Take It to the Limit Part V, You Can Have Enough

Are you used to seeing Jeff Painter or sitting there at the keyboard? And Jeff got the monster flu. I mean, like the one that just flattens you out. So at the very last minute, Cheryl stepped up and I want to thank Cheryl for filling in so capably too. And I almost got the monster flu, but there was nobody to step in. So fortunately the Lord delivered me. Honestly, it's amazing. But anyhow, let's stand together and pray. And let's ask the Lord just to speak to our hearts this morning. Fathers, we come to your word. We thank you for the truth of that beautiful song that Joanne shared with us. I'm confident Lord, that if we grasp that truth, that if we can give you all of ourselves, that you will give us all of who you are. And how could we ever want? What could we ever desire then more than that, than have all of God? So speak to us now. Or even the most distracted of us, bring us in in tune. Turn our hearts to hear on your frequency now in Jesus name, amen. All right, thanks so much. Invite you to grab your outline out of your notes. This is week five in this series, take it to the limit. You're not going to want to miss next week when I talk about moral margins. I'm going to talk about not just for single people, but for adults and married adults. 2 Corinthians chapter eight will be our text. As you're turning here, I want to share a story with you. 2 Corinthians eight. I want to talk about the very first person in the United States of America to reach billionaire status. At the age of 20, and we've had a lot of dot-com billionaires come and go since then. But at the age of 23, this individual became a millionaire. And by the age of 50, the first bonafide billionaire in the United States of America. Every decision, attitude, and relationship was tailored to create his personal wealth and power. But three years after he attained his goal, at age 53, he became terribly sick. His entire body was wracked with pain and he lost much of his function. All of his hair fell off of his head in complete agony. The world's only billionaire could buy anything he wanted, but he could only digest milk and crackers. An associate wrote he could not sleep, would not smile, and nothing in life meant anything to him. Imagine a billion dollars at your disposal and you couldn't do anything with it. His personal highly skilled physicians predicted he would die within a year. That year passed agonizingly slow. As he approached death, he awoke one morning with the vague remembrances of a dream. He could barely recall the dream, but knew it had something to do with not being able to take any of his successes with him into the new world. The man who could control the business world suddenly realized he was not in control of his own life. He was left with a choice. So he called his attorneys, accountants, and managers and announced that he wanted to channel his assets to hospitals, research, and mission work. And on that day, John D. Rockefeller established his foundation. This new direction eventually led to the discovery of penicillin and many other antibiotics, cures for current strains of malaria, tuberculosis, and diphtheria. The list of discoveries resulting from his choice was enormous. But perhaps the most amazing part, and the part I didn't know about this story, is that the moment he began to give back a portion of all that he had earned, his body chemistry was altered so significantly that he began to get better. He looked as if he would die at 53, and John D. Rockefeller lived to be 98 years old. Rockefeller learned gratitude and gave back from his wealth. Doing so made him whole. It was one thing to be healed. It was another to be made whole. Interesting story, isn't it? I believe it captures the essence of what it means to reprioritize and to gain perspective and margin in our lives. When we are blessed, whether through trial, listen, or teaching, you don't have to go through trial to learn these things if you tune in to the word of God. When we're blessed through that, to see clearly what really matters, not through the glasses of cultural values like we talked about last week, but according to eternal ones, according to what really matters, we make wise choices that benefit others, and listen, as the illustration today, also benefit ourselves. That's what I want you to hear. This isn't about giving it all away so someone else gets it. It benefits you in the long run. Now, last week we said there was a secret to developing margin, whether it's in your spiritual life or your priorities or your schedule or financially. There's a deep, deep spiritual secret. Remember what it was? Oh, please don't make me feel like no one got it. What's the deep spiritual secret? We choose to have it. We choose to have it. It isn't like God just gives some the benefit and others lose out. You, by the grace of God, have been given this amazing thing called free will. And free will, if you'll tune into it, enables you to make choices, even today, that will set a course in your life that over time will develop this blessing called margin. When we choose to have financial margin, as we talked about last week, by putting God first, remember PPG, priority, percentage giving, by monitoring our lifestyle so things don't get way out of whack, that margin gives birth to a rare character trait that I love to see but rarely do. It's the first thing on your outline. That rare character trait is a generous spirit. I'm telling you, a generous spirited person stands out like a light bulb in a dark room. It's someone who attracts you with their warmth and willingness to make a difference. You don't feel like you're imposing upon them when you make a request. They always sense that you are important and you feel that back from them. Generosity is very similar in its impact to encouragement. It's just something that draws you to people. Now, you wanna know, here's a little test how you can know whether or not you have this spirit of generosity. So are you ready? You wanna take this little test? Do you? Oh, good, okay. Take your wallet or your checkbook out of your purse. Go ahead, ladies, open your purse, get your wallet out. Don't look at me like I know what I'm talking about. Take it out. Come on, you said you'd take the test. There you go, take it out. This is, remember we talked last week, this is a 21st century idol. See, it even looks like a little temple there, doesn't it? And Americans all over the nation will be worshiping in this idol six and a half days a week. Some put it aside for a few hours, but okay, you got it? Take a good look at it. Now, I want you to pass it to the person next to you. Come on, you said you'd take the test. Pass it to the person. Not your spouse either, okay? No, no, not your spouse, no. There you go. Very good. Just go ahead and just massage that a little bit, okay? Now, I'd like the ushers to stand and we're gonna take an offering. And I want you to give an offering like you've always dreamed you could, okay? I want you to pour it out and just bless. Now, right now, what are you feeling right now? That will determine just how generous your spirit is. All right, pass it back. Oh, hear that? Oh, thank God. Oh, go ahead, you can caress it a little bit now and put it back in there. Okay, well, yeah. So it appears that we may need to make some room on this whole generous spirit thing, huh? All right, 2 Corinthians 8. Let's look there, 2 Corinthians 8. And Scott Henwood has for us, once again on the side screens for those who maybe forgot their Bibles, this important passage. Let's read it together. This is an amazing passage, friends. This just grasps the core issue of what God is trying to bring to pass in us. And now, brothers, we want you to know about the grace of God that has given the, that God has given, rather, the Macedonian churches. Out of the most severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity. For I testify that they gave as much as they were able and even beyond their ability. Entirely on their own, they urgently pleaded with us for the privilege of sharing in this service to the saints. And they did not do as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then to us in keeping with God's will. And so we urge Titus, since he had early made a beginning, to bring also to completion this act of grace on your part. But just as you excel in everything, in faith and speech and knowledge and complete earnestness and in your love for us, see that you also excel in this grace of giving. I'm not commanding you, but I want you to, I want to test the sincerity of your love by comparing it with 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 you, through his poverty, might become rich. Well, the background of this passage is this. Paul was sent out by the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem to establish churches in the outer reaches of the Roman empire. And the one thing they told Paul to do, they said, be careful when you go out to take care of the poor. Galatians 2.10. And Paul said, that was the one thing I really wanted to be sure that I did. Taking care of the poor was always an important dimension of the gospel. So Paul established churches in this region. Think of like a state called Macedonia. Churches like the church at Philippi and Thessalonica and Berea. And these were, and this is important, these were all Gentile churches. Paul was a Jew. Paul had come out of the Jewish church in Jerusalem and he had gone out to the Gentile areas. Why is that so important? Because remember, Jews and Gentiles had no dealings. I mean, there was a rift between them. There was a deep, I mean, ethnic, whatever you want to call it, racial, whatever you want to call it. It was just a rift. They didn't get along. And now it's time for Paul to report to the Corinthian churches that he's talking to about what the Macedonian churches were doing in this very matter of taking care of the poor. Amazingly, what we discover is these Macedonian Gentile believers did the unthinkable. They went above and beyond what was ever expected of them. And as we read this together, they discovered what I hope we'll discover as a church in these days. They discovered, Roman number one, margin of the heart. Margin of the heart, this little phrase I coined, is the key to gracious generosity. You will not become a generous-spirited person until you nail down this thing of having margin in your heart. You see, margin in the heart is the overflow of grace received. Many of us have never understood that God wants to put in you what He wants to take out of you, in terms of holiness, in terms of obedience, in terms of resource. And so you strive and struggle to... Many of us grew up in a religious tradition that made us strive and struggle to be accepted by God. The Macedonian churches realized that it was a grace gift. So they had discovered they didn't have to strive, they didn't have to struggle, they just believed God. And so a weird thing happened. If you look at verse two, it says on your outline there, out of the most severe trial, what kind of trial? Well, look at it. Their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity. How many times would you expect to see the term overwhelming joy and extreme poverty in the same sentence? Most people who are poor, most people who seem to be without, you would imagine them as being like down and depressed and desperate all the time. Paul said it was the opposite. They had this joyful thing going. And when I watched, overwhelming joy plus extreme poverty equaled, watch, rich generosity. The one thing I want you to hear in that is this, you do not have to be rich to have a generous spirit. And so just so you remember this, remember I was a chemistry major, I think in terms of formulas, OJ plus EP equal RG. And for those of you who, you're more narratively oriented, overflowing joy plus extreme poverty equal rich generosity. That is such an amazing statement. What is Paul saying? He's saying that these believers had discovered the secret of gracious generosity was the overflow of grace in their heart. Margin of the heart comes when you're no longer trying to win God's blessing, but you realize it's been given to you and you reach out by faith and lay hold of it. You don't have to look any longer at the little temple to find happiness because you realize it's not in here anymore. It's given to you by the grace of God. And you know that it comes from him and you know that you have been given whatever you need to fulfill the purposes of God. How many of you ever heard Tony Campolo speak? He's a rather colorful speaker. And he tells a story of speaking at a ladies meeting where there were about 300 women present. And as the meeting started, the president of the organization read a letter from a missionary. It was a moving letter, a cry for a specific need. She expressed the need for $4,000 to take care of an emergency that had cropped up. So the president of the organization said, well, we need to pray that God will provide resources to meet the need of this missionary. Brother Campolo, will you please pray for us? Tony Campolo, if you knew this guy, you could just see him doing this. He stood up and said, no. The president of the organization said, I beg your pardon? He said, no, I won't pray for that. I believe that God has already provided the resources and that all that we need to do is just to give. I'll tell you what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna step up to this table and give every bit of cash I have in my pocket. And if all of you will do the same thing, I think God's already provided the resources. Well, the president of the organization chuckled. She was getting nervous. She said, well, I guess we get the point. He's trying to teach us that we all need to give sacrificially. He said, no, that's not what I'm trying to teach you. I'm trying to teach you that God has already provided for this missionary. All we have to do is give it. Here, I'm gonna put down all my money. Now, on the side, he says, now, all I have is $15 in my pockets. I wasn't too worried. But he put down his $15 and looked at the president of the organization. Reluctantly, she opened her purse, took out all of her money, which was about $40 and put on the table. One by one, the rest of these 300 ladies filed by and put their money on the table. When the money was counted, they had collected $5,000. Tony Campola said, now, here's the lesson. God's grace always supplies for our needs. And he supplied for this missionary too. The only problem was we were keeping it for ourselves. Now, let's pray and thank God for his provision. You see, when you dial into the grace of God, you know that there's enough. God has spoken to me numerous times that all the resources that we need for the mission of this church are already here. We just have to find the grace to release them. In verse three of 2 Corinthians chapter eight, you'll see this. I testify that they gave as much as they were able and even beyond their ability. What does that mean? In other words, they were able to give this much, but they even gave beyond that. Well, here's the secret. When you're dialed into the grace of God, he supplies from places you didn't expect. Look over in chapter nine. Chapter nine, verse 10 and 11. Now, he who supplies seed to the sower. Who is that? That's God. And bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion. And through us, your generosity will result in thanksgiving God. I wanna stop right now and say, if you're in a small group, start praying for God to strengthen and increase your store of seed. For God to start to bless you with more than you have now. So why? So you can just add to your portfolio and grow your net worth? No. So you can be generous whenever God calls you as Mark and Janie shared in their testimony. This kind of spirit is a generous spirit and it changes people. Number two, experiencing God's grace is the key to margin of the heart. Now, I said that, I wanna underscore it. If you don't get this, you're not gonna be able to go on. Look at verse five at 2 Corinthians chapter eight. And they did not do as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then to us in keeping with God's will. You begin to create margin in your heart when you fully surrender first to the Lord and then to those that God has called alongside of you, both of which are crucial. Here's what I want you to hear. Now, grab this church. Here's where some of you are. You are still debating with God about ownership and lordship and priority and allegiance. You know, he may be important to you, but you haven't made him first in your life. And that little word is crucial. He has to be first. If God is not first, he is not Lord. And the problem that some of us have, it won't matter who's standing up, you're giving the teaching. It won't matter what you hear. No, it won't matter what the need is. If he's not first, you're going to struggle because God wants to be first in our lives. But once that is settled or resettled, if you've once been there and now have drifted away, you say, Lord, everything I am is yours first of all. And Lord, these are my people. This is to whom I've been called. Margins of your heart begin to open up and gracious generosity begins to flow. Turn your outline over. Surrender opens the door to receiving grace. At the end of the service today, we're going to have communion. It's another opportunity for you to say, Lord, be first in my life. I surrender this to you. I don't want to control it. I want you to control me. Then grace increases as we learn to trust. Trust others around us. Trust that as we give authentically and openly, God then holds accountable those to whom we give our resources. And you see, now watch. It's the outcome of these two things that leads to giving. Some of you come and you feel good about it. You feel generous. You feel like you want to, but it doesn't get followed up with the action. It's very important. It's not just about how you feel inside your heart. You say, well, God knows the heart. He knows I feel really generous. That doesn't count. What counts is what you end up doing. Paul says, be a doer of the word, not just to hear, just to deceive yourself whether it was James. It's a feeling you say. Well, the feeling's fine, but it's got to act out in an action. How do I know this? Well, look at the next letter C. The word give lies at the heart of grace. God just didn't feel good about his creation and he didn't feel badly that we were in sin. He didn't just feel that we were in trouble. He what? He gave his only son. Do you see the difference? He saw a condition and he gave. At the core of grace is giving. Now, when I say the word grace, most of us immediately associate it with forgiveness. I have been forgiven by faith in God's grace. And that's true and that's important. But before you ever were forgiven, God had to do something. So he gave his son. And when his son came, we had opportunity to experience forgiveness. God can't help it. He is drawn. It's like this irrepressible desire to want to give to a need. Why? Because he's full of grace. That's the nature of God. He wants to give to make a difference. Some years ago, when my kids were much smaller, I remember a trip I took with David, my oldest son. He was maybe five or six. I'll tell you how long ago this was. We had to go to the bank to get money out. Isn't that weird? And some of you came out, what? You didn't like go to the ATM? No, there weren't any ATMs. So we went to the bank, got money out. And then we stopped out at North Park and we were throwing ball or doing something, just playing around. And after about a half an hour of that, hopped back in the car and went back up to the house. And Carol said, would you get the money out of the bank? I said, sure. I went to pull it out of my pocket and sure enough, it wasn't there. I mean, it was a whopping 60 bucks or so. And I looked in the car, it wasn't there. I said, oh, I bet what happened is we started messing around North Park, it fell out of my pocket. Carol, at this point, the money was very, very tight. She said, well, I think you better get back in the car and go back to North Park and find that money. So I went back, no money. Other people were around. I'm sure someone just picked it up. David went with me and we were searching around. Well, when he got back, he could tell that mom and dad weren't doing real well over this. And justifiably so. So he disappears, goes up to his room and then he comes back down with this little roll of pennies. He said, dad, I want you to have this. I said, oh, David, that's, I don't, you know, I can't do that. He said, I want you to, I need you to take this. He goes back up and he brings down, actually it was a little jar of some silver change, you know, dimes, quarters. David said, dad, I need you to have this. I mean, I want, I just need for you to take this. I want this to be yours. You lost all that money. I said, David, I understand. But, wow. He goes back up one more time and he comes down, listen to this, with a $20 bill. Now you have to remember, for a five or six year old kid back then, I mean, that was like a down payment on a house. I mean, you know, it was huge. It was life savings. He was saving it up for this Star Wars action figure kind of big thing he was going to buy. And he pulls out this $20 bill. And he said, dad, I just need for you to have this. I want you to take it. It'll just, I know it's the right thing to do. And, you know, I mean, it shook me up so bad. I mean, I almost gave it back to him. And I'm, now, you'll always wonder what the truth was. But you see, David's heart was moved when he saw my predicament. That's my point. And God's heart was moved when he saw our predicament. And he gave, not under compulsion. He gave because he loved. And if you're here today and your heart is moved, you're going to want to give, not because you have to give. Not as Janie said, like, you know, carving out something like the Flintstones. No, because something in you says, I've got margin in my heart. I know what God's given to me. And I want to give back. We read in verse eight here. Paul says, I'm not commanding you, but I want to test the sincerity of your heart. I'm not telling you you got to do this, but I want to see what's really there. You see, if you're here today and you're saying, I don't feel any desire to give. I don't think, I mean, I can't give cheerfully. So I'm off the hook. And you know what? The answer is, I would suggest that's probably true. But it's also a commentary on where you really are, spiritually speaking. Because Paul said, I want you to excel in this grace, just like you do in all the other things, speaking and serving and teaching. I want you to excel in this grace of giving. And the law of sowing and reaping will say that if you don't sow anything, you're not going to reap anything. So my question is this, what is your next step of an overflowing, generous spirit in your life? Maybe for some of you for the first time, it will be getting on board in the giving game. You've been coming for a long time. And when the basket goes by, you just don't ever give. Maybe today you'd say, you know what? I need to start doing something, just something to get in board. Others of you, it's like you give sort of sporadically when you feel like it. For you, the next step might be, it's time for me to start putting God first, make it the priority, priority of my giving, priority of my financial management plan, the first check I write. What should it be? And that might be the third step. For some of you, it might be a consistent percentage. Remember we said last week, the New Testament is clear. It's a percentage, 1 Corinthians 16.2. As the Lord has increased, give a percentage on a regular basis. For some of you, it might be up to that tie, through that 10%, which was what God said was the Old Testament standard. Certainly in the New Testament, we shouldn't give less, having received grace, but maybe you're not quite ready to get there. But now some of you have been giving just comfortably. For you, it's time to stretch a bit. Maybe you've given the same level for the last five years. Your income has been doing this, but you're still giving that thing. And well, I'm doing my part. Well, God's saying, wait, I want to enlarge your capacity. I want you to become generous of spirit. And if you do, you will be the one that will be enriched. Roman numeral three, how do we get to this point? By looking to Jesus. He is the key to experiencing God's grace. This beautiful verse, verse nine of 2 Corinthians 8. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes, he became poor. So that through his poverty, through his poverty, you might become rich. This verse reminds us that our Savior doesn't just tell us what to do. He models for us what to do. And in a culture where heroes are usually those who start with a little and end up with a lot. You watching this? In our culture, it's, hey man, I had little, I'm self-made or whatever, or I hit the lotto and now I have a lot. That's usually the way of a hero. In the kingdom of God, it's upside down. God started with everything and gave it all up. And it's hard for us to relate to that. As we've said a lot around here over the years, we live in an upside down kingdom where downward mobility marks maturity. Jesus left the glory and splendor and power and majesty and intimacy of heaven, as Philippians 2 said. And he came to earth, lived for 30 years in obscurity. No one even knew he was anything special except just a carpenter. And for three and a half years, fulfilled his mission as an itinerant teacher and miracle worker, and then died an ignominious death on a cross. And when he did that, he changed the world forever. That spirit of sacrifice is so rare. But when you look at Jesus, you see what it is that's supposed to be in us. Poverty itself is not a good thing. God wants us to have enough. He became poor that we might become rich, rich in the things of God and rich in the provision of God. But you don't see sacrifice too often in our culture, do you? One of the most vivid illustrations, it comes to my mind every time I think about this, it's the closest to this verse that I can think about. Back on January the 13th, 1982, you may remember a flight out of Reagan Airport, an Air Florida flight, crashed on takeoff on a snowy day and crashed into the Potomac River. And if some of you aren't old enough to remember that, it was very vivid. Because the plane sat on top of the water for a while and then slowly sank and had time for the TV crews to get out there. And we couldn't find the video in an archive anywhere. But if you remember it, that's what the tail piece looked like. During that time, you could watch the helicopter dropping down a life line and life preserver. And you watched an individual passing it over once, twice, three times, four times. And they pulled people out each time, a fifth time. The sixth time it came down and the person, the only one left was the person who'd been handing it off and he didn't have the strength to hold onto it himself. And he perished. And today, if you go over I-395 in the Potomac River on the little bridge that goes into DC, it's called the Arlen Williams Jr. Bridge. In memory of the man who gave up his life that five others would not perish. He was a hero. Today, friends, if you're here, the starting point of becoming all that God wants you to be is to receive what Jesus did. That opens you to a generous spirit. It opens you to the possibility that God wants to do things for you. You just can't imagine, but you've got to start there. And if you've known this up in your head and maybe just emotionally you've pulled away, today's the time to come and say, Lord, I want to be a person that you flow your grace through, flow your resource through. I want to be a person that makes a difference. Imagine what God would do in a church that's full of generous spirited people. Just imagine that, how we turn our culture, we just turn it on its ear. Right now, maybe a third of us get this. I'm praying that the other two thirds of us will get it and own it and allow the Lord to change us. Let's stand together as we prepare for communion. Lord, as we come before you right now and we open our hearts to you, we thank you that we'll be able to take these elements and set them aside. We thank you, Lord, that you modeled for us what it meant to give your life for us. And as I pray now, as we come to worship and to receive communion, that you would move us, God, by the power of your mercy and grace to receive the gift that only you could give. And so we come and bow before you, seeking your blessing in Jesus' name. Let's worship together as we prepare to receive communion. Lord, I will bow to you to no other God.