that is on you and hold it," and that's exactly what they did. Hold your cloak out. So she held it, "And he measured six measures of barley and laid it on her and she went into the city." She would pull her garment, six measures of barley were poured in and away she would go carrying this abundant of grain. That is the imagery of Jesus' words in Luke chapter 6. God wants to fill your lap with abundant blessing to overflowing. The principle is simply this, generosity in giving results in a greater reward from God. You want blessing from God, you want it poured out, you want it overflowing, pressed down, shaken together, packed in full, then give. That is the most direct route to blessing from God. That's the first verse and if it was all there was in the Bible, it should make generous sacrificial givers out of all of us because what it tells us is you can't out give God. You give and He gives back more. You give, He gives back more. That's the principle, that's how it works.
But there's a second verse that we would add to it and that is Acts 20:35. It says, "It is more blessed to give than to receive." By the way, that is the only quote from the lips of Jesus recorded in the New Testament outside the four gospels, unless you include those glorified statements where Christ is speaking in the book of Revelation. But earthly statements quoted from the lips of Jesus are all in the gospels with this one single exception. And of all that Jesus said, which John tells us the books of the world could not even contain all His words and works, of all that He said, of all that could have been quoted, of all that could have been rehearsed and recorded after the gospels, only this, "It is more blessed to give than to receive."
In other words, what you give away brings you a greater blessing than what you receive. That should be enough. That should be enough to make us line up to give. Do you want to be most blessed? Than give. Do you want to receive pressed down, shaken together, and running over so that your lap is filled? Then give. Those two monumental promises of blessing and generosity from God who is the source of everything, who is the giver of every good and perfect gift, who has the power to get you wealth, who gives you all that you have, those promises from God should make us sacrificially generous.
Now apparently, and we have to say this sadly, but truly, apparently many Christians don't believe those promises. They carry around the idea that they have to protect everything they have and hang on to it. They become hoarders and they become stingy and they become self-indulgent and protective. And it's really a matter of faith. They don't believe the promise of the Word of God or they would give. It's a question of faith. It's a question of trust. It's a question of belief. You either believe it or you don't. If you do, you give because giving is more blessed and giving causes God to give back in greater abundance.
It should be noted, by the way, that for those, however, for whom the motive of promise doesn't work too well, for whom the motive of promise doesn't elicit faith and trust, there is also a command. Luke 6:38 does say, "Give," that's imperative. So it's not just a question of faith, it's a question of obedience. Trust and obey, those are the two keys to Christian living. Believe God's promises and obey His commands and you have both there. The command is give, the promise is He will give in return. Giving then is an issue of faith and obedience. It is an issue of trusting God. It is an issue of believing in His commandments. It is believing that if you give He will give you back in greater measure than you could ever give away, which means you're always replenished. It is also a question of obedience.
In either case, not to give is a sin. It's a sin against God in the sense that you don't trust Him. It's a sin against God in that you don't obey Him. These simple verses ought to be enough to make us line up to give as generously, as magnanimously, as unselfishly, as sacrificially as possible.
Now in the two chapters before us, 2 Corinthians chapters 8 and 9, we're going to see marvelous teaching about this matter of giving. In fact, this is going to be a model for Christian giving, a theology of Christian giving. We're going to meet some believers who both believed God and obeyed God.
Now let me remind you of what we've already done. For four weeks we've been through a little introductory series. Before we talk about giving we wanted to teach a little bit about what the Bible says about money. So we laid a foundation. We talked about the morality of money, the love of money, the right to money, the acquiring of money and the use of money. And we saw what the Bible taught about all of that and this morning we come to the series in 2 Corinthians 8 and 9 on the giving of money...the giving of money. And everything we've learned up to this point is foundation we will build on and we'll build a theology of Christian giving...a theology of Christian giving.
Let me read you the first three verses of chapter 8 and then we'll talk about some introductory aspects. "Now, brethren, we wish to make known to you the grace of God which has been given in the churches of Macedonia, that in a great ordeal of affliction their abundance of joy and their deep poverty overflowed in the wealth of their liberality, for I testified that according to their ability and beyond their ability they gave of their own accord, or their own will." That introduces us to two chapters about giving, Christian giving.
Now at the outset let me make some things clear and we're going to deal with some introductory things that I find absolutely fascinating in setting up an understanding of this text. At the very outset we must remind you that believers early on gave to the church. They gave to the support of the church basically in two ways generally.
First of all, they gave that the leaders might be supported. They gave in order that the leaders might be supported, that is Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, those who were responsible for leading, serving, working in the church. And they no doubt supported those who worked alongside them.
We find that, for example, in 1 Corinthians chapter 9. Paul already having addressed this aspect of giving to the Corinthians themselves and to all of us, listen to what he says in 1 Corinthians 9 and verse 6. He's talking about his own ministry, his own apostleship, his own work, his own labor and the labor of those who are with him, Barnabas and others who traveled and served with him who were a part of his ministry team. And in verse 6 he says, "Do only Barnabas and I not have a right to refrain from working?" Look, are we the only people who should be supported? "Who at any time serves is a soldier at his own expense? Nobody. A soldier serves his government, his government supports him. Who plants a vineyard and doesn't eat the fruit of it? Who tends a flock and doesn't use the milk of the flock?"
In other words, he's saying there are certain things that we do that have a living built into them. And verse 8, "I am not speaking these things according to human judgment, am I? Doesn't the law also say these things? For it is written in the law of Moses, `You shall not muzzle the ox while he is threshing.' God is not concerned about oxen, is He?" In other words, God is speaking in an analogy but He's talking about something other than an ox. "Or is He speaking...verse 10...altogether for our sake? Yes, for our sake it was written because the plowman ought to plow in hope and the thresher to thresh in hope of sharing the crops." In other words, the ox who plows should be fed for his plowing. The plowman should enjoy the crop. The thresher the same. There are built into certain functions and certain jobs the reward. And in verse 11 he brings it to its point, "If we sowed spiritual things in you, is it too much if we should reap material things from you?" In other words, you ought to support the preacher, you ought to support the apostles and those who travel with him and those who minister and those who teach and those who lead you.
And down in verse 14 he says it more directly, "So also the Lord directed those who proclaimed the gospel to get their living from the gospel." It certainly was true in the Old Testament economy. The priests received their living from the tithe that the people gave. And so he is saying we support through the church the leaders and teachers that God gives to us.
Galatians 6:6 says the same thing. "Let the one who is taught the Word share all good things with him who teaches." Make sure that all the needs of the teacher are met by those who are the taught. And then in 1 Timothy 5:17 again the same principle, "Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double time. double pay, especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching." Why? "You shall not muzzle the ox while he is threshing and the laborer is worthy of his wages."
So the church had the responsibility as Israel of old did to support its spiritual leadership. So when the people came on the Lord's day they gave for the ongoing support of their elders and pastors and spiritual leaders.
But secondly, they gave for the general population of the church as well, to meet the needs of the people...to meet the needs of the people. Support of the needy was a very, very important aspect in the life of the early church because the early church was filled with poor people, with needy people, with widows, with orphans, with folks who didn't have a lot of resources and they needed to have their needs met. In fact, in 1 Timothy chapter 6, just beyond where we were reading a moment ago, Paul instructs the rich in verse 18 to be generous and ready to share and thus store up treasure in heaven. There was a great need for sharing. There were many people in the church who had needs, many poor people.
Now I give you those two aspects of giving, one for the support of the ministry and leadership of the church, secondly for the support of the people in the church who had need...that was basically why they gave in the early church, those two aspects. And it is still so. We give for the leadership and the support of the staff and those who minister and lead and serve among us, including our missionaries around the world. And we give also to include the facilities we have. Of course, the early church didn't have that. They met outdoors. They met at various homes. They met in the temple ground, in public places. We give for the support of the life of the church and we give to care for those who have needs. That too an important part of the church and in some parts of the world today it's as important as it was in the early church, though in America we have most of our needs met because we live in such a flourishing society.
But the principles for giving then have to do with those areas of giving. Give for the support of the church and the meeting of the needs of God's people in the church.
Now as we come to the text of 2 Corinthians 8 and we're going to look at it now, the issue here is meeting the needs of poor saints. The issue here is not supporting the leadership, the issue here is meeting the needs of the poor saints. And, in fact, it has to do not with the Corinthians meeting the needs of poor saints in their own church, apparently they were already doing that, but the Corinthians meeting the needs of poor saints in other churches. In fact, in one particular church and that is the church at Jerusalem. In chapters 8 and 9 Paul is endeavoring to get the Corinthians to make significant generous gifts toward the poor saints in the Jerusalem church. That's the issue here. But what comes out of this is a general pattern for all Christian giving. It wouldn't matter what the issue was, or what the request was, or to what church the money was directed, or for what purpose, you see here the heart of giving...the heart and soul of Christian giving, a theology of Christian giving. But here the specific issue is the church in Jerusalem and its poor saints.
Now let me tell you a little bit about the church in Jerusalem. It had many, many poor Christians, many in great need. From its beginning, you remember, on the day of Pentecost, the church had to face the problem of extreme poverty among its people. It was as poor as poor could possibly get. It was not an upper class church. It was not a yuppie church, to borrow current terminology. It was an impoverished congregation of people. And I'll tell you why. There were three causes, very important as a background so you understand this.
Cause number one was that the church was populated by pilgrims. That is people who had made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the celebration of Pentecost. Pentecost was a Jewish feast that followed forty days after Passover. And you know, from knowing a little bit of Jewish background that the Jews liked to migrate or to pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the great religious festivals. They came not only from around the land of Israel itself, but many of them came from all over the place where Jews had been scattered in what was known as the Diaspora or the Dispersion. There were Jews scattered all over the Gentile world. They were called Hellenistic, hellene, meaning nations or Gentiles. They were called Hellenistic Jews. They were Jews scattered in Gentile parts of the world. Whenever there was a big festival in Jerusalem, they migrated or they pilgrimaged to Jerusalem for that very event.
We are introduced to these Hellenistic Jews right away on the day of Pentecost in Acts chapter 2. The Holy Spirit comes, you remember, and the hundred and twenty in the upper room began to speak, they spoke in languages, they spoke the wonderful works of God and it immediately says that everybody heard them in their own language...Parthians, verse 9, Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, the districts of Libya around Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs heard them in their own languages. Now that just gives you an idea of where the pilgrims came from, all over the world they traversed into Jerusalem for this great event. And there they were, all these pilgrims gathering for this tremendous Pentecost feast.
What happened? Three thousand people were converted on the day of Pentecost. Listen, many of them were these pilgrims. Over in chapter 4 and verse 4, five thousand men are converted. Probably additional women converted. Now the church is in the thousands and many of them are these pilgrims.
Now think of it, this...very simple to understand, there was only one church in the whole world and that was the church at Jerusalem and it was only a matter of a few weeks old. There was no other place to go in the world to go to church. There weren't any other Christians in the world. There weren't any other apostles in the world. They had just been born into the church, the church itself had been born. They had just received the powerful expressions of the Holy Spirit. Miracles were a constant daily experience at the hands of the apostles. There was a joy and a euphoria and a bliss and an excitement and an enthusiasm that caused them not to want to go home. There was nothing to go home to. No church, no miracles, no apostles, no teachers, no nothing. Miracles is a daily occurrence. Joy and exuberance, meeting every day from house to house and in the temple, rejoicing and praising God and eating and celebrating communion and rejoicing in the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the birth of the church, the only Christians, the only fellowship, the only apostles. They didn't go back.
Well when they had come as pilgrims they stayed in inns. But they couldn't afford to stay there permanently, and so they would have to vacate the inns they stayed in. Or they stayed with Jewish relatives, people from their family heritage. But they couldn't stay there any longer because now they had become Christians and that made it very, very difficult because now they would be alienated from their families. And though they were outsiders staying there and should have been treated with hospitality, once they became Christians they would no longer be received into those Jewish homes and so they would be dispossessed and where would they go? Well they would have to go live with believers. And so they would have to move in with the Jewish believers who lived in the city of Jerusalem and its surrounding villages.
Well that little band of Jewish believers trying to absorb all of these thousands and thousands of converted pilgrims made a valiant effort to do this but it was no easy task. It got very complex. As chapter 6 of Acts tells us, there were many Hellenistic widows, that means that there were many pilgrim widows who had come in, converted to Christ and stayed. And I'll tell you, you can be sure that the people who stayed tended to be the poor people, the widows, the orphans and the people who had nothing to go home to. Maybe many of them had become Jewish slaves in the Roman Empire, they wouldn't go back to their slavery. The people who would go back would be people who had an estate, who had a business, who had a very important job in government somewhere who had great responsibility who operated their own environment. Those people would go back to what was pressing for them. And so those would stay, most of those who would stay would be the poor who had nothing to return to, and so they're all really there on the hands of the Jerusalem church...the poor, the widowed pilgrims who stayed and had nothing to return to.
James chapter 2 and verse 5 says "Listen, my beloved brethren," here's another problem, "did not God choose the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom?" When God went about to choose His own He chose mostly the poor. First Corinthians 1:26 to 28 said, "Not many noble, not many wise, He chose the base and the ignoble." And so the church was populated by poor people. He came to reach the poor, to preach the gospel to the poor. He said that Himself, Jesus did.
So that's the first reason that the church in Jerusalem was extremely impoverished. The people were poor and now they had to take on the full support of all these pilgrims in their midst and it made it very, very difficult. In fact, they had so much difficulty just finding these Hellenistic widows that in Acts 6 they had to pick out seven men and put them over the responsibility so none of these new widows who had recently come in and were pilgrims got missed in the allocation of daily food. That church had to buy the food and prepare the food and distribute the food to all these widows.
There's a second component that made them poor. The church was made up of pilgrims, and secondly, persecuted Jews. Jerusalem is the holy city. There's no question about it. And it is the most sacred place on the earth to devout Jews. It is there that they are more concerned about their religion than anywhere else. It is there that their exclusivism reaches its pinnacle, their legalism, and their animosity toward anyone who rejects Judaism. You can see it even to this very day. And if anything, it was even more fierce in this time. And the people who were converted from among the inhabitants of Jerusalem would be immediately rejected, even as they are today when someone in an orthodox Jewish family in Jerusalem comes to faith in Jesus Christ, they are immediately rejected, they are alienated. They would become the victims of hostile hatred, social alienation, excommunication from the synagogue, complete rejection, they would lose their businesses, they would lose their jobs, they would lose their source of income, everything would disappear. They would be disowned by their family. And so what you had there was a whole lot of pilgrims with nothing and a whole lot of dispossessed Jews who had nothing either.
According to John chapter 15 our Lord Jesus told them to expect this. In John 15:20, "Remember the word that I said to you, a slave is not greater than his master, if they persecuted Me they will also persecute you." And down in chapter 16 verse 2, "They will make you outcasts from the synagogue." That's what they'll do and that's what they did.
And in Matthew when Jesus was promising in chapter 19 that His disciples would receive the kingdom some day, He also promised them that many of them would have to leave houses, brothers, sisters, mother, father, children, farms for My namesake...Matthew 19:29. It would cost them everything. So you can see that the poverty is compounded now because even the Jewish believers who live at Jerusalem lose everything.
Now let me throw in a third component...the Roman economy...the Roman economy. The economy of Jerusalem and the area around Jerusalem, the area of Palestine was as poor as any part of the Roman Empire. And don't for a minute think that the Roman Empire was wealthy. Rome was fine, but the Empire was poor, very poor. And it was made even poorer by the Romans who managed to extract everything out of all of the territories they occupied for their own aggrandizement. The economy of Jerusalem and the surrounding area was as poor as any in the Roman Empire. To add further to that, not only did they take natural resources, not only did they take the products of those countries and use them for Roman enterprises, but the