We'll be looking at second Corinthians chapter eight and I know today there are a bunch of visitors and the reason I know that is because it is a week that I'm going to be preaching on giving so welcome happens every time You I remember inviting people to church and every time I did it was tithing Sunday or something and Way it works people did it to me now. I'm doing it to you In all seriousness, I preach those of you who have been here for a few years know that Before I ever became the senior pastor I was sort of performing function of an interim wondering what was going to happen And I told you back then that I preached on giving and I said I'm still here next year I'll preach on and preach on giving next year as well and any time after that because it's my habit It's my practice to preach about giving every year at least three or four times Whether the finances are good or whether the finances are bad and So the reason I do that is because there's no other better way in the whole world than to figure out where your heart is with the gospel Then to look at how you handle your resources how you handle your wealth in fact the Bible has so much to say about giving and Stewardship and money that this week usually I spend all day on Monday reading and preparing for my whatever I'm going to preach Sunday This past Monday I took me all day just to figure out which what verses I wanted to preach from because there's so many So with all that said we're going to look at second Corinthians chapter 8. I'm going to read to you the first six verses maybe seven Here the word of God We want you to know brothers about the grace of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia For in a severe test of affliction their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of Generosity on their part for they gave according to their means as I can testify and beyond their means of their own accord Begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints and this not as we expected But they gave themselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God to us Accordingly we urged Titus that as he had started so he should complete among you this act of grace But as you excel in everything in faith and speech and knowledge and all earnestness and in our love for you See that you excel in this act of grace also Let's pray Father, I do just pray this morning that you would come and open the eyes of the blind in the ears of the death I pray that you would help us to understand the gospel We'll certainly talk about giving we'll certainly talk about stewardship But I pray that you would help us to understand what is at the very root of it And that is the grace of Jesus Christ And I pray that you would come and open the eyes of the blind to see that the ears of the death to hear that be in my head and in my thinking in my heart and in my understanding and in my mouth and in my speaking In Christ's name would pray these things a man and a man You know as you Think about giving a lot of people Especially you know our church. I'm gonna be honest with you. My one of my seminary professors Steve Brown He would often say can we talk Can we talk here? Let's be honest with each other and one of the things I've noticed since being here at our church It's that our church talks about money more than any church. I've ever seen By a long long way And you know people lose sleep about the budget here. I never lose sleep about the budget Why? Because I lose sleep about other things I lose sleep about what the budget says about the hearts of our people In other words, the more you understand the grace of God in Jesus The more generous you become and so if a church is constantly wondering and worrying about money It's the problem really money or is it something else? Statistically speaking we should just be overflowing even in the worst of times and yet we're not So what I worry about and lose sleep about is where our hearts are with the gospel of Jesus? You know before I start Jump into this passage it it probably helpful for you to be reminded of the most important financial principle in the world That's the skittle principle. You remember that one? I tell you every year which is always firming that most people don't remember but that's okay Remember the skittle principle is just this if you understand the skittle principle you can sort of almost check out for the rest of the Sermon so I'm giving you a way out here The skittle principle is just this you know when you first start taking your kids to the movies Once or twice a year, you know, you'll say you're gonna be a good dad I've three daughters and I'm gonna take the girls to a real movie. Let's say Shrek fours out now Can't wait to see it. So you know you take them and you go to a matinee because you want to save a little bit of money and it's still now It's nine eight or nine bucks for a matinee for a kid and all you're an adult apparently at age 12 now, which is interesting So you pay 40 or 50 bucks just to walk through the door and you say boy today I'm gonna just show them the works and you go up to the to the concession stand and you buy like the 55 gallon drum of coke You know that thing and the 32 gallon drum of popcorn and then you get that box of skittles right? It's about as big as a cereal box It takes all three of my girls to carry you know carry that stuff in there one of them is a hand truck and You get in there and the movie starts and it's dad You've got nothing in your hands and you whisper down there Yes of skittles And the most horrifying thing in the world happens because you're looking down all you see is a silhouette doing this
one skittle You have 20 pounds of skittles in your lap and you hand me one Give me some more skittles. They're mine Right in our house that only ever happened one time right? What do you mean there? I gave you everything and You're unwilling to give me just a handful. What do you expect when you're in that situation if you're the father or the mother? You would expect or you would at least hope that when you say can I have some skittles that they would take that box And they would just turn it upside down in your hand You tell me when to stop dad Take as much as you want you gave it to me take as much want and yet they always have to be reminded. I always have to be reminded So if you remember remember the skittle principle that's all the Christian giving is about you remember that God has given you Everything and that's where it starts here. We're gonna look at three things this morning We're gonna look at the Macedonian example We're gonna look at the poverty of Jesus and then finally we'll look at a call to action. What's the Macedonian example? Let me read you Paul says we want you to know brothers about the grace of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia Well, first of all, let me go back and say why did Paul even write this? Why has Paul spent two chapters writing the Corinthians about giving? Why does he spend two chapters this letter writing them about the issue of money? And you you learn the reason he's doing that is because a year earlier at the end of first Corinthians He has he's made a deal with them. Let me read you First Corinthians 161 Paul says now concerning the collection for the saints as I directed the churches of Galatia You so you also are to do on the first day of the week each of you is put something aside and stored up as he may prosper So that there will be no collecting when I come when I arrive I will send those whom you accredit by letter to carry your gift to Jerusalem So what's going on here? Basically the churches in Jerusalem apparently are going through extremely hard times They're having a rough time and they need someone to help them financially and Paul's out there planting churches And so what Paul does practically speaking is he has a capital campaign You know a capital campaign is when people begin you know They have a special project and they raise money for that special project and people commit They say over the next year. I'm going to give this mount and that's what the Corinthians did apparently so Paul came through and said The Jerusalem the churches in Jerusalem are needy there and bad shape financially and otherwise and I need you guys to commit to a certain amount of money to them So they do apparently and Now a year later Paul is writing them to say Titus is coming to collect that money But Paul is also apparently heard that they really haven't they didn't really plan on making that good on their commitment And so Paul is sort of giving them a warning shot that Titus is coming But he doesn't just give him a warning shot and say he's coming you better you better get with the program He gives them the example of the Macedonians Because the Macedonians it's interesting. We're also in hardship the Macedonians were also in bad shape Now it's always interesting to me if you wonder what what are the Macedonian churches? Well, at least three of them that we know of one of them is the Philippian church One of them is the church in Thessalonica and the other is the church in Buria They were getting in hardship themselves They were in affliction themselves and being persecuted themselves And it's always interesting to me that the churches that are being persecuted from those kind of churches You get a letter that's subtitled the letter of joy Right the Philippians The letters to rich churches aren't letters of joy interestingly enough. They're almost always Rebuke so Paul tells the Corinthians first the Corinthians apparently are pretty wealthy church The wealthy and gifts, but they're also wealthy financially because of where they're located geographically And he says first of all I want you to know the grace of God shown to the Macedonians and The first thing you need to know about giving or why you should give or what motivates you to give Is grace What is grace Grace is the unmerited favor of God It's as simple as that The God is a giver. He always gives and never receives that God almost by definition gives And he says I want you to know the grace of God given to the Macedonians the first thing to think about when you've considered the issue of giving is What do I understand about grace? In other words, do you understand that every single thing that you have and that you are is a result of God's grace toward you? I think about that all the time When I was in Ethiopia Why is it that I was born a white guy in in a in a in a lower middle-class home But we had food at least when I could have been born in one of these corrugated shacks in Ethiopia and died at the age of 40 Is it because of anything I did did I pull myself up by the bootstraps before the foundation of the world? I Didn't I Am who I am because of the grace of God you or who you are because of the grace of God and it's interesting because what you hear Through out this section of Paul's letter over and over again is either the word grace or some derivative of it the word grace and Greek is chorus and you hear things like chorus or chorus Mata grace gifts So the way he says I want you know about the grace gift that God gave to this church In the middle of affliction and the middle of persecution in the middle of their hardest times They gave that's something for you to note Because the one of the things that I hear all the time as people discuss the budget and you say gosh the numbers are down in our church Why don't people give and Someone inevitably will say what times are tough? Times are tough as if you shouldn't expect people to give when times are tough You know great example the other night Abby my oldest daughter and I were driving to a powder puff football game For not familiar with powder puff football. That's where girls play football and when I was a kid the guys were cheerleaders. They've apparently Got rid of that But either way we're driving to this football game and She put her iPod she plugged into my stereo and my truck and she played a song that at first sounded familiar to me And then it went south real quickly Right it started out you know there comes a time when you need a help and hang right where are the world where are the world Where are the children that song? Well as soon as the first guy opened all the sudden different people were singing then should have been singing In other words, I remember that song from 25 years ago and I said that's not that's not the right version and Whenever I discuss music with my daughters, I I turned from being dad to dude right now I dude Miley Cyrus She's better than the young warwick So we listen to it and then I said when we get home we're listening to the right version Right and so we got home we did YouTube and great. That's where you got the young warwick Willie Nelson and Kenny Rogers and Bruce Springsteen Lionel Richie Michael Jackson All those guys and she didn't agree with me But I'll take Willie Nelson over Snoop Dogg any day. Sorry But what did it make me think of what was interesting is the why they why did they create that song? It was created 25 years ago to raise money USA for Africa to to relieve famine victims of what have you in Africa and 25 years ago The unemployment rate was 7% And not only was it 7% in 1985 but every year after that it tracked down and every now and there was a blipboard went up But it averaged probably about 5 or 6% from 1985 until 2008 where unemployment started to climb to where it is now Now what was interesting to me and I got on this like this is where one of the way my ADD mind work So all of a sudden I all he was thinking about was stewardship and I got a preach on giving is I thought I wonder what the difference is between the giving that happened Then and the giving that happened now So that song written in 1985 to raise money for Africa raised adjusted for inflation $63 million Pretty good isn't it? Until you compare it with the new version that was used to raise money for Haiti Which raised at least $63 million and more in 48 hours But times are tough now, aren't they? How could you give? You know almost a billion dollars has been given for Haiti now and we have the worst unemployment since the Great Depression Right? You've ever watched the news. That's what you hear over and over again Well, why is it that people can give anyway? It's because they want to they're motivated to give and they have a way to give they didn't have cell phones where they could text in their giving or internet But given the means people will give given the appropriate motivation In the primary motivation you have here Paul says is the grace of God towards you in tough times or in good times It all comes back to the grace of God but also it comes back to something else look at notice what he says about the Macedonian example He says in verse 3 he says they gave according to their means as I can testify and beyond their means of their own accord Begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints The first thing I want to point out is this is apparently the Apostle Paul knew that the Macedonian churches were not Were not as well off his other churches and so he didn't ask them And they heard that he was raising money to help people in Jerusalem in need and went to him and begged him for the opportunity to participate It was a privilege for them to be able to help it was a privilege for them to be able to give and how did they give if they were so poor Paul says I testify they didn't get not only according to their means but they gave above and beyond their means Well how can you give above and beyond your means if you don't have something you can't give it correct Well what is obviously happened here is they gave until it meant some kind of sacrifice in their lifestyle In other words when you think about the church in the US and you think about Christians 50% of Christians give relatively speaking nothing And 50% of Christians give relatively speaking something it averages out to about 2% in most Christians I think give out of their surplus In other words Jonathan Edwards used to say most people when people say I can't afford to give what they really mean is I can't afford to give because it will be a burden to me And the Bible says what about burdens bear one another's burdens how can you bear one another's burdens unless you actually are willing to take on some kind of burden And so the question is when you give if you give anything now does it affect does it have some kind of place where there's a sacrifice in your lifestyle I tell them the discovery class if you've been there how do you know if you're giving enough because a new testament says nothing about tithing In fact the new testament tithing is sort of old fashioned and the new testament Jesus wants it all And so in the new testament you don't say how much should I give you say how much is the need And the new testament you know you're giving enough when you sort of wince when you write the check I mean that how do you know if it's sacrificial if you sit down at the kitchen table and go well honey what do you think I don't know Think we could do it love we pushed and we stretched I think we can do it is you're giving sacrificial do you feel it at all If you don't feel it at all it's probably not up the biblical standards And if you're not giving it all that of course hasn't made it think about that So what else do we see in the Macedonia example not only did they see that everything came to them from God not only did they have a sacrifice in their lifestyle But also the third thing we see in the Macedonians is just this as they believe that God owned everything In other words not just as they'd received things by grace but they'd received things by grace as stewards of them and not as owners of them Let me read to you here He says they gave and he says in verse 5 and this not as we expected but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God to us What does it mean that they gave themselves to the Lord most scholars I agree with them I believe that they sort of submitted themselves and said God everything that we have is yours Everything those skittles we recognize that those came from your hand and you are the owner of them And so if you ask for some back we will gladly give them to you In other words as a human being at least from the perspective of the Bible you are not an owner of anything You might be according to King County you might be according to the federal government but according to the gospel you do not own anything God owns everything and the question is do you recognize that and do you submit yourself to that God you own everything You know one of the most freeing moments in my whole life and one of the most freeing experiences I was in the army I joined the army at 17 and then I got out at age almost 22 and went to Florida State to go to college And right before I got out to go to college I got a brand new Toyota pickup truck It was beautiful you know it's burgundy same color Florida State garnet And when I got to Florida State having that truck completely and utterly stressed me out Because any of you know to have a small pickup truck at a big university where people are moving every single weekend Seriously everyone wanted to borrow my truck all the time and I felt like I had to be with them to guard it with blankets and keep them from scratching it And at some point I realized that God owns everything including this truck And so people come up and say Tommy can I borrow your truck? I say I ain't my truck I throw them the keys and they say what do you mean? Take it And I never had to think about it again now by the time I got out of college in seminary That was the most banged up dirty disgusting truck you ever saw in your life and I loved it I loved it because it was paid for and I didn't own it and since I didn't own it I didn't care what other people did to it Is that the view? I wish I had that view of my woodworking tools right? I'm working on it Fortunately not many other people want to use them But if they did Take them because they I don't own them anyway Only when you get to the point is saying that I don't own this stuff Can you give it away? But also when you get to the point of saying I don't own this stuff I'm a manager Can you be free? It's a lot more fun to spend someone else's money and to give other people's money away than it is to give your own money away isn't it? Well guess what? Giving should be fun because you don't own any money All of it belongs to God That's the Macedonian example Paul says accordingly since now that you've laid out the Macedonian example I'm sending Titus to you And he says you've got to love Paul because he's on a puzzle which means what he's saying You know it's the gospel and you know it's authoritative but sometimes it just sounds a tad bit manipulative Notice what he says to them Verse 6 He says accordingly He urged Titus that as he has started so he should complete among you this act of grace But as you excel in everything in faith and speech and knowledge all earnestness and in our love for you See that you excel in this act of grace also I say this not as a command but to prove by the earnestness of others that your love is also genuine So Titus was the one who is managing this capital campaign He says because of all this I'm sending Titus to you so that we can complete this act of grace in you In other words maybe we made a mistake by not including the Macedonian churches at the beginning We're not going to make that mistake with you so Titus will be there to give you the gift of letting you give And then Paul says something interesting because you remember the problem with the Corinthian churches? One of them is they were extremely proud and boastful And the things they boasted about was their giftedness The first Corinthians is where you have the debate about whether or not you can speak in tongues and languages and that kind of things They boasted about that They boasted in their sort of wonder-working faith They boasted in special knowledge And notice what Paul does here he says you know what? You Corinthians you are a great church You do excel in knowledge you do excel in speech you excel in everything He says why don't you excel in this gift too? And what's interesting is this is the only gift that I can think of that every Christian possesses or should possess In other words you might possess the gift of teaching and not the gift of something else or you might possess the gift of prayer or faith But not every Christian is supposed to be developing their giving and I think the reason for that is If you read verses like Ephesians 5-1 where Paul says be imitators of God And what is God if nothing else God is a giver That's all God does over and over he just gives and gives and gives and gives and if you are going to be like him You will give and give and give and give And so Paul says just like you excel in all these other things excel in this gift as well And you know if you have a gift what do you do? People are always surprised when they catch me reading books about preaching I'll give the doctors off some reading preaching book People have said don't you know how to preach writing I say you know there might be something in this book that I haven't seen yet I'm constantly trying to hone I'm constantly trying to get better Do you do that with your giving? I'm constantly saying how can I become more and more generous? Honey is there anything we need to sacrifice so that we can give it to Ethiopia Or help the church get rid of its mortgage or anything we can do? Do you study your finances? Do you study financial things? If you don't we're going to give you the opportunity Next Saturday I believe it is I'm signed up for the course At least 13 to 14 people will be standing all day And crown ministry is training If you're not familiar with crown ministries it's the best financial education As far as a biblical perspective that you can get it's a 10 week course So after people come out of the training we'll be offering I don't know how many classes But it's life changing I've seen it over and over again But do you develop your gift of giving? And one of the only ways to develop a gift is to do it You know you can't develop as a preacher unless you're preaching Professional baseball player unless you're playing You can't develop as a giver unless you're giving So the question is are you giving? And let you know if you're sitting out there cynically don't give anything to us Give it somewhere but are you giving? Because what the gospel is doing in your heart will show through your giving And if you're in the Corinthian church what does Paul say to them? He says I'm telling you this not as a command Doesn't that sound bizarre? Because you feel sort of like guilty right now right? And Paul says I'm telling you this not as a command Just so that you can tell whether or not your love is earnest By the genuineness of others In other words compared to the Macedonians how are you doing? Most people in this room I'm guessing are not doing that well And when you're not doing well when you feel guilty when you feel beat down And he said man I'm not a sacrificial giver I'm not this I'm not that I don't give a dime Where I do give but it's all out of my service What do I do? I feel so guilty With you feel guilty that's the good news of the gospel Because Paul I think anticipates that So the next place he takes us is the only place where your guilt can be removed The only place And interestingly enough by having your guilt removed It makes you even more motivated to give It's a win-win for you And where is it that you get your guilt removed? Where is it that you now can feel free to give The only place that you ever could and that's the cross of Jesus Christ Let me read to you verse 9 As we look at the poverty of Jesus Verse 9 for you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ That though he was rich Yet for your sake he became poor So that you by his poverty might become rich He says for you know Corinthians The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ That though being rich Now what's interesting if you read the New Testament You never read one place about Jesus being rich So Paul has to be talking about something else He has to be talking about Jesus before he actually became a man When he dwelt in heaven with the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit In all God's glory and all eternity It's the owner of everything in all the comfort and joy and fellowship That is Jesus was wealthy He owned everything And yet for your sake he became poor And if that means more than just he did become a man for your sake But as I thought about it this week It struck me that Jesus literally became poor In fact when you looked in the New Testament Jesus was one of the biggest moochies of all time He borrowed everything If you read through the gospels what you see is Jesus And first of all Jesus' parents having to borrow a manger To put their baby in They don't even borrow nice stuff Where do they get the money to flee into Egypt Someone else gives it to them They don't have it And as Jesus is going throughout his ministry He borrows food from children Loves and fishes He borrows clothing He wants to do an illustration He wants to do the coin trick Who's got some money? I don't have any You get to the end of his life and he even has to borrow a tomb He has nothing In fact from time to time in the gospels Jesus lets the apostles sort of go home on leave And they go to their homes Where does Jesus go when the disciples go to their homes He goes to the mount of olives in the woods Why? Because the son of man has no place to lay his head That Jesus didn't just become a man on our behalf But he literally became poor And that's not even the good news That's just information The good news is this That as Jesus lived this life of poverty He actually lived the life that you and I should have lived He lived in perfect obedience to the Father He gave 100% of the time Jesus never had to feel guilty about giving Because he gave all the time He gave so much he didn't have anything And the greatest gift that he gave of course Was his own body on the cross That though he was rich He became poor that by his poverty You might become rich There's this great exchange that happens at the cross That you and I have a debt of sin You and I have offended God And God must punish sin and that debt Just hangs over our shoulders Bigger than any credit card that you have Bigger than any mortgage that you have This debt of sin will not go away And it cannot be taken away Unless there's someone who comes along who can bear it Someone who's really, really wealthy And Jesus is really, really wealthy in righteousness And goodness and obedience to the Father And when he goes to the cross He not only becomes even more poor than he was But he takes on our debt He who knew no sin became sin So that you and I might become the righteousness of God in him He becomes poor we become rich And now being rich And now being rich What do you do with all these riches Do you hoard them Do you keep them to yourself Or can you not help but give them away I think it was in Tim Keller's book Reason For God Where he tells a story about a young woman who is a skeptic And she didn't know whether she should trust Jesus To forgive her sins and become a Christian And he said why Why would you not And she said I'm afraid because if this is true There's nothing that he can't ask of me If the gospel is true That he gave everything for me There's nothing that he can't ask of me All he wants is some Skittles He wants some Skittles That's what Paul goes next He talks about this call to action He reminds the Corinthians of the gospel That Jesus became poor So that they could become rich in every way And now is there nothing that you would not do for him And nothing he cannot ask And Paul tells them And again he doesn't command them He gives his opinion Let's look finally at this In verse 10 Paul says in this matter I give my judgment That word could also be translated opinion This benefits you Who a year ago started not only to do this work But also to desire to do it So now finish doing it as well So that your readiness and desiring Maybe matched by your completing it Out of what you have For if the readiness is there It is acceptable according to what a person has Not according to what he does not So Paul reminds them first of all That what you started to do Here's my opinion Here's what's going to be the greatest blessing to you What you started to do What you committed to do Do it And implicit there With regard to giving Is Paul assumed that they had a plan That they had committed something And Paul says now The biggest blessing for you is going to be If you do it And so the question for you And me is do you have a plan Forgiving Do you sit down some time of the year Or maybe several times of the year my family does And say how much are we going to give this year Whether it's to the church Or other charitable causes How much are we going to give Can we give more Should we give more And Paul says The best place to start with your plan Is at the beginning It's to start In other words In the Corinthian mind some of them had thought Well you know I made a 10 million dollar commitment I don't know if I'm going to be able to make that whole 10 million So I probably won't just give anything Probably just better that I just back out altogether And Paul says you know what It's better to start where you are With what you got And I would give you that encouragement as well So don't see yourself being a giver But you want to be Start someplace Make a plan give 1% 2% 3% do something What's interesting here to what Paul says Especially to a wealthy church Is how he expects them to meet their commitment Let me read that to you again He says so that your readiness and design Maybe matched by your completing it Their commitment out of what you have Forth the readiness is there It is acceptable according to what a person has Not according to what he does not have He says but I do not mean that others should be eased And you burdened but that as a matter of fairness Your abundance of present time should supply their need So that their abundance may supply your need That there may be fairness So Paul says you should meet this need According to what you have Not according to what you expect to earn this year In other words you should think about that as well But what Paul is calling us to do Is something that people in the United States rarely think of Is meeting other people's needs Not out of what we might earn And what the surplus of that is But actually what we have In other words the church Our church or any church is never in dire financial straits Until the members have begun to sell things And having sold everything I can't meet their obligations When is the last time I can't remember a time At least in the churches that I've been in Where the church needed something And some members said you know I've got an island off the case I'm going to sell it If you look at the New Testament What did they do? They began selling things And bringing it to meet the needs of the apostles You see a lot of Christians let themselves off the hook Maybe they have a lot of assets They have a lot of wealth sort of parked some place But they're not making any money And they said I've tied but I'm just not making any money Think how foolish it would be Imagine if you're Bill Gates And you have $40 billion in the bank Depending on the stock market that day You've got $40 billion in the bank And you take $1 in salary And at the end of every year You write your tithe check for 10 cents That seems silly doesn't it Bill was just a little bit of all this money Now interestingly enough he actually does Give a lot of it away Not for the same reasons we do But he does The question is when you give Are you giving not only out of what you might have And what you might learn But what you do have I mean it's amazing how much stuff we have How many of you I know I don't need to ask If every three years you could probably go through your garage And clean it out and have a garage sale Some people do that why And then you can see to collect things we don't need And Paul says To the Corinthians at least You can meet these needs You can meet it out of what you already have You don't need to go out and make any more money What you already have You'll be able to do it And then he does something interesting Some Christians you read And they'll teach this almost as a sort of Christian communism Or Christian socialism You know that some people will have to have much We'll meet the needs of those with little And you'll just spread the wealth and everyone will be the same. That's not what Paul says in fact Paul is saying the exact opposite thing here I think What is he saying He says by the grace of God there are times in people's lives when you actually have a lot And other people have a little And Paul says those of you with a lot Need to meet the needs of those with a little In other words those of you who have a lot should write a bigger check If you have very little should write a smaller check In Paul says you never know At some point in the future the roles may be reversed In other words, Paul is not talking here about an equality of a mount that people give Paul is talking about an equality of response That what if we read the story of the woman and the with her mites Remember the widow's mites and Jesus is telling the story about giving And she goes and pitches her two mites in there Jesus says she gave more than everyone else that day why Because she gave everything she had Now how different would the church be If wealthy people did the same thing Why is it that we look at a widow and we clap our hands And praise her for giving the last two mites that she owns And yet we who are relative wealth And we don't do the same thing The standard is everything I'm not telling you Paul I'm not telling you what to give or how much to give But it's something that you need to deal with between you and God What's the last thing he says here He says that your abundance at the last thing he says is it is written Whoever gathered much had nothing left over and whoever gathered little had no lack And he's quoting Exodus chapter 16 there And in Exodus chapter 16 what it said is that some people went out And some people for whatever reason were able to gather a whole bunch of mana Which mana as a side note it's interesting You know what the word mana means The word mana means what is this Imagine 40 years you're eating stuff that's called what is this Some of you are shaking your head you say I have been doing that That was a joke But seriously so they're gathering mana and some people are able to gather a whole lot We don't know why and other people gather a little bit But at the end of the day everyone has as much as they need And that's the key here Paul is saying I'm not saying that you should be burdened and other people get off the hook In other words in the Bible there's nothing wrong with some people having much And some people having little In fact the Bible says over and over you always have the poor among you But what the Bible does have a problem with is some people having too much And some people having too little You saw I saw on the news people were criticizing the president My own opinion rightly so when he would say things like Here comes time people just have enough How much is too much I just don't think that's appropriate for the president to say Because I think it's more appropriate for Jesus to say it It's not a political issue it's a heart issue How much is too much? Think about that let's pray Father I pray that you would simply come and you would change us and change our hearts That you would work in us and through us That we might be not only obedient to the gospel But we might be rejoicing in the fact that we are wealthy in Christ And his name we pray Amen Amen