Review:
How Does Giving Glorify God?
- Giving results in THANKFULNESS . (2 Cor 9:11-12)
- Giving proves AUTHENTICITY . (2 Cor 9:13)
- Giving grows RELATIONSHIPS . (2 Cor 9:14)
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above with your cursor for answers!
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So this month, really, we've had one message, and the message is this.
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I love to give.
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You know, we pass these little, you know, goofy looking felt bags, those little blue bags with the handles, and we pass those around.
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And like, why do we do that?
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Because we love doing that.
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It's not the obligatory, "Oh, this is the part.
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Every church does this.
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This is where we're supposed to give.
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That is so not our attitude.
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Our attitude is we love this part.
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We love seeing those goofy little bags come around.
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Why?
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Because I love to give.
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Like, why are you so fired up about giving?
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Well, that's what we've been talking about this month.
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Remember in this passage, 2 Corinthians 8 and 9 is really the key passage in the New Testament about Christian giving.
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Recall that there were all these poor Christians in Jerusalem being persecuted for their faith and losing their jobs and their businesses.
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So there's thousands upon thousands of these poor Christians.
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And Paul and some of these churches were taking up an offering from the outlying regions saying, "Let's support these Christians in Jerusalem." And what we've seen through this series is giving is about the heart.
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Giving is voluntary.
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Giving isn't about a percentage or about an amount.
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It's about voluntarily choosing, deciding in your hearts, a biblical portion of what God has trusted to you.
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And it's between you and the Lord.
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So why do I love to give?
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Just as a recap.
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Why do I love to give?
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This is what we've seen in this passage.
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First of all, I love to give because I'm a steward.
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I'm a steward.
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Nothing is mine.
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Right? Nothing is mine.
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Many of you know a couple weeks ago, accident and I was really sad. I loved that car and it was a reminder to me, God just let me borrow that car for a few years. It wasn't mine. I wasn't going to drive that car to heaven. Okay? Nothing is mine. Nothing is mine. And remember Ben, remember how fun it was to give away somebody else's money? Remember that? Like we took money from the Fredericks and we gave it to you and said you could give it to anybody. Wasn't that See, it's fun when you give...
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He was like, "Yeah, this is great." Because he didn't have an attachment to it.
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It came into his lap.
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And I said, "You can give it to anybody." And he did.
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You know why that's fun?
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It's because there's no attachment.
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Nothing is mine.
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And until you understand that principle, that everything in your possession is really God's, and God gave it to you to use to glorify Him, give it away.
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Until you do that, you're not going to understand why people love to give.
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So I love to give because I'm a steward. I love to give, secondly, we talked about, because Jesus loves to give.
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Jesus loves to give.
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If we had Jesus personally, physically, in the flesh, right here, right now, sitting with us, and we said, "Jesus, what's your favorite thing in the world?" He would say, "I love to give." How do we know He loves to give? Because His life was typified by that.
03:20-03:49
himself. He emptied himself, and that was that beautiful verse, remember? That He became poor for us. He emptied himself so that He could give Himself fully, even all the way to the cross. And even beyond that, God is a giver of gifts. He gives us His Holy Spirit who gives us His peace, His joy. We are fellow heirs with Christ. God loves to give, and Because God's people, we love to give.
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God is conforming us into the image of His Son.
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So because He loves to give, we love to give.
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Then last week we talked about why do I love to give?
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I love to give because God gives to me.
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And at the risk of sounding like some liberal, charismatic TV preacher, we looked at what the Bible actually says.
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The principle of sowing and reaping that's true for agriculture is also true with money.
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The Bible says if you sow, if you give money, you will reap, you'll receive money.
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And your reaping is in proportion to your sowing, meaning if you sow a little, you're going to reap a little.
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If you sow a lot, you're going to reap a lot.
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And we saw last week that God gives you more so that you can give more.
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God wants you to meet a need, not feed your greed.
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So God says you keep giving it out.
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I'll keep giving to you.
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God gets really fired up about that.
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You've seen a lot of reasons that I love to give.
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All of those are great reasons, but today we're going to look at the number one reason I love to give.
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This isn't like - Paul's like, okay, here's a bunch of reasons, and we're going to kind of round it off, kind of cap it off, and let's throw one more in.
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This is the biggest reason that I love to give.
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This is the biggest reason that we should love to give.
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And why is it the biggest reason?
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Because this reason is something that should typify the Christian's life in every area.
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This is the reason behind why you should have the marriage that you have.
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This is the reason behind why you should parent the way that you parent.
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This is the reason behind why we try to do what we do as a church.
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This is the reason that's actually the mission statement of the church.
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And it all comes from 1 Corinthians 10 .31 "Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." And that's what we're going to see in this passage.
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I love to give because giving glorifies God.
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Again, that's something that should typify every single area of our lives.
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Why are you doing it that way?
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I'm doing it because this is the way that glorifies God.
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So why do we give the way that we give?
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We're going to see it very clearly in this passage.
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Because we want to glorify God.
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But what does it mean to glorify God?
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To glorify God means to manifest His presence.
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To glorify God means to make Him known.
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In other words, glorifying God means you're letting people see God in you.
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Jesus said, "Let your light shine before men so they may glorify God in heaven." Now, your light isn't your light, right?
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It's God's light shining through you.
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But Jesus said, "Live your life in such a way that people see God at work through you, And then they're going to glorify Him, not you.
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Because you're manifesting His presence.
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The biggest reason that we give to the work of the Kingdom is it glorifies God.
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The way that we give magnifies the Lord.
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So today, the question is how does giving glorify God?
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There's three things I want to share with you.
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is giving results in thankfulness.
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You're going to see this again straight from the text.
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Giving results in thankfulness.
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Look at verses 11 and 12.
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Paul says, "You will be enriched in every way, to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God.
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For the ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints, but is is also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God.
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You see it right there in the text.
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Like what's happening with this giving?
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What's happening?
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Paul's like, well, a couple of things.
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We're meeting the needs of the saints, but that's not even the main thing that's happening.
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The main thing that's happening is all these people are thanking God because of this giving.
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That's the main thing that's happening.
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And biblically, this is so important.
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I'm gonna say this quickly.
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We could spend a whole sermon series on this topic.
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Just write this down.
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Thankfulness glorifies God.
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Thankfulness glorifies God.
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It does.
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2 Corinthians 4:15 says, "For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people, it may increase thanksgiving to the glory of God." Thankfulness glorifies God.
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In Romans 1:21, just write the reference down.
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But you have to see The Apostle Paul in Romans talks about how faith is linked to thankfulness.
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Meaning this, you find me somebody that's not thankful to God, I'll find you somebody that doesn't have faith.
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You find me somebody that says, "I don't think God's ever given me anything.
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God's never done anything for me and I'm not thankful." Well that guy doesn't have faith.
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But you find the guy that says, "You know, God has been so good to me.
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Yes, life has been hard.
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I've had to deal with some very hard things in my life.
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It's been very difficult.
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But you know, God has been so good, and He has sustained me, and He has taken me through some very hard times in my life.
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You find me that guy, and I'll say there's somebody that has faith.
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But you have to see, biblically, faith and thankfulness are connected.
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You can't separate them.
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People thankful to God have faith.
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People not thankful to God exercise faith.
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That's Romans 121. Because you see, it's all from God. You see, when we give, it's because God moves our heart, and the recipient of the gift thanks God for the gift.
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Don't thank me, thank God. You see, that's how that works.
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The person gives, and And the recipient, while acknowledging that God used that person to give, the recipient ends up thanking God because God's the one that moved the heart for that person to give.
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You following me on this?
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This is so important.
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The point is, it's not the person that receives the glory.
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Like I gave this to you man, you should thank me.
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No, you should thank God.
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Because God is the one who, He gave it to me in the first place, right?
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Everything I give came from God, so you should be thanking Him anyways because I'm just giving you something that He gave me in the first place.
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That's something I like to say to people the times that we're out and I treat somebody to lunch or coffee, "Oh no, no, let me get that, let me get that." Something I like to tell people is, "Oh no, don't worry about it, my father owns everything." Meaning what?
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Meaning everything in my wallet came from God in the first place.
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It's not like it's mine anyways.
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So, it's all from God.
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Think of Moldova last February, when we took an offering to help rebuild the pastor's home that was a communist block apartment that was crumbling, and the pastor and his family were living in these horrible conditions, and we took an offering to help rebuild his home.
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What resulted from that?
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Does the pastor and his family have a picture of me on their wall?
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And every morning, "Kids, kids, it's time to sing the Pastor Jeff song, come on!
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We're going to praise Pastor Jeff because Pastor Jeff got the church to send us money." Does he do that?
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He absolutely does not.
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Nor should he.
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Take a guess what they do.
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Do you think that they thank God because of the gifts that you gave?
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Absolutely.
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So much praise has gone to God.
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Thank you, God.
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Look what God provided.
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Yes, He did it through Harvest Pittsburgh North and Harvest Pittsburgh East and some other churches.
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Yeah, that's how, those are the channels that God used, but it's all from God.
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So the thankfulness went to God, not to me, not to you, not to Jeremiah in Pittsburgh East.
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The thankfulness went to God.
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You see, and that's why I love to give.
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Because when I give, people praise God for the gift.
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We can talk about the concepts of this all year.
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But you know, we have an opportunity to actually put this into practice.
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We have an opportunity right now in front of us, and I've been teasing it the last couple of weeks.
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We have an opportunity.
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Just as these churches were giving to help support this ministry in Jerusalem, Harvest Bible Fellowship has approached us about an opportunity.
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They're building a training center in Romania like the one that I attended in Chicago to train ministers to plant churches all over Europe.
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And they're coming to us, and they're saying, "Can you partner with us in this mission?" An absolutely incredible opportunity.
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It is to be on the front end to do something like this?
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It's a staggering opportunity.
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I mean, it's one thing to invest in a ministry.
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It's another thing to plant a church.
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But to invest in a ministry that is training pastors to plant churches - think of how far those offerings are going to go.
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We're talking generations of people, as Jay said, starving for the Word.
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We have an opportunity now to give to get this going.
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Isn't that just an incredible thing about giving?
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See, not everybody here can say that's great, I'm going to jump on a plane and head over there for three months and build it.
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Not everybody can do that.
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But, every single one of us have something in our pockets that we can give.
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To say, you know what, I believe in this.
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And I believe God is calling me to give like the Macedonians, according to my means, beyond my means.
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And we want you to be prayerfully considering you're going to give to this ministry to get it going.
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And prayerfully consider you're going to be one of the people to head over there to be a part of getting things built.
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Much is happening.
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Incredible opportunity.
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So I love to give because giving results and thankfulness - people praise God for His provision through you.
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Do you know that?
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For generations, people will be praising God through this training center.
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And think of the churches out of this training center of these passionate worshippers of Jesus Christ and people coming to Christ.
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And all this worship going up.
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And how did it start?
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It started because God did something through you.
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And that's what Paul's talking about here.
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Giving has a way of doing that.
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God using you to make all of that worship happen.
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You mean I can give money and the end result of this money Is there going to be people worshiping God?
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Who do I make the check out to?
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It's an amazing cycle, isn't it, when you consider what we talked about last week.
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So we give, and then it results in thankfulness to God.
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So because we give, God gives us more to give, and then we give more, which results in more people being thankful to God, and God is glorified even more.
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So He gives us more to give so that we can have even more people thankful to God, and God has glorified more.
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Do you see this incredible cycle of grace?
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Awesome.
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Giving results in thankfulness.
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#2 - Giving proves authenticity.
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Giving proves authenticity.
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Look at v. 13.
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"By their approval of this service, they will glorify God because of your submission flowing from your confession of the Gospel of Christ and the generosity of your contribution for them and for all the others.
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Giving proves authenticity.
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See, this would have been very important for the Corinthian church, because let's be honest, the Corinthian church - they were a messed up church.
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They were messed up.
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Read 1 Corinthians sometime.
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They were messed up.
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1 Corinthians 5 - do you know in the Corinthian church?
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There was a guy in the church who's having an illicit affair, a physical illicit affair with his stepmother.
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Okay, so his dad gets remarried and this guy is messing around with his stepmother and like the church was bragging about it.
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Okay, and I'm not trying to be crass, read 1 Corinthians 5.
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They were boasting about it.
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There were a lot of high fives and pats on the back and oh man, look at this guy.
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And Paul's like, what are you doing?
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You shouldn't be bragging about this.
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Paul's like, "What in the world is going on in that church?
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Throw him out!" Bragging about such a gross sin.
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Throw him out.
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That's 1 Corinthians 5.
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So the point is, it was a messed up church.
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It was a messed up church.
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And I'm sure as word got around of these kinds of things, there are probably people wondering, I wonder if there's even any really like born again people attending the church in Corinth.
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I mean, you really think that there's anybody here Christian, I mean, obviously, all their salvation's in question now.
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If this is the kind of garbage that they're doing, well, Paul knew.
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Paul knew, listen, they're born again people that are like us, still learning, still growing, right?
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Anybody here have it all figured out?
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Anybody, anybody at all?
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Like, yeah, it's all figured out.
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I'm like as good as I'm going to get, not me.
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We're all on a journey, aren't we?
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And Paul knew that about them.
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He says, they are born again and they're growing And Christ is doing something in them.
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And that's why he says, "Look, this giving is going to - what's it going to prove?
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How's it going to glorify God?
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Look at this phrase.
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Because of your submission flowing from your confession of the Gospel of Christ." What's he saying?
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He's saying that one of the ways that giving glorifies God, Giving is a demonstration of true faith.
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Giving is a demonstration of true faith.
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It's not as if giving is what gets you saved.
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That's not the point at all.
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Paul is saying that giving is a demonstration that you truly are saved.
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Because you did confess Christ, giving demonstrates salvation.
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How can you tell if somebody is saved?
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Can you tell someone, say, what's the fruit of salvation?
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Is it based on what they say or by what they do?
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Well, according to James, faith is demonstrated by what people do.
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James says, "Faith without works is dead, but faith with works is alive, and giving is one of the most beautiful acts of worship." Want some evidence?
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Let's look at the disciples.
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We're going to be jumping back into Mark here next week.
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And we've already seen this in our study through Mark, where the disciples were always arguing about stupid things.
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Like, which one of us is the greatest?
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While they were walking around with Jesus.
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But then something interesting happens.
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They're arguing about which is the greatest in Mark.
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And then you get to the book of Acts, and they're like giving everything for the common good of everybody.
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And you're like, wait a minute, How did they get from these self-serving, sort of arrogant people to pouring themselves out for Jesus people?
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What happened in the middle?
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What happened in the middle was the Holy Spirit came.
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And the Holy Spirit changed them.
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I believe that's one of the ways the Holy Spirit transformed them.
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They were, you know, in Jesus' day, so much about themselves, their glory, their attention.
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After Jesus' death and resurrection and after the Holy Spirit came, they were about giving.
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Read Acts 2. Read Acts 4.
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That's what the church did.
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They gave. They gave. They gave.
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So that everybody was taken care of.
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It says that there was no needy among them.
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They shared everything that they owned.
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Church, nothing fires a Christian up more than seeing Jesus change a life.
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That giving generously is one of the most visible and tangible ways that demonstrates that Jesus has changed a life.
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Because God truly has a person when He has their money.
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So giving proves authenticity.
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And finally, giving grows relationships.
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Giving grows relationships.
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Look at v. 14.
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Paul says, "While they long for you and pray for you because of the surpassing grace of God upon you.
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When Jesus changes someone, the reality that the world sees is the love that we have for one another.
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Sort of counterintuitive.
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I would have thought that Jesus would have said, "By this, all men will know that you're my disciples by the way that you love lost people." But He didn't say it was about the way we love lost people.
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Jesus said it was about the way that we love each other.
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Scripture's so clear in that.
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John 13, 35, "By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." So the world is looking at us.
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Do we really love each other as Christians?
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And that's why in this passage, we see signs of deep loving relationship.
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Did you see that in verse 14?
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He says they long for you, and they pray for you.
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See, that relationship was happening to the point that they were wanting to see them, They were constantly remembering Him in their prayers.
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And it was because of the giving.
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Now listen, I'm not saying that we're buying friends.
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I'm not saying that.
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I don't want anybody to leave.
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So I hear what Pastor Jeff is saying.
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He's saying that we should buy friends.
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So Tony, I like you.
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Will you be my friend?
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I'll buy you a dirt bike.
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If I buy you a dirt bike, will you be my friend?
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Tony, will?
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Okay, that's fantastic.
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He's a cheap friend.
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You're a cheap friend, Tony, because I asked somebody else the other day, "Will you be my friend if I buy you a dirt bike?" And he said, "You're gonna have to up it "to something with four wheels." I'm like, "Yeah, I'm kinda buying one of those myself." And I'm not saying that you buy your friends.
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Like, well, then what are you saying?
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I'm saying there's a sense in which relationships form and deepen when someone is willing to give in order to ease another's financial burden.
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And I wanna share it from a different perspective.
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We were talking about giving to Moldova giving to Romania. But you understand that we've been on the other end of that, right?
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Before this church launched and money was pretty tight, right Ken? You remember that money was pretty tight? Harvest Bible Chapel up in Oakville in Niagara, you know, they're just like right down the road from each other. I've told you this, they sent us somewhere between seven and eight thousand dollars. They're just like, we were going to do some missional giving, we thought you guys could use it, here you go. So how do you think I feel about those churches? You see, there's a There's a connection there with Pastor Robbie Simons and Pastor Darrell Molyneux.
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There's a connection that I have with those people that I always remember.
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You know what?
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We were in a tough spot and they reached out to us by giving.
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Now granted, we had hundreds of people that were like, hey, best of luck to you, I'm pulling for you, I'm praying for you, that's fantastic.
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But there's something special about these people that said we are willing to invest in you.
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It happened even more recently with Northway.
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At the end of a baptism service, they took an offering and they gave a portion of that offering to us.
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Why?
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To bless us.
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We didn't ask for it.
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I didn't have a private conversation with Pastor Kent or Pastor Scott like, "Look, I appreciate you doing this "because we're broke." None of that happened.
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They're just like, "We just wanna bless you guys "because we love you guys and we love our partnership." So they gave us money.
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So I'm saying that being on the other end of that, I understand the truth that there's some kind of a, there's some kind of an affection and a bond and a unity that comes when ministries are being supported by other ministries like that.
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That's exactly what Paul's talking about here.
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When you give, that's why they're longing for you.
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That's why they're praying for you, because you're being united and unified and knit together because you are willing to invest in them financially.
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Thinking of what's going to happen in Romania, as I already said.
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These churches are going to think very fondly of you.
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There's a church in Pittsburgh that never met us!
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Praise God for them!
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And I'm praying for them, and I'm praying for that church, and I'm praying for that ministry because God used them so mightily in our lives.
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So giving makes for unity and a love and a gospel like nothing else.
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Because money used rightly can make friends.
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But if you're still sort of like, I'm not sure about this using money to like buy friends thing that you're talking about.
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Just jot this down.
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Luke chapter 16.
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This is one of my favorite parables.
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Because it is so weird compared to the other parables.
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But Jesus told this parable, and I mean weird in a good way.
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But Jesus told this parable in Luke 16 that's just kind of crazy when you think about it.
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Jesus is like, okay, so this, I'm paraphrasing.
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I want you to read, I'm paraphrasing.
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But Jesus is like, okay, so this guy, this guy worked for this guy that owned all this stuff.
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And this guy was a manager.
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And this manager knew that he was getting fired.
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Like, you know what?
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We found out that there's some shady things going on.
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You're gonna be out, you're fired.
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So this guy knew he was getting fired.
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So what this guy did was he called in all these people that owed his master money.
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He's like, "What's your bill?" The guy's like, "Well, I owe 100." He goes, "Cut it in half, write down 50." And he called in the next guy, "How much do you owe?" And he's like, "Well, I owe like 100 or whatever." And he's like, "Write down 80." So he called in all these people that owed and said, "Cut your bill down." It was like, you know, price to sell, price to move.
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We are cutting debt here today.
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Why did he do that?
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because he knew he was about to get kicked to the curb.
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He didn't have anywhere to go.
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But all of a sudden, he just made for himself a handful of friends that were sort of indebted to him.
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That's why the Bible says, Jesus said the master commended this manager for his shrewdness.
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I'm sure he didn't commend him for what actually happened in the sense of, you just ripped me off a lot of money.
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That wasn't the commendation.
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The commendation was, dude, that was actually kind of clever what you did.
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Because when I can you here, you're going to have all these people that are going to let you stay with them because you looked out for them.
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Why did Jesus tell that story?
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Jesus made the application.
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He says, by the way, worldly people are a lot smarter about using money than kingdom people.
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He says, but I'm telling you, you can win eternal friends with unrighteous mammon, which is money.
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Because you can win friends for eternity with money.
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You can win people.
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Jesus said they're going to welcome you into heaven.
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There are going to be people in heaven waiting for you when you cross over.
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And they're going to be like, "It was because of your giving.
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It was because of the way that you invested in me and this ministry that affected me that I'm here in heaven right now." Jesus said there are going to be people in heaven greeting you.
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Why?
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are willing to give money in the name of the Lord to advance His kingdom.
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So can you use money to win friends according to Jesus?
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Yes.
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Not only yes you can, but Jesus said yes you should.
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Invest your money in people.
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And that grows relationships.
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I know that sounds very weird to hear in church.
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I encourage you to be a Bible student.
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That's what it says here in 2 Corinthians 9.
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Read the parable in Luke 16.
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Okay, and then we have verse 15 as I close.
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Look at verse 15.
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Paul says, "Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift." "Thanks be to God for his," what kind of gift?
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He says it's inexpressible.
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So what do you think he's talking about?
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What do you think he's talking about?
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Go ahead and shout it out if you think you know the answer.
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What is the inexpressible gift of God?
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Jesus, okay, everybody else now, what's the inexpressible gift of God?
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Jesus, that's obviously who he's talking about, right?
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God's given me lots of stuff that I can describe.
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He's given me an awesome wife, an awesome family.
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He's given me so much, an awesome church.
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I can describe you guys though.
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You know something I can't fully describe is how awesome Jesus is.
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And that's what he's talking about.
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That's kind of a weird way to end this passage, don't you think, Deana?
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because I was thinking about this this week while you were doing what you do, and I'm thinking about this.
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He has this section in 2 Corinthians 8 and 9 that's all about giving.
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And something they teach you when you go to preaching school is that you have to land the plane.
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Meaning your conclusion should be tight and memorable and meaningful, right?
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So as I was thinking about this week, "You know, how was Paul gonna land this plane?
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He just gave this awesome, Holy Spirit inspired discourse on giving.
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How was he gonna land this plane?" Then Paul's like, "Okay, so they long for you and pray for you because of the surpassing grace of God upon you.
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Amen." Like, no, that wasn't quite, wouldn't quite do it.
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Or, you know, he's like, "Well, because of the surpassing grace of God upon you, "So, give." Okay?
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No, that couldn't quite do it.
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How could Paul conclude this series on giving?
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He says thanks be to God for His inexpressible gift.
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And here's the point.
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It all goes back to Jesus.
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It all goes back to Jesus.
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All of it.
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What do you mean by that?
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Listen, if I have to forgive someone for a wrong they committed against me, who is my motive?
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Who is my example?
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And who is my power for forgiveness?
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Somebody could get up and list all of the verses in the Bible about forgiveness.
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But at the end of the day, do you know what motivates me to forgive?
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Jesus.
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It all goes back to Him.
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Or, good works.
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What motivates me to do good works?
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You can give me all the reasons why it's important to work for the Lord, and how important good works are, but at the end of the day, what motivates me?
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Jesus.
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We can talk about prayer, and all the benefits of prayer, and the way that God works through prayer, but at the end of the day, going to motivate me to pray?
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Because Jesus prayed.
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So now we're talking about giving.
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And here's the need, and these people have needs, and God has given you, and even if you don't have much, you have something to give.
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But if you give, God's going to give you more, but it's an act of faith.
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And he's talking about all these concepts about giving, but it all goes back to what?
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It all goes back to Jesus.
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and say, "Listen, if there's somebody here that's still like, 'Yeah, I'm not really sure.
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I'm not really sold on the giving thing.'" Maybe there's somebody here that says, "Yeah, Pastor Jeff, I hear what you're saying, and I'm not really sure." My answer to you is, it goes back to Jesus, doesn't it?
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Because He's the giver to me.
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He's the example of giving sacrificially.
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He's the example of giving worshipfully.
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He's the example of giving lovingly.
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And because of all He is, and because of all He does, and because of everything He promises, I say, I love to give.
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How about you?
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Father in Heaven, it certainly does go back to Jesus.
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And You have taught us so much stuff in these chapters about all of the promises and blessings and ways that You work as we give.
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And I pray, Father, the thing that we would leave with is I love to give because of Jesus.
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Father, I pray that as we are preparing to partner with this training center being built in Romania, that You would move our hearts.
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You would stir our hearts to be generous towards this endeavor.
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The advancement of Your kingdom for the glory of Your name.
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Let us be people who don't just talk about giving, who don't just acknowledge that giving is good.
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Let us be generous givers.
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In Your glorious name that we pray, Amen.
Small Group Questions (Whole Group):
Read 2 Corinthians 9:11-15
How would you define what it means to "glorify God"? How does financial giving glorify God?
In 2 Corinthians 9:13, Paul says that giving is a proof of genuine salvation. How is giving an evidence that someone is truly born again?
Breakout Questions:
Pray for one another to grow as givers: rightly motivated, generous, and trusting God!
