Transcript
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What then are we to say if God is for us Who is against us He who did not withhold his own son But gave him up for us all Will he not with him also give us everything else Let us worship God
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Let us pray Let the good news come now O Lord not only in word but in power in the Holy Spirit and With full assurance through Jesus Christ
our Lord Listen now to the reading of God's word from Paul's second letter to the Corinthians the eighth chapter once again but today beginning at the eighth verse I Do not say this as a command But I am testing the genuineness of your love against the earnestness of others For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ That though he was rich yet for your sakes he became poor So that by his poverty you might
become rich and In this matter I am giving my advice It is appropriate for you who began last year not only to do something but even to desire to do something Now finish doing it So that your eagerness may be matched by completing it according to your means For if the eagerness is there the gift is acceptable according to what one has Not according to what one does not have I Do not mean that there should
be relief for others and pressure on you But it is a question of a fair balance between your present abundance and their need So that their abundance may be for your need In order that there may be a fair balance As it is written the one who had much did not have too much and The one who had little Did not have too little This is the word of the Lord Before Gordon Cosby founded the Church
of the Master in Washington D.C. He was pastor of a small Baptist Church somewhere outside Lynchburg, Virginia One day the chairman of his board of deacons came to him with a problem He said we have in our congregation a widow with six children I've looked at the church records and I have discovered she is one of the major contributors to this church She obviously ties her income and every week gives four dollars The deacon went on
to say we're convinced that she's unable to do this and take care of her family adequately We want you to go and talk to her let her know that she needs to feel no obligation whatsoever free her from her responsibility to give Well Gordon Cosby reports, I'm not very wise now, but I was less so even then So I went to this widow and told her of the concern of the deacons I Told her as graciously
and as supportively as I knew how that she was relieved from her responsibility of giving And then as I talked to her I noticed that she was crying Suddenly she said pastor Pastor stop I want to tell you that you are taking away the last thing that gives dignity and meaning to my life Here was a woman Who knew The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ Who though he was rich Yet for our sake became poor
That we through his poverty might become truly rich She trusted in that grace And the integrity of her faith compelled her to give sacrificially to the work of Christ's Church And That's how the Macedonian Christians must have felt For as Paul tells us they gave according to their means literally according to their power and beyond their power of their own free will Such stories are important because they tell us that this business of God's grace in
Christ is more than empty talk People really do experience it And respond to it like that Grace is at work in the life of believers And yet the experience of others can never be a substitute for our own experience what others do in response to God's grace may encourage us may challenge us But motivation for Christian giving comes out of our own encounter with God's grace So when Paul turns to the Corinthians he says simply You
know the grace Of our Lord Jesus Christ According to gayard eithotes this verse 2nd corinthians chapter 8 verse 9. This verse is one of those Pauline thumbnail summaries of the gospel This is it sum and substance The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ who though he was rich yet for Our sakes became poor that we through his poverty might be Truly rich. That's the gospel It represents a summary of the life story of Jesus During his
earthly ministry Jesus declared foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests But the son of man has nowhere to lay his head Jesus was poor By worldly standards But Paul is thinking here more deeply than that. He sees the story of Jesus as a movement from riches to rags Poverty is a form of powerlessness and The son of God surrendered the power of his riches in the presence of the father for the powerlessness of
his poverty in solidarity with us The sending of the son by the father is the generosity of the father the obedience of the son to the father is the generosity of the son In his letter to the philippians paul cites an early christian hymn which comments on this story of Jesus This is how they sang in the first century He always had the nature of God, but he did not think that by force he could try
to become equal with God Instead of this of his own free will he gave up all he had and took the nature of a servant He was humble and walked the path of obedience all the way to death His death on the cross That is the movement of the story of Jesus from the riches of heaven to the poverty of earth from the power of the crown to the powerlessness of the cross But through that powerlessness
he empowered us to become the children of God in the riches of God's love And so paul appeals to the corinthians experience of this love He reminds them that whatever enrichment they have received from christ has come to them at the price of this impoverishment And that is why we say that the ground of all christian giving is the giving of the son by the father and the giving of himself by the son We give because
we have first received And there are people who still believe this There even are students who believe this It was almost a decade ago as I remember When one of our phd candidates in theology Had just finished his oral examinations He was abd all but dissertation But he and his wife and children were so strapped financially that he could not afford any more time to work on the dissertation without himself working and had Accepted a call
to an inner city poor church in toronto Two weeks prior to the end of school His wife was hit by a truck Negotiating entrance onto route one in those days. There was no canal point road And the only way to get to the seminary was by route one, which we all know means taking your own life in your own hands Yes She was fortunately not hurt seriously, but their little volkswagen was totaled The students at crw
began what we used to call in the pastorate and every member canvas I know because I got canvassed And hit up for a major contribution The students at crw raised over ten thousand dollars in two weeks And bought that young couple a new volkswagen With a mortgage But the down payment on a new volkswagen and gave them the keys And they were able to return home to canada And begin their ministry If you and I are
going to go out into the church And preach to our congregations that they need to give to support the local church and the mission of the church Then we are going to have to ourselves know why we give And Why we will have to be among the major contributors to any congregation we ever serve We will be like that dear widow with six children outside of lynchburg virginia And if we expect our people to give They
will have to know the grace of our lord jesus christ And they will only know it if we preach it If we proclaim it and live it and demonstrate it the grace of our lord jesus christ the unmerited undeserved unearned love of god If our people hear that if our people believe that our people will give Even as they see us Doing it first For you know Don't you? The grace of our lord jesus christ Who
though he was poor though he was rich yet for your sakes he became poor That we all of us through his poverty Might be so deeply enriched By the redeeming love of god In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit amen
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And now the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
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