Disciples, Not Donors

Fewer sins are as deep-rooted and hard to detect as greed. Not many of us would admit to being greedy or materialistic, but greed, by default, lives inside each one of us. Jesus makes this clear in Luke 11 when he confronts the Pharisees who hid their greed from others and projected generosity instead. While they appeared holy and generous on the outside, Jesus calls out their inner attachment to money. A few chapters later, Jesus makes his criticism of greed even more clear: to ignore the greed that lives inside all of us makes it impossible to truly love God and others. To Jesus, greed is a poison. And yet, Jesus offers us a solution. The only antidote to the invisible poison of greed is the visible practice of generosity. Our goal is to become disciples, not donors, who practice generosity as a way to keep our greed away from our souls. We redirect our worship towards God by holding our money and wealth so loosely that we give freely, because we trust in the God of abundance.

You can take interactive notes here. At the end of the message, you can email the notes to yourself.

 I’d love for you to open your Bibles to Luke chapter 11.

Such a good day whenever we start a new practice. The driving force behind our church is pretty simple. We make, not attenders, but disciples who reorient their lives to be formed by Jesus together for others. And we spend most of our time on Sundays, like the vision talk that Pastor Caleb gives, explaining what formed by Jesus together for others means.

But even as we intro, I want to spend some time on the phrase that we probably just skip over or ignore. Is that whole phrase reorient our lives to reorient your life is to acknowledge you were previously holding on to a belief an ideology or a practice that you thought would promote happiness and life, but in the end, it’s actually filled with negativity.

Death and destruction. And so Jesus comes to tell us, Hey, you can have a better life. There is a better way to live. And so we slowly keep changing that. That’s really what we do in these practices. And we’ve been doing that a lot in the Sabbath practice. For example, many of us were willing to admit, Oh, I am blocking the Holy Spirit because I’m walking in a hurried spirit.

And so you and I, as a faith family, we began to reorient our schedules so that 24 hours we would stop. Rest, delight, and worship. In our hospitality practice, many of us recognized we were doing a better job at making demonstrations out of sinners rather than making dinner for sinners. And so as a result, we repented and said, you know what, let’s rearrange our dinner tables and our peacemaking practice that we just concluded, but I hope we’re still doing.

We realized when disappointing, uh, issues come up within relationships, whenever there’s friction, we typically run to drama or dopamine instead of Discipleship. And so we’ve been going on this hard journey together. How do we rewire our relational habits, how we love and care for each other? And guys, this is just what disciples of Jesus do.

We do not have the right to pick and choose what to follow. If Jesus says to do it, then we say, okay, Lord, give us grace, give us patience, but it’s our job to actually do it. If we really call him Lord, we reorient or we rearrange, we reschedule our lives. Our priorities, our values, our families, in order to align with the true.

Good and beautiful way of jesus and I really want us to do that today as we begin to talk about Generosity, I will say i’ve preached over 400 sermons here at passion creek I think this will be my third talk ever on giving and so if you’re new here What are the odds? You know, a way to go and, uh, but also I actually think we should probably talk about it more.

And you probably heard that cliche before, but Jesus has talked about it 25 percent of the time when he’s giving lessons in the scriptures, which we’re going to go through a lot of them a quarter of the time. He talked about generosity. Can you imagine if every fourth series at our church was generosity?

It’d be me and my family here. It’d be so great, but this is actually what we’re called to do. So I’d be lying to you if I didn’t admit right out the gate. I’m approaching this series with a bit of fear and trepidation, because There’s some history behind this. One year ago, we did the simplicity practice.

Can you actually raise your hand if you were here for the simplicity practice? You guys are amazing, and you’re still here. Bravo! Okay, so, we actually, uh, we, we went through simplicity, and we talked about the four different dimensions of Christian simplicity. We talked about digital simplicity. Get off your phone, stop watching TV, which you still probably should keep not doing, you know, uh, but we also talk about relational simplicity, gospel simplicity, but the one that I was shocked, I should have seen it coming.

That really offended a lot of people was the message on material simplicity. Uh, as the months have gone on, me and Pastor Caleb affectionately called the simplicity practice the pruning practice because it did exactly that. It either really pruned you, it transformed you, it set you free from the tyranny of stuff and it’s been so cool to see.

Or it set you free from ever coming back to Passion Creek. We literally lost families because of that material simplicity and my, I keep going, man, maybe I should have preached it better. Oh no, you misunderstood me. Whatever. So all that to say, I feel like generosity is the other side of the same coin.

coin. It’s easy for us to misinterpret. It’s easy for us to assume the worst of each other. And I’m just assuming I’m pretty confident this practice will do the same. It will prune us. And, but I pray it’s more about the inner transformation that I really believe is on offer. See, we have a lot of confidence in telling you reorient your possessions, reorient your bank account.

Because when you do You will experience life and life to the full. And I’m not saying it because I think it’s some theory that I made up. We say that with confidence because Jesus himself said in Acts 20 verse 35, it is more blessed, which is the Greek word, Markarius. Many faithful commentators say a cousin word, a synonym is happy.

It is more happy to give than to receive. And we’re betting on that. We’re believing in that. Betting’s probably not the best word to talk about in a generosity series. Now, this is hard for us to believe though, because we’ve been raised in a world that says more money equals more happiness. And some of us say, I know money doesn’t buy everything, but it can buy me a boat.

Right? It can buy me a truck. Okay. I’ll stop. Cause that song gets a little iffy, but, um, so we are, We feel like, yeah, I know it hurts most people, but what if I, I run into some, maybe it’ll work out for me. We want to address all of that. We just ask you to be patient with us. You’re probably going to leave here with more questions than answers, especially on week one.

But I want to start out by saying Jesus’s vision on money is more compelling and complex than the notion that money is evil. That’s typically all you hear in a church. It’s just evil. Well, technically that passage says the root. Of all kinds of evil is the love of money. We’ll get into that But I actually want us to view this very positively Jesus himself, I think it says over and over in the scriptures says that generosity is actually one of the primary ways you and I Can become people of love And joy and peace it is not evil if it’s handled correctly And I want us to be the kind of people who handle it Correctly.

To that end, let’s study the words of Jesus together, starting in Luke 11, verses 33. Lord Jesus be with us. Illuminate this text. May we be healed. Doers of the word, not just hearers only. Amen. Verse 33. No one lights a lamp and puts it in the cellar or under a basket, but on a lampstand so that those who come in may see its light.

Apparently Jesus is like making a joke here. Everybody’s going to be laughing in the audience. Who would put a, put something over a lamp, see lamps. Uh, here’s the thing guys, Thomas Edison wasn’t born yet. And so back then it was this really expensive ceramic Uh, ceramic pot with oil burning in it to light up the whole space so you don’t waste that and you don’t cover it.

So Jesus is kind of stating the obvious here, but now he uses that to segue into a metaphor, into a teaching. Um, in, in verse 34, your eye is the lamp of the body. When your eye is healthy, underline that phrase healthy. Your whole body is also full of light. But when it is bad, underline that word bad, your body is also full of darkness.

So take care then that the light in you is not darkness. If therefore your whole body is full of light, with no part of it in darkness, it will be entirely illuminated, as when a lamp shines its light on you. Now, I’m just going to be honest, I like to study the Bible for a living, and I read this and go, what?

Okay. So it’s a bit confusing until you dive into the context and understand Jewish metaphors. So first of all, let me just say this wasn’t confusing for them, but it’s just confusing for us. But let’s see a couple of things. When he talks about when your eye is healthy, I think most of us assume Jesus is actually probably talking about lust, right?

Be careful, little eyes, what you see. Jesus makes those kinds of statements, just not here in this area. Text. Actually, what healthy means is maybe some of you have like a little footnote next to that word healthy and you go down to the bottom and it says generous. Okay. And then it says when your eye is bad, some of you have a footnote again and it says stingy.

So Jesus is actually talking about modern day vernacular, a person with an abundance mentality versus a person with a scarcity mentality. Abundance mentality, Jesus is very clear on, and we’re gonna talk a lot about that next week, that’s gonna be the whole emphasis. But for now, what is the abundance mentality according to scriptures?

It is the idea that God is a gracious father who loves to give good gifts to his children. It’s this belief that God is a gracious host, who has more than enough food and more than enough shelter. Seeds to have everybody at the table. It’s this idea that, Hey, just because somebody around me is succeeding doesn’t mean I won’t succeed.

We all it’s not a zero sum game. Obviously, conversely, what is the scarcity mentality is to believe the exact opposite. The God is stingy that there’s only so much to go around, that it is a zero sum game. And especially if someone is succeeding or having a lot of wealth near you, that means there less that there is less for you to have.

And so Jesus is trying to speak against that mentality. day! There is more than enough in this world. We can live with an abundance mentality. Stick with me next week. There is a way to use and abuse that. We’re actually going to speak next week against the prosperity gospel and the poverty gospel. So keep that and don’t ask that question yet because it’s coming next week.

But, here’s the focus for now. Here’s the point Jesus is trying to make, or He’s not trying, He’s succeeding in making. Those consumed with scarcity tend to look to money as the only way to calm their fears and create their future. Now, is money helpful? Absolutely! But man, are you setting yourself up for failure when you think it is your God, it is your, The only way to calm your fears.

And so Jesus is making this illustration about the eye and then he references the whole body. He’s essentially saying a scarcity mentality even affects your central nervous system. It changes the way you view the world. It gives you anxiety. And conversely, with an abundance mentality, your whole body is at ease.

It is less consumed in anxiety. Really helpful. Now look at verse 37. If your Bible is anything like mine, is there a header between these two verses, right? Now, in the Greek, we have to know headers weren’t created, so Luke wasn’t trying to be helpful here, like, hey, let’s do a new bold header. It was just, he didn’t even have verse numbers, it was just the whole story.

I think a faithful way to read this text is to understand that 36, ties to 37. These two go together. So essentially, Jesus gives a teaching about abundance mentality, trusting in the God of abundance, and now segues, Luke shows a story to show that in action. What happens when a person is caught in a scarcity mentality.

So let’s look at verse 37. As he was speaking, so again, it shows they tie together. A Pharisee asked him to dine with him. It’s amazing. He went to the hospitality series and he’s just doing, he wants a ping pong ball. Amen? If you’re not from here’s your first day, you have no idea what I’m talking about.

It’s fine. So he went in and reclined at the table. And when the Pharisees saw this, he was amazed that he did not first perform the ritual washing before dinner. Now the Pharisees, they’re known for being set apart. They take the phrase cleanliness is next to godliness to a whole other level. In the first century, The Pharisees decided to be as holy as possible.

Their whole idea was that if everybody in Israel was holy for 24 hours, the king would come and everything would be made right. And so they started to come up with these outward, these external, visible practices that would prove to the world, I’m holy. I am so much better than everybody else around me One of those was they looked into the levitical code in the old testament The levites the priests when they were going to partake in a meal at the temple.

There was a certain hand washing ceremony It’s very particular In order to show the severity of this moment to show that god is holy and we cannot be dirty from the inside Well, the pharisees took that and said hey, let’s apply that everywhere And so they had this special hand washing ceremony before every meal single meal.

All that to say, I don’t believe Jesus is here eating with super dirty hands. He’s not against hygiene, okay? Teenagers, Jesus doesn’t like washing hands, neither do I, right? I don’t think that’s in the text. But what he is against, he doesn’t want to participate in this ceremony. That gives these pharisees false assurance that they’re righteous.

You see the point? So the the pharisees would think hey i’m amazing because I washed my hands this certain way right before eating a meal And jesus has a problem with that. So He is not going to wash his hands So that the pharisee goes now. Wait a minute You’re not holy like I am and it segues into a brilliant lesson because jesus is the greatest teacher of all time verse 39 But the lord said to him now You Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and evil.

Fools! This dinner is going really well, can you tell? Fools! Didn’t he who made the outside make the inside too? Jesus is confronting this Pharisee who has a scarcity mentality and an unhealthy eye, and he does it by giving an illustration of a beautiful cup. With nasty poison on the inside when I was 12, my father changed our lives and said, Hey, we’re gonna go plant a church and a school just like this at Santan Heights Elementary.

And, uh, one of the first few weeks, a family said, Hey, we want you to come over, come to our house. And so I was excited. But for some reason, my mom, who’s a pastor’s kid and a pastor’s grandkid knew not to be too pumped until they saw the house. And so I was like, So we go to this home and I’ll never forget it.

It should have been on hoarders. Absolutely. And, and right when you open the door and God bless you, if this is your house, just don’t invite me over. I smell cats and dogs and pee and all the things. Just, it just hits you like you’re going to have a great next two hours. And so we go into this home and I’m nervous.

I’m not judgy, but also, you know, whatever. And I’m just a little bit nervous as a 12 year old, and I can’t wait for the food to start, and I’m thirsty. I actually was the chief chair stacker at our church. We were portable, so my job was to stack the chairs. I worked hard that day. I deserved a cup of water.

So I said, hey, excuse me. Won’t say the name out loud. I think they’re still local. Hey, can you, uh, Can I have a drink? And they said, sure, go over there. There’s a bunch of different cups. Just grab one, you know, take out the lid, fill it up with water. And it’s over there. And so blah, blah, blah. And said, I said, great.

So I go over and, and I guess the best way to say it kind of looks like a bunch of Stanley cups, which this was over 20 years ago. So I don’t think Stanley was a thing. I feel like it was only a thing for like a year and now nobody likes him again anyway. So it’s like this little Stanley cup. And so I said, okay, great.

And I pick one and cause it was blue, my favorite color. Working out great. So I open up the lid and oh my goodness. It took the Holy Spirit in me not to throw up all over the counter. It was like five week old milk. Just rotting in there. The outside looked great. It didn’t even smell bad. I think it’s because of all the cats.

Like it just masks a lot of different scents. But the moment I opened that up. Oh, right. I all of a sudden was not thirsty again. I put that sucker back and acted like nothing ever happened and I couldn’t wait to go home and drink some real water. This is the similar illustration Jesus is trying to give.

It looks great on the outside. Pharisees, you look super holy. You actually look generous, but on the inside you’re full of poison, man. If you were to be opened up and for people to actually see your heart, it is nasty. It is wicked. And notice Jesus is Bold language here. He, no, he notes two problems with this.

Pharisee. First is that he is evil, but then he mentions one specific sin in particular and it’s greed. See this, based off this passage and other passages in scripture, we have come to believe that greed is sneaky and it’s pervasive, and here’s the worst part. It’s invisible, especially to the one who is carrying it themselves.

Greed has this way of attracting people on the outside. Maybe greedy people may mean that you’re rich, so now people really like you. But I have found time and time again, by the way, let me be clear, I know a lot of rich people who are generous, and this doesn’t define them, but I know other people who are.

And some of the greediest people I know, they were incredible people, until you opened them up, until they didn’t get their way. Until something happened and they, their sense of entitlement comes to the surface, their pride, their arrogance, their indifference to the people around them, and all of a sudden this beautiful person, it seems, gets really, really brutal and ugly.

Jesus is saying, hey Pharisee, this is you. This greediness has overtaken your life and there is poison on the inside. Now, detecting greed is really hard to do. Again, because Jesus point, it’s invisible. And so, I actually found one, uh, I had to read a Quaker, because Quakers, they just, you know, they don’t have many material possessions.

So, of all people to talk about having authority on greed, I couldn’t. would listen to this guy. Richard Foster in his book Celebration of Discipline, absolutely one of my favorite books of all time, talks about how invisible and sneaky greed is. Look at the following quote. He says, We really must understand that the lust for affluence in contemporary society is psychotic.

We crave things we neither need nor enjoy. And this psychosis permeates even our mythology. In other words, how we tell stories, what the movies are communicating every single weekend. The modern hero is the poor boy who purposely becomes rich rather than the rich boy who voluntarily becomes poor. And by the way, we still find it hard to imagine that a girl could do either.

Then he says these really powerful lines. Covetousness, we just call ambition. hoarding we call prudence, greed we call industry. Do you see how invisible greed can be? So to recap what Jesus is teaching us so far, greed is a poison that consumes your entire nervous system, your whole body with a fear of scarcity that drives you further and further into the love of money, thinking money We’ll rescue me from this scarcity and this isn’t the first time Jesus will address this type of mentality.

Turn with me just a few pages over to Luke chapter 16. Luke chapter 16, I think it’s fascinating how much Luke talks about money. I’m going to cover it a little bit more next week, why I think why he talks about money, but let’s look at verse 13. This is Jesus speaking. He says, no servant can serve two masters since either he will hate one or love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other.

You cannot serve both God and money. The Pharisees who were what lovers of money. An unhealthy I, we’re listening to all these things and scoffing at him. And I pray none of you are scoffing at me at the moment. It’s fine. It’s dark in here. I can’t tell. Now, what is, it’s kind of funny guys. Stay with me.

This is heavy. Jesus here is not making, he’s kind of making a moral statement. Yeah, it’s wrong to serve money, but he’s also making just a reality statement. It’s literally impossible to love God and love money at the same time. Amen. Amen. You can try to all you want, but it’s, it’s impossible. So those are the two major lessons I want us to zero in on so far.

What does Jesus talk about with greed? In Luke 11, we just learned greed’s invisible, especially on the outside. In fact, you can fool yourself into thinking you’re loving God and others. In Luke 16, not only is it invisible, greed makes it impossible to love God and others. Let me put it this way. Greed is an invisible poison that puts you in an impossible position to love God and others.

It’s impossible. Like, good luck. There’s no other way around it. And so that’s why the scriptures time and time again reference greed as a rival god, lowercase g. Some people use the phrase mammon, other translations may, or different gospels would say mammon rather than just money, because mammon is actually referencing this false god.

This false god, mammon, promises pleasure and blessing as long as you sacrifice all of your time and your family and your schedules. It will bless you. At least that’s what it tries to promise. So do you see, therefore, both are asking you to reorient your life. Jesus is saying you can’t reorient your life around money and God.

You have to pick one. And I think being honest followers of Jesus, I think it’s okay. There’s grace, there’s forgiveness here. This is not like, are you perfect or not? But I think we have to wrestle with this text and ask ourselves, when I look at my life, have I changed things for money? Or have I changed my schedule, my time, my priorities, my family for the kingdom?

And it gets really scary when we start thinking that through, especially if we don’t remind ourselves of the forgiveness that Jesus has for us, Richard Foster again, but in his book, freedom of simplicity says the following, he kind of really exposes how greed is so, so invisible and, and puts us in these impossible situations to love God.

He says, quote, think of the misery. That comes into our lives by our restless, gnawing greed. We plunge ourselves into enormous debt, and then take two or three jobs to stay afloat. We uproot our families so we can have a more prestigious job or house. We grab and never get enough. Our flashy cars and sports spectaculars and backyard pools have a And I was like, come on dude, everybody loves a backyard pool.

Slow down! Richard Foster. So I just want to make sure, you know, if you invite me and you have backyard pool, I’m not going to judge. Praise the Lord. I won’t want to. So I think that’s why people left simplicity practice. Just, just give me some time here. Okay. But all right, moving on. All right. Backyard pools have a way of crowding out much interests and civil rights or inner city poverty or the starved masses of India.

Greed has a way of severing the cords of compassion. The apostle Paul saw this clearly. When he warned that lust for wealth causes people to fall into all sorts of foolish and dangerous ambitions which eventually plunge them into ruin and destruction, as it says in 1 Timothy 6, 9. So I haven’t, haven’t made my point yet.

Greed is invisible, especially to the one who has it, and it’s a poison, and it will make it impossible to love God and others at the same time. So, I just want to ask the question. Is there a practice from the way of Jesus that could set us free from the fear of scarcity and set us free from the love of money?

Is there an antidote to this poison? And my answer would be yes, and it’s through the practice of generosity. Cue our working definition. This isn’t perfect, but this is what we’re working with. This is what me and Pastor Caleb have come up with. The practice of generosity is living like disciples who trust the God of abundance by giving like stewards who tithe to God’s kingdom.

Over the next four Sundays, we’re going to parse out each section of this definition. Today, my whole point I want to make is that this is a discipleship issue. Generosity is central. not incidental to being formed by Jesus. This is what disciples do. And Jesus further makes that point in verse 41, back in Luke chapter 11, Luke 11, starting at verse 40, 41 says, but give from what is within to the poor, and then everything is clean for you.

So that’s the answer, but woe to you Pharisee. You give a tenth or a tithe of mint, rue, and every kind of herb. Anybody in here has a garden? Can you imagine like making sure down to the, to the rue? I don’t even know what rue is, right? But imagine you’ve got to give a tenth of everything. So notice how this person is so legalistic, but then he says, but you bypass justice and love for God.

Justice is caring for those around us. And obviously loving God, you know what that is. But then notice this next line. These things you should have done. What? Justice and love for God. Without neglecting the others. In other words, without neglecting tithing. So, a few things to notice, just based off of these two verses.

Number one, Jesus is not pitting the external versus the internal. I think a lazy way to read this passage and to preach it is to say, look, it’s not about giving. It’s about caring. So it doesn’t matter what you’re doing with your hands. As long as you believe in your heart, then it’s okay. Jesus says, no, like justice and love for God is central.

You have to actually love people and care for them, but also tithe. Also give. Giving helps you. So we’re going to talk about this a lot in week four. So August 25th, we’re going to ask the question, is tithing even biblical in light of the New Testament? So I just know we’re going to be split in this room in different quadrants, actually, of what we believe about tithing in the New Testament.

So I’m not going to answer that yet. Stick with us, but I think we can at least admit Jesus here doesn’t dismiss it in Luke 11. He says, just don’t make it the only thing. You need to have the right heart posture as well. Second thing to note from verse 41 and 42, the only antidote to the invisible poison of greed is the visible practice of generosity.

I actually find this to be incredible. Because greed is so invisible, it’s hard for us to know if we have it. The beauty is generosity is one of the most visible things we can do. Now let me be clear, We are not talking about giving to make sure everybody sees us. Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount not to give in public like that because then you’ll just have your reward.

Give in secret. So we are saying that. I’m saying, when I say it’s visible, it’s visible to you. You can know if you’re giving or not. You can see your bank accounts, right? You can see how you are generous with your life. And so it’s visible to you and your family, but not really to us. Now, what this also means is you can’t be theoretically generous.

You’re either generous or you’re not. Which is a gift. I find this refreshing so much of the Christian life. I have to know, am I making progress? Am I growing? I don’t know. What’s great about giving is I can actually like put it on a spreadsheet and go, yeah, I’m increasing in my generosity. I’m actually growing in this area of my life.

Now, the third thing I want to point out from these two verses that I think is most important is Jesus isn’t interested in creating donors who give legalistically and stubbornly, but in making disciples who give cheerfully and sacrificially. Pharisees were the best donors around. They were the ones invited to all the different fundraisers, but they would give exactly 10 percent and that was it.

So in other words, if they gave to the temple that 10 percent and they saw somebody on the side of the road who was hurting, they would say, well, I’ve already gave my 10 percent for the day. There’s no way I can help you. In the same way, I think we can kind of examine our hearts. Are we like Pharisees?

Maybe you do give to the church, but you never open up your home. You never have people over for dinner. You never find yourself just covering people’s expenses or blessing somebody with a meal. Then that means maybe you’re giving legalistically and stubbornly. Because I think we could all agree Pharisees are givers.

They’re donors, but they’re not disciples. They’re not giving in a way that requires faith. They are not living in the way of Jesus. So the question I want us to kind of wrestle with this week, even in your groups, what’s the difference between a donor and a disciple? And I think the biggest way to help me, donors do generous things.

Disciples are generous people. There’s a difference there. Is generosity something you do or someone you are? And so our goal is to become people who are generous. If we were doing a building campaign, which we’re not, sadly, if we had a building, I’d be like, Hey, let’s do it. But so this point, I’m not like trying to make sure we make more money in August than we ever have.

That’s not the point. What’s a greater goal for us is that we just become generous people that we cheerfully give as it says in second Corinthians eight and nine that we sacrificially give. And we’ll cover that in the weeks to come where we do it with a spirit of joy, not because we have to, but because we want to.

And so I just think a lot of us are going to be on different phases of this generosity journey. I want to share with you quick my own journey. Um, growing up, I was in a home that tithes every single, uh, two weeks when he got paid. And my dad would show us, hey, and this was back in the day when you didn’t have online giving.

So I would watch my dad write the check, right? Every Sunday when we get there and I would, I just knew this was a principle that was ingrained in me. And so when I started to finally make money, As a umpire, 16 year old, uh, umpiring 7 year olds and having the 7 year old dads just wanted to kill me because of a bad call.

Um, I took all that money, 7 bucks an hour, and I made sure I gave a tenth of that to the church. And here’s what I would describe in that. My understanding of giving at that point in my life, at 16, was that generosity is true. In other words, the Bible says to do it, so I’m going to do it. It’s my duty. I read the Bible.

I think it’s clear. He commands us to give. There’s a lot of wiggle room. How much? But I think it’s pretty obvious. God owns a hundred percent of everything. What a joy for me to at least give 10 percent and so I would give because I just knew I had to and that was okay. Fast forward a little bit into my college years.

I was finally making money, you know, which in those days, like I look at it now and kind of laugh, but I was making money and I was a part time youth pastor. Partially, I took this gig because I really wanted to marry that girl in the front row. And I was like, I have to have some sort of money, uh, to marry her.

So that’s what I did. Uh, but I started to get bigger checks and I thought, how great I’m going to give. And I transitioned from knowing I’m giving cause it’s the true thing to do, but also because it’s a good thing to do. Um, I realized how good it was for the church. It was in this moment, it’s just, my job was in California and as I was getting my income, I would tithe right away.

Two, my church back home in Arizona, it was my dad’s church Hark cry church. And at that moment, they were eight years into their church plant just like we are. Actually, they were in a school just like we are, but they were slowly dwindling. They were going from two services to one. Things weren’t looking great.

And so I realized like, thank you, God. Every time I got paid, I thought I’m helping turn the lights on. At home in Arizona, I’m paying for the door to get open. I’m, I, this giving is for the janitor to be able to open everything up. So I just knew this was a good thing. I’m helping my community that I care for, even though I’m not by them.

So I was very pumped about generosity, being able to do a good thing. A funny story, I’ll make it quick. It turns out the deacon of finance at this church I was at in California met with me and just kept caring about me and just saying, how are you doing? Is everything okay? And I thought it was so strange.

I thought, dude, I’m fine. Everything’s great. And he was asking, are you hurting money wise? And I said, no. And so then on my drive home, it hit me. He’s in charge of finance. He’s like, dude, you’re a youth pastor and you’re not giving to this church. You’re stingy. You’re, you know, I was like, Oh, so I had to meet with him again.

Hey, I’m giving just not to you, just not to this church, which is a whole problem we’ll talk about in a couple of weeks. I probably should have been giving to this church in California, whatever I found giving was true. It was good. And I hate to admit this to you, but it wasn’t until six months ago, I started studying for this practice that I began to realize it’s also beautiful.

So Giving is plausible. It’s plausible that Jesus would tell us to do it. It’s helpful for those around me, but I’ve come to believe it’s desirable. That like my life is so much better when I go above and beyond in generosity. And I wish I could tell you it’s because I was reading Luke 11 for five months straight, just how guying meditating on the Bible.

And now I just learned it’s the beautiful thing to do. No, um, that’s partially it, but it was from two books. I read, uh, it’s on your recommended reads and your booklet. Gospel patrons, which we’ll talk about in two Sundays, just open my heart to see the beauty of what money can do for the kingdom and the joy we have in, in being generous.

But the second book was called the paradox of generosity. This book’s pretty fascinating. It’s by two sociologists, Christian Smith and Hillary Davidson. And they say, Hey, Jesus said it’s more happier to give than to receive. Let’s see if there’s data to back that up. And so these, this book has chart after chart.

I just want to read you just a couple quotes from the book that really grabbed my heart. He says, quote, and she greater generosity is clearly positively associated with many of the characteristics that most people consider essential to a good life, happiness, health, purpose and growth. Generosity often triggers chemical systems in the brain and body that increase pleasure and experiences of reward.

It reduces stress and suppresses pain, which tend to lead to a greater happiness and health. He gives study after study. You’re more connected to community. You actually forgive people easier. You’re not worried about your future. And it’s all tied to this one practice of giving. And so I have been convinced of that, but I know Not everybody in this room is convinced of that, even after listening to just a wonderful sermon this morning on generosity, you’re probably thinking, I’m not so sure.

And so we just want to, the two steps I want to give you today is first of all, to remind you, this is all an invitation. I recognize there are those of us who are in different spectrums of our understanding or belief of generosity. Some of us don’t even think it’s true. And you’re welcome here. Some of you think it’s true.

It’s just not good. You’re welcome here. Some of you, I pray, you go from understanding that it’s a good thing to help other people and you actually even make that full transition to see it’s a beautiful thing that you desire to give. I just want to say you are welcome here no matter where you’re at in that spectrum of your understanding of generosity.

I understand a lot of churches have misused and abused funds and so it’s natural for you not to trust a church and so a part of this invitation, I hope every week you are taking a next step of generosity, but let me be clear. It’s okay if your next step is not giving to our church. If you don’t trust us yet, you’re worried about that.

I just want what’s best for you. And honestly, it’s just like, if you give to another church or another organization for a while, I honestly don’t care. And maybe you’re thinking, yeah, you do well, like more would be great. Cause then we can get a building. Cause I’m anyways, whatever. I don’t care. Just give it is best for you.

And so one invitation today is if you’re willing and able to do something generous today. You can give to our ministry or buy somebody’s lunch. And if you’re smart, you’re going to go to like Serrano’s today and look for the guy sitting alone and be like, I followed the sermon today, buying that guy’s 12 meal, right?

Or the family of five, good luck. Whatever it is, right? Bless somebody in secret. Venmo somebody randomly, right? So this is just an invitation and we’re not going to ask you how you did it, whatever. But here’s the next big step. Join a group, And take the greed inventory on your way out. We should have enough booklets still Uh pastor caleb actually created this generosity Booklet, and I think it’s really helpful.

I encourage you to read through it this week in your groups Which is available online at formed by jesus. com slash generosity If you go to the disciple not donors this today’s teaching You’ll give you a whole group guide that you’re going to work through your group with and at the end It’s going to tell you hey go through this booklet on pages eight and nine And take the greed inventory And that is just three questions.

Just to honestly, we want you to wrestle with God and see, is there greed in you? Because if we believe Jesus’s words to be true, Jesus would tell you and me, it’s more invisible than you think. You just might have it and you’ve never noticed it. And so we want to help set you free. Maybe a huge part of your life, your lack of happiness and purpose and joy is because you’re greedy.

But man, The good news of Jesus is that we just acknowledge it and hand it over to Him. And we find joy and joy in abundance. This isn’t a place where we earn our salvation or our faith. It’s where we just acknowledge who we are and allow Christ to take us there and transform us one step at a time. And so my prayer is that we would With the understanding of abundance and his grace we would approach this practice just on week one I think it’s the easiest of all the four practices that we have ready for you in these four weeks Just get honest and ask your spouse or yourself Am I greedy what area in my life?

Am I greedy? And how can I be set free from this trap of love of money and fear of scarcity? Okay, I’m going to do this, this, and this when it comes to giving. That’s our hope. That’s our desire. Let’s pray.