All right, well, if you have a Bible, please turn with me to Romans, chapter 11, we're going to look at Romans 11, 33 through 36 really as a jumping off point as we begin a new sermon series this morning that will go for about five weeks. If you're using one of the Bibles that we have underneath the chair in front of you, I believe it's on page 12-05, 1205. Here now, God's holy and true Word from Romans, chapter 11, starting in verse 33, the Apostle Paul writes, Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are His judgments and how inscrutable His ways for who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been His counselor, or who has given a gift to Him that He might be repaid. For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things to Him be glory forever, amen. So word of the Lord, let's pray once again, Father, we do thank you for the power of your Word and for its clarity. We thank you for the gospel and we ask, Lord, that as we look into this beautiful attribute of yours, your generosity, that we would see the beauty of the promises of the gospel of Christ, shine even brighter in our hearts that they would transform us even more into His likeness we just praise you, Lord, that you gather us together to worship you and to hear from you from your Word. And so we pray that your Word would do its thing this morning and that your Holy Spirit would be in us to change us and mold us and free us from our idols and from the things that we trust instead of trusting you, would you graciously peel our trust off of all things other than you and plant it firmly onto you and onto the finished work of our King, the Lord Jesus. Father, we thank you and pray that as we begin this series, that it would be a series that brings great glory to your name and that is powerful in the life of our church and most of all, Lord, that the name of Christ would become even sweeter to us and heard by even more people in our community and even around the world as you work in us to equip us to take the gospel to our neighbors and to the nations for it is in Jesus' name that we pray. Amen. Well I am excited to begin our new sermon series this morning. It's called The Generosity of God and the Freedom to Live Generously. And we are going to be in this sermon series for five weeks but I do want you to know that we're actually going to have a theme of generosity that will really run throughout the ministry year from now through June. We'll actually have another sermon series on some other aspects of generosity in the spring. We'll also, after this particular five weeks, we'll jump into a book of the Old Testament that will take us through to the Advent season but this idea, this theme, this concept of generosity will return to it a number of times this year. In the past, as a church, sometimes we focus on all sorts of things and we're trying to narrow that and just continue to focus on one thing. So it's going to be an interesting year, I believe, as we look into the beauty of the generosity of God and how that sets us free to live generously. Upon the or on the advice of experts, I want to begin by addressing what might be an elephant in the room. And what that may be is the fact that often when we hear a pastor or a church talking about generosity, our minds might go exactly towards, well this is just about giving. We're just talking about me giving more to the church. And I want to say that that's actually, it's much bigger than that. The concept of generosity, the ability that we have to be generous as we see the generosity of God is way bigger than what we might be giving to our local church. And so I want to really make sure that we emphasize the fact that what this is really about is gospel transformation. This is really about us growing spiritually and trusting God more deeply. And the pastors and I, when we were planning this sermon series months ago, one of the conversations we had was how important it would be for everyone to know that this really is about us growing spiritually. And it's really not just about giving. And so what we decided and what we prayed about, what we feel led to do and to say is that if during this series or even during this year, if you do feel God moving in your heart to lead you to live more generously, you are free to direct that generosity anywhere you want. It does not need to come here. That's a key thing for us to understand. You could direct that generosity to a missionary. You could give to RUF. You could give to one of the parent church ministries in our city here. You could give to one of your neighbors who's in need. And the reality is generosity covers way more than just financial giving anyway. It covers a whole lot of things. Generosity is actually something that God doesn't want from us. It's something He wants for us. That's a key thing for us to understand at the outset. It's that generosity is not really something God wants from us as much as it is something that He wants for us. He wants us to feel the freedom that we actually have to be generous with our time, with our talents, with our treasures, with our testimony. He wants us to feel free to give as we feel led to give. And I want you to think about this. It's just really it's about joy. It's about seeing the joy in becoming more generous. I think a lot of you probably know people that you would say are very generous and having just recently received a very generous gift from a friend not too long ago. One of the things you notice about generous people is they're not cranky about it. Like if you get a gift from somebody, it's not like they're saying just take it and get out of my face. That's not how they react. It's not how they treat you. It's like they're overflowing with joy. Like they're having more fun than you are receiving it, right? This is something that God wants for us, not from us. That one author says if there's one behavior that consistently surprises people, it is the act of generosity. And it is surprising. When somebody does something out of pure generosity, it's always kind of like oh wow, it's surprising because they're not obligated to do whatever it is they did or not maybe not obligated to give you something that they just decided to give you out of generosity. So what is generosity? That's an important thing for us to ask and here's a definition that we can maybe come back to from time to time in this series. Generosity is at its core a lifestyle in which we share all that we have are and ever will become as a demonstration of God's love and a response to God's grace. That kind of sounds a little radical if you think about it. We share everything we have. And maybe this definition shouldn't make us think that we should right now just give everything away that we possibly have. I don't think anybody's ready to do that anyway. But seeing that the willingness or even the joy of sharing or giving things whenever we feel like it is a key factor in understanding generosity, understanding what we're looking at. See, generosity is actually really at the very heart of the gospel, if you think about it. The generosity of God is at the very heart of the gospel. It's at the very nature of who God is because God is in no way shape or form obligated to do anything for us. He wasn't even obligated to create us. Even that is out of generosity. And he's definitely not obligated in any way shape or form to love us or redeem us or forgive us or give us faith in Christ. Give us the gift of repentance. All of these things that we receive that reconcile us to God are out of pure generosity. He doesn't owe us anything. He's not obligated to do anything for us. And so we see that the sweetest thing in our lives, our salvation is out of his generosity just like we see in the most famous Bible verse in the Bible, John 3.16, for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him might not perish but have eternal life. And so you really, you can't even understand the gospel unless we can understand what generosity is and how beautiful it is when people give when they're not obligated to. And you know, that's how this series, how the word of God through this series I think is going to really impact us. Seeing his generosity, seeing the generosity of God, I think it's going to deepen our understanding of the gospel of grace and then bring about change in our lives, change that I think will be visible as more of us begin to do things out of generosity and look for opportunities to be generous. And think if we could narrow it down to one short answer, why are we studying this? Here's what it is, that we might be transformed by the reality of God's immeasurable generosity toward us in Christ. Okay? That is the primary reason that we might be transformed by the reality of God's immeasurable generosity toward us in Christ. And we're going to celebrate, we want to celebrate any and always in which God increases the generosity of the people of this church. So if you do begin to feel more generous, if you do something and it's something outside of the church, amen, praise the Lord, tell us because we want to celebrate. We want to celebrate with you as God works in all of our hearts. So with those things said, we're going to shift gears now and really kind of focus in on what we're going to talk about the rest of the morning, the rest of our time in the word. And that would be this, that God is the creator, sustainer and ultimate owner of all things. Now that would be a good place to start because if we're going to understand how generous God is, we've got to understand that he owns absolutely everything. Okay? So we're going to talk about how he's the creator, the sustainer and the ultimate owner of all things. If you're making an outline, we can pull it right out of what Paul says in Romans 1136, which I read moments ago, he says, for from him and through him and to him are all things from him, through him and to him. Those are the things that we're going to be focusing on today if you're making an outline. So let's jump in and we'll be looking at a couple different places in Scripture. I'll put them on the screen. You don't have to flip there. We're going to be all over the place today, not really walking through a passage as much as like we do a lot here. But let's let's begin and talk about how everything we have is from God, which every time I say that it sounds like well done. We know that, but I wonder how often we actually think about it. Look at this. Deuteronomy 10-14, and this is just a handful of so many verses that just scream this truth. Okay? Deuteronomy 10-14 says, behold to the Lord God, belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth, with all that is in it. In Nehemiah 9 verse 6, speaking to God, Nehemiah says, you have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their hosts, the earth, and all that is on it, the seas, and all that is in them. And then, of course, Job 41 verse 11, in the book of Job, there's a point where there's a dialogue between God and between Job, and God is speaking at this point. And here's what he says, who has first given to me that I should repay him? Whatever is under the whole heaven is mine. Okay? That is an incredibly powerful statement. Here's what he's saying. The God owns absolutely everything. Everything is from him. He doesn't owe anyone anything. Never has. Okay? He is without any owing. There is no owing in God. And so, whatever we have, then, obviously, if you think about that, I mean, every little thing we have and everything that makes up the things that we have is from God. Look at Psalm 104 14. You cause the grass to grow for the livestock and plants for man to cultivate that he may bring forth food from the earth. Now, here's something interesting. I think that when you are younger and just starting out, maybe if you're a college student or a recent college grad, and a lot of what you have is a hand me down from your sister or from your parents or something like that. You know, it's easy to kind of remember that you, everything you have is basically something that you've received. But I think the older that we get, you've been married for a while, you've made some of your own money, you bought your own couch finally or something like that, you kind of begin to think that this is mine. Like, I bought this thing. And that's just how it resonates in your mind. But what's so interesting, he is Psalm 104 14 and other places and scripture show us that even the process is by which we're able to have a job, make money by a couch, put it in our house. Even all of that is out of the generosity of God. The reason a cow can eat and then you can eat it is because the grass grew first and God caused that to happen generously. Okay? And it is absolutely amazing. But what happens is see, we get stuck in this mindset where we really feel like we own our things, like our things are ours. I think I have four children. I don't think I have four children. I know I have four children. I think I might have said something like this before. But my children sometimes they start to you know have a conversation with each other about something being theirs. Right? Sometimes those conversations are loud. But nonetheless, you know, they're talking about something and there's sometimes that M word that gets screamed. It's mine. No, it's mine. No, it's mine. And you let that go on for a second and then you want to do something about it. And recently a couple of my children were arguing about the room that they were in. They kept saying, no, it's my room. And the other one said, I don't care. And the first one said, but it's my room. And so I walked in and I said, hey guys, hey guys, this is my room. Okay? I bought this house. It is actually my room. You are very welcome to use it. Sleep in it. Do your homework. But it's mine. Okay? So why don't we share. And of course, it's very interesting. What happened? They start saying, okay, I guess this isn't mine and they start playing and they have fun. And then about three minutes later, I hear this, no, this is Daddy's room. So you can't tell me what to do. What are you going to do? But you know what, I thought about it. And the reality is even that, even my comment is not really totally true, right? It's not my room. It's not my house. Because God generously gave Hannah and I the ability to have a paycheck and pay a mortgage and own a home and all these things. I mean, every single thing, you've never earned anything in your whole life. That hits hard with some of us. But the reality is even our ability to earn money and buy things is from the generosity of God. And I'll tell you what, few things generate more gratitude and humility than recognizing that literally everything we have is from God. And the more that you think about that and you run through a list of things in your mind, I think these are all from God. Just makes you want to worship him. Everything is from him. Also, we see that everything is through him. And what I mean by that is everything is sustained by God. And that's where you get that from Paul in another place in Colossians 117 saying this, and he is before all things. And in him, all things hold together. Not most things, all things hold together. And he's talking about Christ here just like the author of Hebrews in Hebrews 1 verse 3 says he, meaning Jesus, is the radiance of the glory of God, the exact imprint of his nature and get this. And he upholds the universe by the word of his power. And in Acts 1728, we see that in him we live and move and have our being. So not only is everything from God, but everything is sustained by God. He is holding together the universe, sovereignly governing all things. He's in control of every little molecule. And here's what that means when we think about his generosity and the things that we even have is that everything is where it is. Everything has the value that it has. Everything isn't disintegrating into an uncountable number of microscopic pieces because God is generously holding things together in Christ. So you actually have no real actual control over the things that we do have. It's an illusion that we think we really have control over these things and that we have the ability to actually make sure we get enough things to meet our needs. That's an illusion. We have no actual control over what we have or the value of the things we have or whether the things will work or not. It's all under the sovereign reign and control of Christ. And it's all done according to the infinitely wise plan of our gracious God. And so what that means, you can praise God then whether or not you have anything, whether or not you lose anything or gain anything. This is what we see in Job. Job understood that God wasn't obligated to give anything to him. He also wasn't obligated to make sure that he had anything other than his greatest needs. And so in Job 121, when Job loses everything, he says, naked I came from my mother's womb and naked I shall return. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Recognizing that God was not obligated to give us the things that we have. He's also not obligated to make sure we still have these things is actually very liberating because it sets us free from a wrong idea about the things that we have. See, we don't realize how enslaved to things we actually get. A man at the first service came up to me afterwards and he said that he heard a great line one time where he said, if we need things to be happy, then that proves we are slaves. And it's very interesting to think about because what happens is when you think that you're in control of what you have and when you have it, it really makes you start to think about those things in ways that we really don't even want to think. I'll give you an example. So my wife hand up bought this book and I don't know the title she can tell you if you want, but it wasn't about generosity, it was about organization. And she says, this book is amazing. It's going to help me organize everything and I'm like, that's all good. You know, do your thing. And so then I come home one day and she has organized to the point where things that she had and like three dressers were now into part of one. And she told me that and I was like, I'm sorry, what? How did that happen? You have everything now into one like one dresser and a little part of the closet. And she said, yeah, you know, the book shows how to fold things a certain way so you can cram a bunch of stuff in drawers. It's pretty sweet. You can ask her, she'll tell you about it. But the other thing that happened was she wanted to give away a bunch of things that she wasn't using and it was, you know, there was a good amount of stuff and she said, you know, maybe you want to look through your closet and just see if you want to give away some stuff. And I thought, yeah, I should do that too. So I go into my closet and I start pulling down shirts and pants and stuff that I really don't wear very often and it got bigger and bigger and bigger. And it just, it pretty soon, I started not to feel good. And I don't have a ton of clothes, but this was, this was awkward. And I realized something. I was like, why do I have all this stuff? And the best excuse for the best reason I could come up with was, so I have it.
And I just was not happy about that one bit. And I realized that it's because when you, when we feel like we're the ones controlling what we have and what we don't have, we automatically start to think along the lines of slavery. We start to think along the lines of, I will always need what I have. That's the way our minds tend to work. When we have things, we think, I need these things. I will always need what I have. And for me, I wanted to repent of that. I don't want to think that way. That is slavery. That is not what God wants for us. God wants for us to be free. And to know that because of the cross that we have freedom in Christ, and we can, because of the cross say, instead we can say, I will always have what I need. I won't always need what I have. I will always have what I need. God will always meet my greatest needs. And the cross is the proof of that because our greatest need, I mean, the greatest possible need we could possibly have is to be reconciled to God, to be forgiven, to be declared righteous, to become his child, to enter the kingdom, to inherit eternal life, all these incredible promises that we have in the gospel. And he has met our needs through Christ on the cross as a generous gift to us. Not because of anything that we've done or anything that we could do. And when we know that the cross is the proof that God will always meet our true needs, then we are free to live in a mindset where we say, you know what, I'll always have what I need. In other words, if something is taken away from us, or if we just begin to feel like we want to give something away of great value, we can say, I know I will always have what I need. If I give away something of great value and I really need it, God will get it back to me or he'll replace it, or he'll lovingly show me that I didn't need it anyway, right? This is how Job can lose everything and then say the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. That's freedom. I want to live that way. I think you want to live that way where we feel totally free knowing that not only is everything from God, but everything is through God. He is sovereignly ensuring that everything is where it needs to be according to his plan, whether it's in my possession or not. Everything's from God, everything's through God, and everything is too God. That's our last point this morning. Everything we have is too God, meaning it's ultimately for the display of his glory. I want you to take a look here on the screen at Zechariah 14, 20 through 21. Zechariah is giving a prophecy here about a day when everything is basically dedicated to the Lord. Here's what he says. On that day, there shall be inscribed on the bells of the horses, holy to the Lord, and the pots in the house of the Lord shall be as the bulls before the altar, and every pot in Jerusalem and Judah shall be holy to the Lord of hosts or to the Lord Almighty. In Exodus 28, 36, holy to the Lord, that exact phrase was inscribed on the gold plate that was worn by the high priest to show that it is exclusively dedicated to God, that its sole purpose is the glory of God. And so Kelly Capick, who wrote a great book called God So Love, He Gave, and interpreting that, here's what he says. By saying that the same sacred words would be inscribed on ordinary objects like pots and pans, Zechariah revealed just how far the redemptive reach of God's ownership will ultimately stretch to every nook and cranny of creation. In other words, anything in existence that isn't already displaying God's glory, pointing people to God's glory, it will be. It will be in time. One of our elders who has spent a lot of time teaching our high school, Sunday school, he likes to bring doughnuts into the class, and yes, that is the picture of a blueberry cake doughnut, which is the best doughnut, don't argue with me, blueberry cake. Anyway, he brings doughnuts, hopefully some blueberry cake when he does this, and he asks the students, what's the purpose of a doughnut? And of course, salivating, they say, to eat it, let's fulfill the purpose, give us the doughnuts, right? But I love this, here's what he says, you know what the point of a doughnut is? The glory of God. And what he means by that is even something as insignificant as a little doughnut,
even that exists to somehow point to the unbelievable, unfathomable, amazing glory of God. Even that. And the reality is the more God's kingdom is made visible here on earth as the gospel advances around the world, the more we will see how every little doughnut or truck tire or duct-filled platypus, you name it, everything in creation in time will be revealed to be something that is specifically designated to point to the absolutely amazing glory of God. And God wants to liberate us to think about things like that right now. God wants us to be free to look at the things of the world and realize everything is ultimately designed to point to the glory of God, and the more that I understand and behold the glory of God, the more I will have joy in my existence. And so it is absolutely amazing that we are free to look at everything, our money, our possessions, you name it, everything that we have access to or have authority over everything we possibly have. We need to see is somehow, even if we can't see it yet, it's somehow designed to show the glory of God. And we get to think about the way we get to think about things in the world now, the way we will think about them for eternity. We just get a head start right now by seeing that everything is to Him. So everything is from Him, and the more that we see that everything is from Him, that's going to lead us to worship. The more that we see that everything is that we have is governed by Him. He's the ultimate one who makes sure all of our needs are met, the more that we will want to worship Him. The more we see that ultimately everything finds its ultimate purpose in His glory, the more that we will worship Him and be transformed by Him. And so I'm excited, I hope you are excited, that's where we're headed. Let's pray. Father, we don't often look around at things and think about the fact that everything belongs to you, but I pray that that would be something that we take away this morning. I pray that as we just revel in your absolutely amazing generosity, that it would first and foremost deepen our grasp on the gospel. And I do pray that it would transform us. I do pray that each one of us would feel more and more free to live generously. Would you give us wisdom for that? And would you give us the grace? Would you generously not only transform us, but then help us to turn back to you and give you all the praise and all the credit and all the glory before we pray in your name. Amen.