Corinthians chapter 9 verses 6 through 15. So I say to you here the word of God, the point is this, whoever so sparingly will also reap sparingly. And whoever so's boundtively will also reap boundtively. Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. 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 as it is written. He has distributed freely. He has given to the poor his righteousness endures forever. He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sewing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. For the ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints, but is also overflowing in many thanksgiving to God. By their approval of this service, they will glorify God because of your submission, flowing from your confession of the gospel of Christ and the generosity of your contribution for them and for all others, while they long and pray for you because of the surpassing grace of God upon you. Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift. Let us pray. Father, I pray that as we continue this week to look at stewardship that you would in fact open our eyes to see not only our need to be good stewards, but in fact our need to trust Jesus with all things, most namely our own souls, our own hearts. I pray that you would open the eyes of the blind and the ears of the deaf this very morning. I pray that you be in my head and in my thinking, in my heart and in my understanding and in my mouth and in my speaking. Christ, name we pray these things, amen, amen. You know, it was August, 1995, I read this week, Paul Harvey told the story on his radio show, about a woman who called the Butterball Turkey hotline. Apparently, there is a Butterball hotline. If you have a Butterball Turkey, you can call the hotline and ask them any questions. And the lady called the Butterball Turkey hotline and got the Butterball Answer Man, I guess, on the phone. And she said, we just found a Butterball Turkey in the bottom of our freezer that's been there for 23 years. Is it still edible? And he said, was it frozen solid that whole time? And she said, yes, it has. And he said, well, it's edible, but if I were you, I don't think I'd eat it. And she said, we didn't plan on eating it, we plan on giving it to the church. I was almost afraid to tell that story because I was wondering if it might have been one of you. Most of us, when we think about giving, isn't that how we think about giving? We've got something extra that we don't need. We can't use it. It may be worth something or it may not be worth something. Let's just give it to the church and sort of check it off the list. If nothing else, it helps us declutter our freezer. It's a win-win. Past few weeks or the last week and this week, I'm talking about giving. And if you've been around for a while, every year, I try and preach about giving at least three or four times. And I've noticed, like whenever I do preach about giving, that's when we have an inordinate number of visitors. And so I've decided as a permanent outreach strategy, I'll be preaching on giving every single week for the rest of the year. In reality, we did begin to look at giving last week. And we looked at it through the perspective or from the perspective of Paul's second letter to the Corinthians. If you remember, the first letter to Corinthians at the end of the book, Paul says it's a year prior to this letter. The Jerusalem church is apparently having some kind of hardship, some kind of financial hardship, they're being persecuted. And they need some resources. And so Paul decides that he's going to have a capital campaign or raise money from the Gentile churches. And so at the end of first Corinthians, in chapter 16, Paul tells them, I'm going to basically see you in a year, put aside something every week, and when I come to see you, I will collect the money. Now, something, apparently you've got it, it's sort of a mystery. Apparently Titus was in Corinth between the time Paul, they made a commitment that they would give something. And when Paul was going to show up, and he came back and told Paul, you know, about that Corinthians collection thing. And Paul said, yeah, are they ready? And Titus, yeah, I don't think so. They don't look like they're really getting on it. I know they committed to a certain amount, and they committed to a certain, something to give, but they don't really look like they're doing it. And you're going to show up, and I just feel like, you know, maybe you ought to write them a letter. Maybe you ought to let them know that you're going to be coming, and that might spur them on a little bit. And so Paul does, he writes them about a number of things. And however, in second Corinthians, he takes two whole chapters to write them about this collection that he's making for Jerusalem, for the Jerusalem churches. And he does so because on one hand, he could have just said, hey, I'm coming to see you guys, you better be ready. And I could have been at real short letter. And said he does tell them that, but in the process, he gives them all of these sort of motivations for giving, why they should be giving, why they can give, what giving is all about. And that is where we are learning about giving as well. Remember, he talks to them first about giving from the perspective of the Macedonians. The Macedonians were apparently very poor church, and that would be churches in Philippi and Thessalonica. And yet Paul says they gave over the generosity overflowed from them. And so what do we learn from them? The first thing we learned from them is that all giving, he says, let us remember the grace of God shown to the Macedonians. So in other words, when you think about giving, the first thing you got to think about is do you realize that everything that I have is a result of God's grace. Everything. And when I say everything, I mean everything. We tend to think, well okay, you know, there by the grace of God go I. Do you think all of not just the material possessions that you have were given to you by God, but even your health is yours by the grace of God. Your intellect is yours by the grace of God. The fact that you have the ability to save and the ability to earn money, that's all comes to you by grace. Do you realize that? That's the first thing you need to realize when you think about giving. The second thing you need to realize when you think about giving is that God owns everything. We've learned that from the Macedonians. They gave themselves completely to the Lord. They basically said you own it. And if you want to experience freedom in your life, begin to look at your stuff and say God owns all my stuff. And if God owns it, then it really doesn't matter. I mean, I need to take care of it, but on one hand on the other hand, if I lose it or if I give it away, that's okay because it's God's. I didn't lose anything. I'm just a channel for things. And I told you the story last week about my pickup truck in college. The most freeing moment of my life is when I went to college and everyone wanted to borrow my pickup truck. And I didn't want it to get dented up. And I started for some somehow learning. Maybe I heard some sermons about giving and realized that everything belonged to God, including this truck. And so at some point, people asked to borrow my truck and I just throw them the keys. They said, you're just going to let me borrow. You're just going to give me your truck. That's God's truck. Now if I were you, I'd be real careful with God's truck. I'm just saying. But by the end of college and seminary as well, that was the most dented up, ugly truck. We ended up driving it out here to Seattle as well. But it was a great truck because I never had to worry about it. How much of your stuff do you have? Do you feel that way about it? I mean, we're all in process. I told us to talk to my men's small group this week. I said, you know, I give you my truck. Now, I don't know if I'd let you borrow any of my woodworking tools right now. So we're all in process. But when you think about your stuff, your home, your cars, do you realize that God owns all of it? The thing we learned from the Macedonians is that they're giving me a sacrifice in their lifestyle. In other words, if you're giving to be up to sort of biblical proportions or biblical standards, it probably needs to hurt some. You probably need to feel it. When you give or you're just giving sort of wrote out of, you know, sort of wrote writing a check or do you feel it? Do you sit down and do you say, honey, how much you think we can give this year? And then you write the check and you sort of win. That's how you know you're on the right track. If you're giving sacrificially. And then the biggest motivation Paul gave for giving to the Corinthians was this. It was simply the gospel of Jesus. He said, now remember the grace of the Lord Jesus, who though he was rich, he became poor for your sakes. And through his poverty, you have become rich. We talked about not only is the stuff we have reliant upon the grace of Jesus, but even our very souls that Jesus has saved us from our sins and given us the righteousness of God. It's ours. We possess it and we own it. And Paul, the last thing he says to them, he basically says, finish what you started. He says, you committed a certain amount to this Jerusalem collection and now you need to finish what you started. And then the very next thing he says is what I'm going to call an administrative bridge before we get to the text we're looking at today. Notice I skipped a big chunk in there. And basically what Paul tells them next is how the collection is going to be taken and why the collection is going to be taken. He says, how the collection is going to be taken. He says, I'm sending three guys to you. I'm sending Titus, who is my partner and your pastor, they love Titus. And he says, I'm also sending a guy who we don't know his name. He says the one who is famous among the churches for preaching the gospel. A lot of commentators think that's actually Luke, the doctor who wrote the gospel of Luke and who wrote the book of Acts. And then finally he says, we're sending the brother who's trustworthy and all things. In other words, we're sending an accountant. It sounds like with us. And those men would be appointed by the churches. They would be appointed by the churches. You have someone representing Paul and someone representing the other churches. And so basically a built-in financial accountability. And Paul says we're doing this so that we'll be above reproach in the eyes of God, but also in the eyes of man. And then Paul, the next thing he talks about is why he's sending the three guys. And that's where Paul, if you didn't know better, you would almost think he was being a little manipulative. Because let me read to you what he says to them. He says in chapter 9, verse 1, he says, now it is superfluous for me to write you about this ministry of the saints where I know your readiness of which I boast about you to the people of Macedonia saying that Akhaya has been ready since last year in your zeal has stirred up most of them. Okay, so think about this. He's saying, I know that writing this letter is unnecessary, superfluous. I know I don't need to read it, but I wanted to remind you that the reason that the Macedonians gave so generously in the reason that the Macedonians had such zeal to participate in this collection is because I told them how zealous you were. In other words, Paul saying the reason the Macedonians were so generous is because I brag to them about how generous you would be when we showed up. And now I'm getting ready to show up and I'm going to have some Macedonians with me. And it would be really humiliating for me and for you if you didn't show yourselves to be generous. I don't think he's trying to be manipulative, but he's just sort of just saying. So I'm going to be there and Macedonians are going to be with me. And if you don't give, like you said you were going to give, it's probably going to be real embarrassing for everyone involved. And he said the reason I'm sending these guys ahead is so that when I get there, it will seem as if you gave willingly rather than having it exacted from you. In other words, when Paul gets there with the Macedonians, they can celebrate what the Corinthians have given rather than Paul have to sort of, you know, cajole them or sort of pull it out of them. And that leads us to our text now because after that, you know, at each point, Paul sort of takes you to a point in this particular portion of the letter where you either feel guilty or you feel something. So he says, I'm not compelled to give, but if I don't give, I sort of am wrong. What is it? And the last thing he says here, right, in verse 5, he says, so I thought it necessary to urge brothers to go ahead to you to arrange an advance for the gift you have promised so that it may be ready as a willing gift, not as an exaction. And then after that, what does he go from there? He sort of bottom lines it. He basically tells them why the gift that is, that they are going to give is not going to be an exaction, why they shouldn't give it as if they were compelled about it. And we're going to look at three things this morning, if you're a note taker. The first thing we'll look at, the first point is simply the bottom line, what's the bottom line to giving in this case and in all cases. And then the second thing we'll look at is the reason we can give generously according to Paul, at least. And the third thing we'll look at is the reason we should give generously. So let's look first at the bottom line. Verse 6, Paul says, the point is this, whoever so sparingly will also reap sparingly and whoever so's bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion for God loves a cheerful giver. So verse 6 begins, literally Paul saying, here's the bottom line, and you expect some great wisdom, and he gives it, but it's more simple than we thought. He says whoever so sparingly, reap sparingly, whoever so's generously, reaps generously. That's common sense, is it not? If a farmer spreads a lot of seed, he can expect a greater harvest. If a farmer spreads very little seed, he can expect a very little harvest. And Paul says, if you sow sparingly, you're going to reap sparingly, if you sow generously, you will reap generously. And what's Paul getting at here? Well, on one hand, I think he's getting at the point that giving is by faith. In this agriculture metaphor, a farmer always sows by faith. Does he not? He throws the seed out there, and then it's up that he has to depend everything else that is completely out of his control is what makes these seeds grow. I mean, he might fertilize them, but it might not rain. I mean, duck kind of stuff. So he sows by faith for one. But also, we're going to find out later, he sows what he's been given to sow, and the more he sows, the more he will be given to sow. In other words, this is a very abused passage. If you look at the sort of stereotypical TV preachers, if you want to be wealthy, then give us money. And if you give us money, that's planting a faith seed, and then God will bless you five times over, and that kind of thing. I don't know a great story this week where a guy was talking about a ministry that had sent him a letter that said, if all of our viewers give us $50 each, then we will have all the money we need for our ministry. And you will be blessed five times over. And he wrote the ministry back and said, it seems like a better fundraising idea for you than would be for you to send me $50. And by giving me $50, you'll be blessed five times over, and your ministry will be five times as big as it is now. So it can't be that, right? Paul is just giving a general principle here that everyone would have nodded their head to, sort of like you are, you reap sparingly, you sow sparingly, you reap sparingly, you sow generously, you reap generously. And then he sort of narrows it down, and Paul does something interesting here, because when you read through Paul's letters, he almost never uses the term saint in the singular. In fact, I think he never does. Whenever you read the word saint, it's always plural. He's always addressing the church, and in this particular instance, he actually addresses the individual. The very next verse knows what he says. He says in verse seven, each one, each individual must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion for God loves a cheerful giver. So the first thing he says is each one, each individual must give as he has decided in his heart. So that, remember, if you were here last week, talked about the fact that you need a plan, how much of you decided to give? What have you decided to give? Do you sit down at the beginning of the year and say, honey, how much are we going to give this year, or maybe when you hear every once a year, twice a year, when you hear sermons on stewardship, is that when you sit down? At some point you've sat down and you've decided, but he said each one must give, and then he qualifies it. He says not reluctantly and not under compulsion for God loves a cheerful giver. Now, when you begin to think about the two ends of the continuum there, is there any option but cheerfulness? He says, I don't want you to give reluctantly. In other words, you don't sort of grit your teeth and say, I don't want to give it, but I will. On the other hand, he doesn't say, he doesn't want you to give under compulsion to say, I have to give. The elders who are just at my house looking at my tax forms, they're going to tell the old church, we don't do that by the way, but you know what I mean? That somehow you feel under compulsion to give. Well, between those two ends of the continuum, what other option is there? If you're not reluctant and you're not under compulsion, then you must be willing or glad to do it. Now, why would you want to be glad to do it? Well, one of the reasons you want to be glad is because of all the things we talked about before that you know everything is by grace. You know that God owns everything. But you also know that the more you sow, the more you reap. Paul talks about that in a little while. And what's the point there? Is that all of us are sort of like, you're either a funnel of grace or you are a bucket of grace. Either grace flows through you or you just receive and receive and receive and receive the problem is when things flow into a bucket eventually, it just oftentimes just stops. Whereas we're designed to be channels of grace. And I've thought about this this week. It reminded me that I thought about when I was a sales rep for Eli Lilly. You know, all sales rep are competing against other companies for sure, but you're also competing against other sales reps in your company. And when you're in your competing against sales reps in your company, what you're oftentimes competing for is resources that the company is willing to give you. So in other words, your manager will get several thousand dollars each quarter that she can give to whoever she wants. I had my manager as a woman to give whoever she wants in order to put on programs and other things that are going to ultimately make you more successful. And so the more successful you are and the more you sell the more resources you're going to get in order to sell more. And so now imagine if you're your God and from his perspective, all every one of us, if you're Christian at least, are called to be a steward of all the things that God has given you. And that God is going to give you a certain amount. And if you're God, who would you give more stuff to? The person who is going to use it, how you ask them to, the person who's going to produce more generosity or the person who wasn't. That's where Paul is moving here. You see, he says you should be willing to give cheerfully. But let me tell you why you can give cheerfully. Because God, the more generous that you are, the more God will give you so that you can be more generous. God is in the business of generosity. God is in the business of giving. And the more you and I give, the more God is going to give us, not in order that we may expand our own personal wealth, but the more he will give us in order to give. Let's look at what he says next. In verse 8, Paul says, and God is able to make all grace about you so that having all sufficiency and all things at all times, you may have found in every good work. He has distributed freely. He has given to the poor his righteousness and doors forever. He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for selling and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way. So what's the first, did you notice the sort of universal that Paul used there in verse 8? How is it that you can be a cheerful giver? Some Paul say that with a straight face because it sounds counterintuitive that you would be cheerful giver and yet Paul says, here's how it's because you realize that God is able to make all grace about you so that having all sufficiency or contentment in all things at all times, you may have found in every good work as it is written. He has distributed freely. He has given to the poor his righteousness and doors forever. So on one hand, Paul says the reason you can be confident in that you can give generously is because you know that God is able to meet all of your needs that he can show you all grace at all times and all situations make in all contentment and all sufficiency so that you can be generous in everything that you do. So what makes that possible? What makes that possible is the very next thing that Paul does. He quotes Psalm 111 says God has distributed freely. He gives gifts to the poor, his righteousness and doors forever. The reason Paul can say that God is going to do all these things is because it's the same thing we talked about last week and it's this thing we call the gospel of Jesus Christ. You read through the Old Testament. If you read through the Old Testament, there is one thing that is constantly and consistently linked with the righteousness of God and that is his care for the poor. Do a study on it. In fact, when you read the prophets, the prophets are generally upset or they're communicating God's anger for one of two reasons or both and one reason is injustice. And the other reason is that Israel or in our case, the church is not caring for the poor. Almost all of the prophetic books talk about that. And what does it mean? But it says his righteousness and doors forever or that his righteousness ultimately distributes to the poor. And it's just this. In the Old Testament, this word righteousness is a little bit hard to pin down sometimes. And at the end of the day, probably you could also translate it as something like covenant loyalty or covenant faithfulness. In other words, the reason that God distributes to the poor is because he is faithful to his covenant. Now, what does that have to do with us? What has everything to do with us? Because you and I are poor, maybe not materially but or poor spiritually. And God has provided for us as well. And he's provided for us on the basis of his covenant faithfulness. In other words, you and I have not been faithful to God's covenant. We've sinned. We've not been obedient in everything that we've done. But there is one who came who is completely loyal, completely faithful to God's covenant. And that is Jesus. And for the person who trusts in Jesus, you will be credited with his covenant faithfulness. God will give it to you by faith. So God's righteousness now transfers to you. And what is it's what's supposed to happen next that our righteousness will work itself out how Paul could have said anything here. And yet he says in this particular case, that our righteousness that we receive from Jesus works itself out in generosity. Notice what he says next. He says, he who supplies the seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for selling and increase what the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way. So what does it mean to live out this thing called the gospel? What does it mean to be what you are? What does it mean to live out the righteousness of Christ? Among other things, it means that you are becoming and you are being more and more generous because that is what God does. So that's how we can be. We can because God shows us all grace at all times and all situations for all things. And in every situation, he enables us to be generous. And the more we are generous, the more he will enable us to be generous. Now why should I give? I can give because God is going to provide me everything. But why should I give? And Paul gives us some incredibly lofty things here when he talks about why we should give. He didn't say why we shouldn't and there are lots of reasons why we shouldn't. In fact, the reasons we shouldn't are almost the exact mere opposites of why we should listen to why we should. He says at the end of verse 11, he says, I'll read the whole thing. He says you will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. For the ministry of this service not only is not only supplying the needs of the saints but is also overflowing in many thanksgiving to God. He says by their approval of this service, they will glorify God because of your submission and the generosity of your contribution for them and for all the others. This is backwards from the way the world looks at things. He says why should you be generous? He says besides meeting the needs of the saints, your generosity will issue forth in thanksgiving to God. Now why is that so backwards? Because a lot of people give for the sole purpose of hearing someone else say thank you. You know there are people that I've known in the course of my life where they give you something and you almost get the sense that they're just waiting, they can't wait for you to say thank you. And if you don't say thank you quick enough they get almost they get upset and they sort of let you know about it. Well where they really giving things, if you see if you believe that everything has been given to you by God, do you really ever expect people to be thankful to you? I do but should you really know because anything that you've given to someone else has just been given to you by God and so you should never expect thanks. Now should you say thanks I think you should on the other hand, you don't need to receive thanks all the time because you know that what you've given has come from God and gone to that person. But there's something else is that through your generosity Paul says to the Corinthians it's going to give people in a different place than you at a different geographical location at a different spiritual state are going to give thanks because of your submission to the gospel and your willingness to give. That's huge. For example when I went to Ethiopia here are people I've thought about Ethiopia a lot and you know we don't we don't live in the most fancy house in the world. But I wonder sometimes if I would almost be embarrassed to bring some of the Ethiopian pastors to my house because compared to how they live I live in a palace. It's opulent. I mean it's drips and thing. At least it's not corrugated steel. And I did a pastor's conference for all these Ethiopian pastors and one of the most moving things in my ministry ever is when they the pastor's conference was over and they all stood around me and put laid hands on me and sung. That's what I want to do. I want to thank God. I want to thank God. You know those are pretty big. They could have said thank you to me and they pat me on the back but to hear them singing praises changed me. And so the reason we give the reason we're generous ultimately is so that people that aren't just within our geographical reach or the sound of our voice they also can give thanks to God. And I think I've told you before if you were here when I came back from Ethiopia it has bothered me ever since that in most churches in the United States and then this one as well almost all of our giving almost all of our money goes to taking care of ourself almost all of it. And every year since I've been here there have been sort of these little cat fights every year because people are arguing about what should be cut and what shouldn't be cut and what should be spent what shouldn't be spent. And there's almost no talking about you know if we if we didn't have a mortgage if we didn't have these bills we could be ushering Thanksgiving to God from all over the world but instead we choose to fight about small things which ultimately end up taking care of ourself. I don't know any other way to say it then just to say that's wrong. I don't know what to do about it necessarily. Next week you have 13 or 14 people going through Crown Ministries course in order to start training but there's a sense in which do we see ourselves not just as stewards we tend to give because there's there's a need you know gosh the church's lights are going to get turned out or we need to pay this but we need to have a greater goal for giving when you think of your giving do you think by by this check that I'm writing by these things that I'm writing. Do I actually envision people from around the globe or people from around my neighborhood giving thanks to God and singing praises because of my generosity or do I think I just need to do it because you know that we preach about stewardship again and I feel guilty. I don't want you to give out a guilt we need to give because we have this great vision for the gospel and what Jesus is going to do in people's lives both in our neighborhood and around the world is that where you are that's where we need to be. And we need to quit bickering about taking care of ourselves and get past that what's the last thing Paul tells them let me read it to you. He says that they'll glorify God because of your submission and he says verse 14 he says while they long for you and pray for you because of the surpassing grace of God upon you. What's interesting is he basically says that there's a quid pro quo going on here. That you wealthier Corinthians are going to give money to help the people in Jerusalem but what you don't understand at least until I'm telling you right now is that by your gift they not only thank God for you but they actually pray for you. In the United States we tend to think we're just such rugged individualists and we think we just need to get together and have a meeting and decide what we can do about our finances or decide what we can do about this and we're all engineers or all this or that we can just fix it. You know we know how to budget and we know how to cut and we know how to do this and very little prayer goes on fortunately among the poor arguing about money isn't really a big deal. I know I grew up poor so what do you do you spend a lot more time in relationship and you spend a lot more time praying and Paul says that's what you get out of it. Your generosity ushers forth in prayer. And so the question is are you going to give generously whether you get here or somewhere else it's a question between you and God and your own heart but I'll just end with this and you think about how you feel in these situations. You know yesterday was a big event for me every now and then you you know when your kids are growing up you get to you can watch a movie that you thought they were too young for before. And you think well you know at some point they're going to get to watch Tombstone with me or at some point. Well yesterday my youngest daughter and I the whole family eventually started watching we decided it was okay for her to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer, one of my favorite movies of all time. As I was watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer it made me think about my sermon today because I'm always thinking about my sermon and that made me think about every superhero movie that I've ever seen and then I started zeroing in on Spider-Man 2. Right that's how the ADD mind works by the way. What did I think about Spider-Man 2? Well if you think about it every superhero movie you've ever seen or if you've read comic books someone has given a special power if you're Spider-Man you have Spidey sense webs you know you can crime and watch you do all these things and if they don't use that power to benefit other people how does that make you feel upset doesn't it. Why because you look and you say look at all that person has been given yet they're not using it for the sake of humanity. Remember Peter Uncle Ben's words to Peter at the end of Spider-Man 1 with great power comes great responsibility and in Spider-Man 2 he decides he's sick of it. I'm sick of being there for everyone else I'm sick of give give give give give I'm gonna live for Peter Parker and he stops being Spider-Man and that whole time it's about a third of the movie it's sickening. Why because he Spider-Man and only he can do these things he has been given gifts in order to help other people and he's not doing it and the interesting thing is not only was he not doing it but the longer he went without exercising the gifts God had given him. The more diminished they became until he got to a point where he had no spidey powers anymore. What's I got to do with you it has everything to do with you because if you were in this room and you are a citizen of the United States if you're a member of this church what that means is relative to the rest of the world you are extremely wealthy and you have been given incredible gifts spiritually and financially. And if you feel like you know it sort of works you that Spider-Man doesn't use the gifts that God had given him what does it make you feel like when you consider that about yourself. Are you using the gifts that God has given you in order to to help out other folks whether again whether you give here or give somewhere else God has given you all of these things and the reason he has given them to you is in order that you might give them away to others. And the last thing Paul says here is he roots it again in the gospel he says thanks be to God for his indescribable gift. Fortunately John's gospel was able to describe that he says for God so love the world what that he gave his only son think about that let's pray. Father I pray that as we consider stewardship and we consider giving that you have make us better stewards that you would make us willing and able to use the gifts that you have given us in order to benefit those around us. In Christ's name we pray these things amen and amen.