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Corinthians 9 – God Loves a Cheerful Giver
Sermon
delivered by Christopher Hobbs
It’s only a little thing. But there’s a man I look
after in an old people’s home and there is only the one chair in his room. So
when I or anyone else visits we have to sit on the bed. I asked the handy-man a
few weeks ago, if he could bring another chair there, as there are in other
rooms. He said he would, but he hasn’t done it. I haven’t said anything when I
have seen him since. Maybe he has forgotten and I ought to say something, or
maybe he hasn’t got another chair, and maybe he feels guilty, or that I
shouldn’t have asked for another chair. I don’t know. But in a sense I feel he
has let me down. I am sure that on many occasions I have told people that I
would do something, and it has completely slipped my memory. Quite probably I
have let you down. Often it’s hard to remember because our memories usually
filter out the times where we have been in the wrong.
Well in our reading tonight the Corinthians
were being shown up as not quite what they claimed to be. Of course this was in
the nicest possible way. Paul doesn’t say to them anything too critical. He
reminds them of what they promised to do, and he gives them a few motivations
to make them feel better about doing it.
And what they had promised to do was to give money.
They had promised to give money to support the poor Christians in
And there may be some people here tonight who are
thinking. Oh that’s mildly interesting but it’s not relevant to me, thankfully.
Those Corinthians had something they ought to do, and I hope they did it. I
hope they finally got round to giving what they had promised, but actually they
were a little foolish. If they had never promised to give anything they wouldn’t
have Paul reminding them. Never commit yourself in the first place, and
anything to do with money keep strictly to yourself.
I agree with you if you want to keep how much and to
whom you give private to yourself, it even says that in the Bible, but there’s
one person who is legitimately concerned about your giving. If you are a
Christian that one is God.
If we are Christians we have said to Jesus Christ that
we want him to be the Lord of our life. We have said Jesus Christ please take
me and forgive me and be the one who rules me. And that isn’t just on Sunday
evenings or Sunday mornings, or when we are meeting with other Christians. That
is a whole of life commitment for every part of our life. Maybe everybody here
tonight will have already sorted out their personal finances, so that they know
their giving shows they are people who follow Jesus, but there may be just one
or two who haven’t got round to doing what they should do, or haven’t thought
about whether they are giving properly. And any who have recently corrected
their giving can be encouraged to be thinking about the next time.
Paul puts the pressure on the Corinthians to do what
they promised, and I am sure they did make the offering, but he gives them five
motivations, five reasons to help them do what they should do, and we are going
to look at those five motivations tonight.
1) Giving is not losing but sowing (v 6)
2) Giving gives joy to God (v 7)
3) Giving is not risky, because of God’s generosity
(vv 8-11)
4) Giving moves others to thank God, and to pray for
us (vv 12-14)
5) Giving can never repay God (v 15)
So firstly Giving is not losing but sowing.
There was a boy who had been given two coins before
church: one was for the offertory, and the other was for an ice-cream on the
way home. Sadly he dropped one of his coins and it fell down the grate over a
drain. “Bad Luck God” said the boy – “there goes your pound”. For that boy
there was no difference as to where the coin went – in both cases he lost a
pound.
One of the things we have to realise is that giving is
not losing. It’s not throwing money away. It’s not just
having to live on less money. Giving might rightly seem to us as though we
have less, but actually it is a kind of sowing. We should consider the results
of giving, not just how it seems to us.
Look at verse 6: The point is this: the one who sows
sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap
bountifully.
If you plant seeds you don’t have them any more. They
are gone. Someone might think I won’t plant these seeds because then I won’t
have them any more. But what they should think is ‘If I plant these seeds,
something will come from them’. And ‘if I plant a lot of seeds, I will have a
lot of plants, all of which may have a lot more seeds’.
Giving is sowing, not losing. We are to focus not on
what we lose, but on the results, what comes from our giving. It may not be
specifically to our benefit. It may benefit other people, but either way we are
to think of the good that comes from giving. We have less, so that there will
be more good things.
In the church context it’s
people’s giving that means we have youth workers and parish assistants and
places for them to live. If people didn’t sow their money in that way we
couldn’t have them. In a year we hope to replace Simon as our Assistant
Minister, and we will be able to if people sow generously.
In the wider church context it’s someone long ago who
gave his house for
All those good things, and countless others, are the
bountiful harvest for the givers to enjoy. It’s good to have given to something
where we can see the results. But the thing about sowing and harvesting is
there is always a gap in between. Maybe we have given to something and we are
thinking the results aren’t that impressive: it may be that we haven’t given it
enough time. And even if the results after time are still not too impressive -
it’s like preaching, we try to teach the message as clearly as we can, but the
results are down to God, not to us. We give, that is sow generously, but of
course sensibly – that is not on rocky ground – and we leave the results to
God. And they more we sow, the more harvest there is likely to be.
Why would we keep the seed doing nothing, when it
could be given away and growing a harvest? Helping bring about a great harvest
may make us very happy, and is a good motivation, but more than that, Paul’s
second motivation is:
Giving gives joy to God
Look at verse 7, Each of you
must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion,
for God loves a cheerful giver.
We don’t have to be thinking what the vicar or someone
else thinks about our giving, and whether we are giving enough, but we do have to
have in mind that God is pleased by and approves a cheerful giver. The way we
give is known by God. He knows whether we give because we feel forced to, or
because we actually want to. He loves it when we are people who get happiness
from giving.
I don’t know if it was that boy who lost his money
down the grate, or another boy, who went to church with his grandfather, and as
the plate came round, whispered to his grandfather, ‘You don’t have to pay for
me – I’m only six’. That boy was a long way from being a cheerful giver.
There may be people who think ‘I don’t have to pay – I
only earn a very small amount’ or ‘I don’t have to pay, I give lots more time
than other people’ or ‘I don’t have to pay, there are lots of wealthy people
and they should give more’. It’s not about other people, and it’s not about how
much we have got, it’s whether we give happily, or resentfully, or not at all.
And it’s between God and us – he is the one who loves it when we give
cheerfully. He’s the one who loves it when we are generous like he is. That’s
Paul’s second motivation, that we please God.
What do we do if we are people who don’t get happiness
from giving? What do we do if we are people who are cheerless givers, if we are
people who hate giving money away? That question may be another way of asking, How can we trust God more? Because it may be that we find it
hard to give money away because we think then how will I survive? Who will look
after me when I am in need?
Well Paul’s next motivation addresses that: Giving is
not risky, because of God’s generosity (verses 8-11)
We think giving is very risky, because we don’t
actually trust God. If we give away we’ll lose our security blanket, that
cushion that we need to protect us in case things go wrong. But God is the one who
provides, look at verse 8:
And God is able to provide you with every blessing in
abundance, so that by always having enough of everything you may share
abundantly in every good work.
If we give away to our fellow Christians we mustn’t
think we will make ourselves destitute. God will make sure we are provided for
too. It may be that in time God provides for us through other Christians, or
through other ways of blessing. But giving is not risky because God can be
relied on.
Then Paul talks about a righteous man quoting from Psalm
112. God
‘He scatters abroad, he gives to the poor; his
righteousness endures for ever.’
Paul explains the verse: God - 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. All that
we had in the first place came from God, and he will bless us as we give.
I can only say I have found this to be true in my own
life. As we give away more may come to us.
But what if it doesn’t. What if we though a
Christian are poor in this life and a famine comes, and because God’s people
are selfish and they didn’t share, we starve. The cast iron promise is the
promise that Jesus makes that in the life to come we will have abundance. This
life is a life that may call us to suffering in following Christ. I do not
think it would be right to say that in this life Christians will always be
wealthy and will always be healthy. But when Christians carry out the teaching
in this chapter it is a lot more likely that all Christians will always have
enough.
We need to remember that it all comes from God. God is
the one who provides us with every blessing, and who gives us enough to share
abundantly. We need to trust that God will meet our needs at the same time as
we are giving to others.
The fourth motivation is that Giving moves other to
thank God and to pray for us. (verse 11 -14) Is it
selfish to want others to pray for you? Is it selfish to want others to thank
God because of you? Does this sound a trifle self-interested?
It might be selfish if you want others to thank you,
or if you don’t want to pray for others, but it must be alright to want others
to thank God, and to want others to pray for you. Look what Paul says,
(verse 11) You will be
enriched in every way for your great generosity, which will produce
thanksgiving to God through us; for the rendering of this ministry not only
supplies the needs of the saints but also overflows with many thanksgivings to
God. Through the testing of this ministry you glorify God by your obedience to
the confession of the gospel of Christ and by the generosity of your sharing
with them and with all others, while they long for you and pray for you because
of the surpassing grace of God that he has given you.
We glorify God, by obeying him. The recipients of our
giving thank God overflowingly because of what has
been given to them. They think of how God has been generous through you, and
they thank God for you, and pray for you.
Of course elsewhere in the Bible it says that we
should never give publicly and so as to be rewarded by men; so we may want to
do our giving through the church, so all the praise doesn’t get wasted on us as
individuals. We may want to give anonymously, but we can be sure that if our
money has gone to the right place, then people there will thank God for it.
It was a funny thing this week, that
for one reason and another there was not going to be enough in the current
account to pay the staff salaries next Monday, but then unexpectedly someone
brought in a large cheque that bridges the few days when we would have been
embarrassed. Of course we thanked God for that cheque and for those people who
gave it. Of course people in the
The final motivation comes in the last verse of the chapter, Giving can never repay God (v15).
As his last word on giving Paul wants us to remember
who God is, and what he has done.
Thanks be to God for his
indescribable gift!
Remember that handy-man who has let me down. It’s such
a little thing, but he is not really treating me, or
my friend rightly. There is every chance that you or I are doing something
infinitely worse, and neglecting to listen to God. The greatest reason for
Christian giving is not because of what may come when we sow our money; or the
joy that it gives to God when we give cheerfully; or because we can be dependent
on God’s generosity; or because others will thank God and pray for us. The
greatest reason for Christian giving is because it imitates God who in Christ
was rich beyond riches, and became poor that we might become rich with God.
What an indescribable gift – to raise up sinful humans, in uniting us to his
glorious Son, Jesus Christ.
We can never repay God for what he has done for us in
Christ. There is no better way to say thank you to God for what he has done for
us, than for us to become givers ourselves.
Can I ask you some simple questions?
• Have you actually worked out what you can afford to give?
• Have you re-thought this regularly as income changes?
• Have you worked out how to give weekly or monthly / consistently?
• Have you thought of spending less on yourself?
• Have you received a bonus, some of which could be given away?
• Have you been on the receiving end of God’s generosity?
• Have you been robbing Him lately?