The Generosity of God
Download MP3Tonight's scripture text is, 2nd Corinthians 9, so if you wanna turn there, if you have your bibles. Before I read it, I wanted to share, just a little bit of bad news, unfortunately. There's been a a guy that has been attending here pretty regularly named Drew Vignel, who, some of you may know, others you may not. But he was killed in a, hunting accident, yesterday. If you don't know Drew, some of you might know Joel Busby and his wife, Mandy.
Speaker 1:He's Mandy's brother. So it's, heartbreaking, of course. And so I'm gonna read this and, we're just gonna pray for his family and sermon. So if you turn to 2nd Corinthians 9. Now it is superfluous for me to write to you about the ministry for the saints.
Speaker 1:For I know your readiness, which I boast about you to the people of Macedonia, saying that Achaia has been ready since last year, and your zeal has stirred up most of them. But I'm sending the brothers so that our boasting about you may not prove empty in this matter, so you may be ready as I said you would be. Otherwise, if some Macedonians come with me and find that you are not ready, we would be humiliated to say nothing of you for being so confident. So I thought it necessary to urge the brothers to go on ahead to you and arrange in advance for the gift you have promised, so that it may be ready as a willing gift, not an as an exaction. The point is this, whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.
Speaker 1:Each one must give as he had 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.
Speaker 1:He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You'll 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 that comes from your confession of the gospel of Christ and the generosity of your contribution for them and for all others, while they long for you and pray for you because of the surpassing grace of God upon you. Thanks be to God for this inexpressible gift.
Speaker 1:Let's pray. Father in heaven, with Paul, we want to declare our thanks to you for your inexpressible gifts. Some of your gifts are more veiled than others, but, nonetheless, these 2 are from your hand and, therefore, are right and true and good. Your gift of Drew was a good one. And for those that knew him, we thank you for the years that you mercifully gave.
Speaker 1:They were undeserved and kind. That you worked in Drew's life, that the good news of the gospel was his confession, This is an inexpressible gift. That he has traded what is momentary for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison is an inexpressible gift. Yet we know that his family and friends are left with affliction and sadness and grief that does not feel slight or momentary. We ask that you would somehow give them eyes to look past what is seen and to cling to what is unseen, the truths of the promises of the gospel, that you are a God that is redeeming, you're a king that is reigning, that you're a savior taking on sin, reconciling us to yourself, and bestowing on us unmerited righteousness, and we love you for this.
Speaker 1:But we pray the gospel promises that you are also a heavenly father who upholds all things, who knows all things, who governs all things, who is strong and loving and safe to run to in sadness and despair and heartbreak, that this would be theirs too. This is the gospel we confess and we believe. And in inexpressible grief, may this gospel be a sure and steady rock for Drew's family and his friends and for us when we face similar sorrows. And, father, whether we did know Drew or not, at the least, it's another reminder that this life is fleeting. It is vapor short and is precious.
Speaker 1:This time we come here to gather is precious and we have too few of them. Our time to sing to you in adoration and wonder with full hearts is precious. Our time to hear your word graciously and faithfully preached, to have that word warm our cold hearts and to bandage our open wounds and to shine brilliant light into utter darkness is precious. So let us sing greedily for the time is just too little, and let us listen attentively how to be generous tonight, straining to hear your gospel proclaimed in each word and eager to apply it to our own short and precious lives, for you are our only hope, our only anchor in tragedy, our only comfort in sadness, the only king that reigns, and our only heavenly father. For all of these inexpressibly good things, we are grateful and we worship you.
Speaker 1:In the name of Jesus Christ, our lord. Amen.
Jeffrey Heine:Thank you, Benjamin. So tonight, we continue in God's word in this study that we've been doing for, 14 weeks. That's how we've ended up at this at this juncture, at this chapter 9, where Paul is addressing the Corinthians, and he is talking about something that can also often be really difficult for us to talk about. And especially on times when we're we're thinking through the the reality, that Benjamin walked us through. It that life is so fleeting and that, that it can be difficult when we are startled by the reality of life, that we we do such a good job entertaining ourselves that when we wake up to the stark reality of life and death, it can be so jarring, and our lives can be flipped upside down so quickly that we don't really know how to make sense of anything, which is why we come back to God's word.
Jeffrey Heine:This this is our grounding. This is our constant that we come back to and can understand again what god is doing in us, through us, despite us, all around us. And Paul is writing this letter primarily in this section. He's talking to the Corinthians because he cares so deeply about the suffering that's happening in Jerusalem. We have to come back to the fact that Paul loves the Corinthians.
Jeffrey Heine:He loves them, and he loves the Christians that are in Jerusalem. When he was sent out to be a minister to the Gentiles, He was sent out by James and Peter and John, and he was he was told to remember the poor. Now, primarily, what I think that means there is not just the poor in general, but as he's going out to the Gentiles to remember the poor Jewish Christians in Jerusalem, remember them. Don't just go off on these missionary excursions and forget about those who are suffering here in Jerusalem. Remember them.
Jeffrey Heine:And Paul deeply cares for them, and he loves them. And because of that, as he goes from place to place and as he writes letters to the Philippians, to the Romans, to the Thessalonians, He mentions this offering. He mentions this giving because he wants to help those who are suffering in Jerusalem. And he wants these churches to be a part of it. Because when these gentiles give of their money to these Jews who are in these Jewish Christians who are in Jerusalem, when they do that, they are declaring the gospel, which is is that god is reconciling a people back to himself from every tribe and every tongue.
Jeffrey Heine:He's redeeming them. And when they do this, when they love one another in this very tangible way, they declare the gospel. And Paul loves the gospel. He loves the Corinthians. He loves the Jewish Christians there in Jerusalem.
Jeffrey Heine:And so he is compelled to write and to continue this issue. It actually goes on for a number of years where he is collecting money for the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. Now, you all might have seen this past year, the movie The Great Gatsby. Maybe you read it in in high school or college, and you might recall the the front cover of The Great Gatsby, those eyes, you know, when those were drawn in 1925, most people didn't really like the cover. Hemingway said it was a terrible idea for that to be the cover of The Great Gatsby.
Jeffrey Heine:But those eyes, doctor Eckleburg, this optometrist, has a billboard that they must drive by, and the illusion is to the eyes of god watching the luxury and the the wealth and looking down and judging with these eyes. And sometimes we can think that if money is being talked about in the Bible, that Paul has got these big eyes looking out over the Corinthians and saying, you're wrong. You've got too much money, and you need to do this with it. That's not what he's doing. He's not looking out, and, actually, we can do that in this context too, Where Joel could get up here or I could get up here or or you could hear a sermon, and it's about money, and immediately, you just feel those big eyes looking at you and saying you're doing it wrong.
Jeffrey Heine:But that's not what Paul is doing, and and in turn, that's not what Joel was talking about last week nor what I will help us look at tonight. You see, Paul immediately starts off by saying that it is superfluous for him to write this letter. It's redundant. It's not necessary for him to write this letter and talk about this particular thing, this particular issue. It's not necessary for him to do that because he knows that they have been ready to give this generous offering to to help with the needs of the Jewish Christians who are suffering in Jerusalem.
Jeffrey Heine:But he writes it anyway. So why? If he starts off by saying it's superfluous, a word that you see all the time in the New Testament. Right? No.
Jeffrey Heine:He said so why? Why would he why would he do this? If he starts off by saying, I don't really have to say this, but and then, really, for 2 chapters now, he's been talking about this. Very few other topics have gotten this much coverage in this letter. So why?
Jeffrey Heine:Well, John Calvin, in his commentary on this passage, he he says that love carries with it, it bears with it, two things. It bears with it this hope, this hope that they would do what they promised to do, but it also carries an anxious concern. You might it might resonate with you. People that you love, you have this hope, but you also have an anxious concern about them. You expect them to live in to the things that they have promised, but you also want to encourage them along the way in whatever that might be.
Jeffrey Heine:You have an anxious concern, a a healthy concern, and so he is exercising that hope and that healthy concern in writing these words. And so he does. He he writes them superfluously as they might be. Use that one a lot too? No.
Jeffrey Heine:And he writes these words, and he's calling them to this collection, And he there are really two reasons. 1, the need for it, as I stated before, that these people were suffering in Jerusalem. Many of them have been cast out of their families for their confession of Christ as lord. Maybe people weren't doing business with them anymore. Maybe there's just physical persecution that was happening.
Jeffrey Heine:There are there are lots of different reasons for their suffering. Some of them were just poor to begin with. And Paul is saying, you have a stake in this. You have a responsibility to these brothers and sisters rooted in the gospel. And so we're taking up this collection, and it is it is important to Paul.
Jeffrey Heine:The second thing is he's reminding them that this is to be a willing gift. This is to be something from their hearts. That this is something that they would pray about, and the spirit would lead them in, and that they would give from their hearts willingly in this matter, that they would see it as valuable as Paul sees it, that he would see these needs of these Christians, and that they would care about it, And they would give. And so that's the context. That's the context.
Jeffrey Heine:What what Paul goes on to teach the Corinthians about giving, about generosity is very pertinent to us. Because if we're all honest, none of us are really satisfied with our generosity because it's not it's not as it could be. Perhaps it's not as it should be. And In this context, Paul is talking about money. We can't really get around that and also the fact that we've been walking through 2nd Corinthians for 14 Sundays and this is where we are, so this is what we're talking about.
Jeffrey Heine:But what he teaches about generosity is much bigger than money. It's much bigger than money. Generosity is how we regard everything. Generosity has to do with everything that God has given us, and how we treat it, and how we regard it, and how we give those things away. It matters.
Jeffrey Heine:Generosity has to do with everything that god has given us. You can give away 99% of your money and not be generous. Writing checks to charity, particularly in the month of December, does not mean that you're generous. It just doesn't. So we have to go underneath that.
Jeffrey Heine:We have to go further than that. But let's not miss the fact that he is talking about money to these Corinthians, but much deeper is generosity. Paul is concerned concerned, with what god is doing in the hearts of the Corinthians. What he's doing in that church, he cares because this will demonstrate this collection will and we'll talk about that more as we go on. But Paul desires that the Corinthians would know and believe and live the gospel because generosity is the gospel lived out.
Jeffrey Heine:And this collection, that they've been very eager to give, they've been so eager to give. He's he's calling them out on that, and he says, I've told them. I've told the Thessalonians. I've told the Philippians. I've told them about your desire, your eagerness to give and support the needs of these Christians in Jerusalem.
Jeffrey Heine:I've told them all about it. I've told them that you are eager. And in a perhaps a a really personal way between Paul and the Corinthians, Their fulfillment of this will also kind of testify if they're still with Paul, if they still trust him. If they still trust him as a minister of the gospel, because as he's been making this argument throughout second Corinthians, he's been defending his ministry. He's been calling them away from those pagan worship settings, and those pagan leaders.
Jeffrey Heine:He's been calling them away from that to come back to the gospel, and this will demonstrate if that has occurred. And so, he cares desperately about these Corinthians, and he's instructing the Corinthians and ultimately us about the necessity of generosity. And I want us to follow this argument in the rest of our time here. I want us to to follow the argument that he presents here, looking at 4 different connections. The connection between generosity and righteousness, the connection between generosity and worship, the connection between generosity and confession, and lastly, the connection of generosity and Jesus.
Jeffrey Heine:Because it's not really a sermon until we get to him. Right? So generosity and righteousness. Verses 6 through 10. We get verse 6.
Jeffrey Heine:This one, this verse in particular is is, abused a lot and so when you hear it, you're probably like pay attention to what it calls to mind. What memories kind of come rushing, preaching, things you've seen on TV, with preachers, The point is this, whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each 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, and he quotes here Psalm 112. He has distributed freely.
Jeffrey Heine: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 sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. So what does verse 6 mean? Well, in that section that we just read, verse 10, the last verse that we just read, really helps us to unlock what verse 6 is talking about.
Jeffrey Heine:It's this concept of harvesting, this concept of reaping, and this is what's so often mishandled and abused by kind of the health, wealth, prosperity, gospel crowd. The misuse that if you sow a little bit of money, you're just gonna get a little bit of money back. But if you give a whole lot of money, you're gonna get a whole lot of money back. Now I've seen that. I've seen that a 100 times.
Jeffrey Heine:I looked up a couple on YouTube this past week. I thought about showing them, but there was nothing edifying in it, so we're not gonna do that. We're also not a youth ministry, so there you go. It was fine. But watching these people as they say, do this, and then you get this.
Jeffrey Heine:Like, there's just this contract with god. Sow your seed. Have you heard that with a number across the bottom? Sow your seed of blank, and then you will get blank. Now, some of the variables are wrong.
Jeffrey Heine:The equation is not bad, but the variables have to be clarified. Because what he's talking about here, what you reap, what you harvest, verse 10, harvest of your righteousness. He's not promising this financial return equation. Who supplies the seed to the sower? God does.
Jeffrey Heine:So god gives these resources, money, time to the believer to be generous with it, to put it to work, to sow it. And then the reaping, the harvest is a harvest of righteousness. The aim here is not so you can be blessed with money. The aim here is that you would grow in righteousness. So what does that mean?
Jeffrey Heine:What does it mean to grow in righteousness? What does it mean to reap a harvest of righteousness? Well, there are 2 ways and it's very important for us to to have these firmly defined in our minds. Particularly when we're reading Paul, and that is that there are 2 ways that Paul uses the word righteousness. 2 ways.
Jeffrey Heine:The first one is this, it means the perfect obedience of Jesus to the father in obeying the law of god, and being perfect in all things, and that being attributed to you by the will and work of god. He took your sin, and he gave you his righteousness. That is justification. Now righteousness is the second way. Righteousness is also the conduct that we live into as god conforms us into the image of his son.
Jeffrey Heine:As we have this right standing with God, as we stand before him perfectly righteous because of Christ's righteousness, we then live out from that into a life of righteousness, holy living. And what Paul is saying here, let's see if we can hold that in our minds. Okay? What Paul is saying here is, you Christians, so you who are standing in the righteousness of Christ fully, lacking no righteousness, as sons and daughters of the living God, as you stand firmly there, where nothing nothing, life nor death, height nor depth, nothing can separate you from this love of god and where you stand in the righteousness of Christ. But you live that out.
Jeffrey Heine:It's a living thing. It's declared to life. It's declared upon you. You are righteous. Now, live in that righteousness.
Jeffrey Heine:And he is saying that when you are generous, when you give, when you sow, when you put what god has given you to work, when you sow that, you reap a harvest of righteousness. You grow in grace. So we have this perfect and complete righteous standing before god, this righteousness of Christ, that right standing, and we live out from it. We live out into this righteous living. And that can be hard that can be hard when maybe you grew up, in a context where you heard that salvation maybe you filtered it through this way.
Jeffrey Heine:Maybe it was the the church culture. I don't know. But but maybe you had the understanding, or the misunderstanding, that you had to be good enough somehow for God to accept you. And then at some point, by the grace of God, that was upended, and you realized that wasn't true. And you have claimed since that time the righteousness of Christ and Christ alone.
Jeffrey Heine:Don't let go of that, but realize that there is still a call to righteousness. And so Paul is calling them calling them to live in this generous way, And he he cites Psalm 112. Now anytime Paul is citing the old testament, it's really good to go back and read whatever it is kind of in full, because he often means that full context of whatever it is he's hearkening back to. Whatever he's citing, he he usually means a good chunk of what he's citing. There are other new testament writers where they just they just want a phrase.
Jeffrey Heine:Like, they there's an old testament verse that kinda says this idea, and I'm gonna use that here to talk about something else. Paul usually likes to really tap into whatever that context is. And in Psalm 112, it's talking about a man who lives righteously before the Lord in generosity. Verses 45 say this, light dawns in the darkness for the upright. He is gracious, merciful, and righteous.
Jeffrey Heine:It is well with a man who deals generously and lends, who conducts his affairs with justice. His conduct, his affairs are done justly. They're they're done with righteousness. And Paul hearkens back to that. That doesn't mean that this isn't complicated.
Jeffrey Heine:I mean, in verse 10 where it says that god will provide and multiply the seed. So sow it and he will he will provide the seed, and then when it's sowed, it will be multiplied. For what? For you to be generous with it. For you to put it to work generously.
Jeffrey Heine:Living generously demonstrates our trust in Christ and his gospel, and he grows us in righteousness. So the question comes to us. Do we recognize that everything that we have is from god? Do you recognize that the very breath in your lungs is from God? That next heartbeat is from God.
Jeffrey Heine:Any money that you have, any jobs that you have, any possessions that you have, all of these things are from a giver, and we have been entrusted with these things to be generous with them. Number 2, generosity and worship. Look at verse 11. You will be enriched in every way, meaning that you would be strengthened with these seeds to sow in every way to be generous in every way which through us, meaning the apostles, the ministers, will produce Thanksgiving to god. For the ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints, but it is also overflowing overflowing in many thanksgivings to god.
Jeffrey Heine:So what is he saying here? He's saying that generosity leads to worship. Paul is instructing the Corinthians that when they collect this gift, it will produce a great deal of thanksgiving. He said, yes, they are supplying and meeting these needs. They they are bringing aid to those Christians in Jerusalem.
Jeffrey Heine:Yes, they are doing that, but they are also stirring up Thanksgiving. See, the opposite of generosity is greed. Selfishness, really. And that selfishness, joy terminates on itself. You're you're probably already seeing the the commercials.
Jeffrey Heine:If you watched, football yesterday, you saw, like, a 1000 k jewelers commercials. I got their demographic there, I guess. And, and as they're telling them these things, they one of them was, doesn't she deserve it? Doesn't she deserve that chocolate diamond? Which sounds delicious, but doesn't she deserve it?
Jeffrey Heine:Yes, she does. But when when we have this selfish mentality, when we when we think that we deserve things, and when we are selfish and greedy, that joy, it is I want that, I will get that, I will derive joy from that, and then we're done. Next thing, I want that. I'll do whatever it takes to get that. I will derive joy, and then we're done.
Jeffrey Heine:Next thing. And that is just that cycle over and over again. But when we are generous, joy multiplies. Thanksgiving multiplies. Worship multiplies.
Jeffrey Heine:So Paul is saying that when you give, Corinthians, when you give those in Jerusalem, they they will be stirred up to worship and be thankful to God because God has provided for them. And we will worship, the ministers, we will worship because we are seeing Gentiles who should have nothing to do with these Jews giving of their money. I earned it. I made it. I can do what I want with it.
Jeffrey Heine:I'm giving it to these people. And they are sacrificing, and they are giving out of joy and love, and because of the gospel, and as they give that, the ministers are stirred up with thanksgiving. And then, these people get to realize that God is being glorified. The Corinthians can see that God is being glorified by the Jews and by these leaders, and now they are stirred up to worship. When we give, we multiply worship to the glory of god.
Jeffrey Heine:And when we are selfish, it just ends in ourselves, and it's wasted. Generosity leads to worship. And then the question to you is, does your generosity lead you to worship or anybody else? Has anyone worshiped and praised god recently for your generosity? Is there anyone that would call you by name for that?
Jeffrey Heine:Maybe. It's a question worth asking. And then it moves us now to generosity and confession. Verse 13. By their approval of this service, they will glorify god because of your submission that comes from your confession of the gospel of Christ and the generosity of your contribution for them and for all others.
Jeffrey Heine:While they long for you and pray for you because of the surpassing grace of God upon you. The saints, Paul says, will glorify god for their confession of the gospel and for their contribution. It's important to see how Paul is linking these 2 together. Their their confession and their contribution. Their confession of the gospel, and then that gospel demonstrated in reconciliation, in sacrifice, in service.
Jeffrey Heine:Gospel rooted generosity declares the gospel, And the Corinthians are demonstrating their confession of the gospel with their generosity. When we give, when we are generous with our time, our attention, our possessions, our money, we are demonstrating the confession of our gospel, that we are dependent upon god and god alone. Not upon ourselves, not upon our status, not upon our pay stubs. We are dependent upon god and god alone, and we find him trustworthy. Our generosity declares our dependence upon God for everything.
Jeffrey Heine:Not just money, but all of life. Which brings me to a little side point here about time. Time. Some of us will happily give our money, but we cannot fathom giving of our time. We will write a check for any amount in a minute, but just don't ask us for our time.
Jeffrey Heine:And some of us, we hear of opportunities to be generous with our time, and we say, I'd love to, but I just don't have the time. And it's true. You don't, because you've already given it away somewhere, to something, to someone. And they might be valid, glorious reasons. But we have to recognize that we have a limited amount of time, and we make the choices of how we're generous with it.
Jeffrey Heine:And if we're honest, we have to say that sometimes we are much more ready to give our money than our time and our attention and to sacrifice patience for someone else. Generosity lives out our confession of the gospel. And in its opposite, our lack of generosity is our functional denial of the gospel. So does your generosity declare your dependence upon god? For everything, your salvation, your justification, your sanctification, your everything.
Jeffrey Heine:And then we move now to verse 15. Generosity and Jesus. Verse 15. Thanks be to god for his inexpressible gift. In John chapter 3, for, I would guess, a number of you, you memorized your very first bible verse, that god so loved the world that he gave.
Jeffrey Heine:We have to realize that our generosity is based and built upon god's generosity. We love because he first loved. We are generous because he has been generous to us. We give all of ourselves because he has given all of himself to us. This is the basis of our generosity.
Jeffrey Heine:Anything else anything else will be a deception. Anything else motivating your generosity, you will be deceived. And so coming back to that verse in John 3, We run a terrible risk of things becoming trite and familiar. And we and we don't step back into that awe of god. And I would say that probably the the most fundamental lacking that I have in my life, and and I would imagine many of you, is that I lack a profound awe of god.
Jeffrey Heine:And generosity is one of those ways where god teaches us to depend on him, to trust him, to reap a harvest of righteousness, and to grow in our awe of him, how he provides, how he shows up, how he receives glory and honor in our generosity. We love because he first loved us, and we are generous because he was first generous to us. As Jess mentioned earlier, our 3 year old girl, this is our first time to really be aware enough to start being wonderfully confused by an American Christmas. And even when we get, like, those good books or the good cartoon, it it really ends on this big, turnaround, where they're trying to say, Look, kids, it's not about getting a bunch of gifts. It's about giving.
Jeffrey Heine:Christmas is about giving. And really, here we go into another dead end, because the reality is, Christmas is about God giving and us receiving. And when we go to either ditch about presence, we just start a grand adventure in missing the point, That god would give and that we would receive. And I say these things daring the familiarity that's creeping in on all of us to hear it. That god would humble himself, and that we know as as Benjamin was pointing out earlier, we know people who are suffering greatly right now in our community, and their hope better be real tonight.
Jeffrey Heine:It was Christmas time in 2007 when my grandfather died, and I remember feeling very little peace at the whole funeral, everything going on, until the priest started talking about the bosom of Abraham. When he took our attention off of the things that we can just touch and feel, because all the things that we could feel, a cold hand, a hard casket, That's where death's sting was. That's where death's victory was. I could point to it. It was a frail older woman sitting on a blue crushed velvet chair.
Jeffrey Heine:There's the victory, death. There's the sting. I see it. But when he turned our attention to the hope that we have that defies what we see in front of us, that hope spurs in us a thanksgiving. It spurs within us a desire to live in a way that declares the gospel of god being generous to us.
Jeffrey Heine:That we can give of anything because he has given of everything, and everything that I need, I have in him already. And my life will either confirm that I believe that or deny it. I have his righteousness, but he calls me to live righteously, to declare in every moment of every day that he is sufficient. And this is what Paul is calling the Corinthians to. And this is what God is calling us to.
Jeffrey Heine:Not just money, but a much more profound opportunity to live generously. Paul does a sly reference. We'll close with this. He does a sly reference to to Isaiah 55 when he's talking about the one who provides food. Let me read to go back as it's helpful to do with Paul's citations in the old testament, let me just read 3 verses from Isaiah 55.
Jeffrey Heine:Come, everyone who thirsts. Come to the waters. He who has no money, come. Buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.
Jeffrey Heine:Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me and eat what is good and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear and come to me. Hear that your soul may live. And I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.
Jeffrey Heine:The call is to come and to receive what you could never buy. Receive him this advent and forevermore. Let's pray. God, help our hearts to be generous, not out of compulsion, not exaction, not a burden to give, but a heart that longs to give, eager to give, to live generously with our time and our attention and our money. Lord, it can be startling to see how Paul was not afraid to talk about money, and he wasn't afraid to declare his love for the Christians in Jerusalem or the Christians in Corinth or his desire to see a unity within the church.
Jeffrey Heine:And so I pray that we would endeavor in a similar way, to be generous in such a way that we would reap a harvest of righteousness, to be generous in a way that would stir up thanksgiving and praise to your name. God, that we would see our generosity as a confession of the goodness and greatness and graciousness of your gospel. And king, that every heart would prepare him room, and that we can look with expectant hearts toward the second advent when all that is wrong is undone, when every tear is dried, and where every heart will be full. You have come for us in your first advent, and you will come again. Lord, make haste to save us.
Jeffrey Heine:Amen.
