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Coffee w/a Calvinist - Episode 20
This is our daily bible reading and study given by Pastor Keith Foskey. You can follow along with our readings at: http://www.sgfcjax.org/uncategorized/2020-reading-plan/
Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.
My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.
Today we are going to be in 2 Corinthians chapter 9.
Now I want to make a note before I go into the lesson that if you've watched the last few days you'll notice I've been doing all of these from my truck.
Well this is me attempting to, in a sense, try to redeem the time.
I've got a lot of running around this week that I've had to do and so I've decided to use this time in my truck to talk to you guys about the Bible verses that we are going to do.
Today again we are going to be in 2 Corinthians chapter 9.
2 Corinthians 9.7 is probably one of the most well known verses on the subject of giving.
It says that each of us ought to give as we have decided in our heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.
Now several weeks ago I did a Coffee with a Calvinist on the subject of tithing and I was asking the question whether or not we should tithe on our stimulus.
Ultimately if you go back and watch that you can get more of the context, but basically what I was trying to get around to is that under the new covenant we are not commanded to give a particular percentage and that's what tithe means.
Tithe means 10%.
But rather in the new covenant we can still look at the tithe as an example because certainly the tithe was given as an example throughout the Old Testament Scriptures, but we are not limited to the tithe to say well as long as I give 10% that's my, as a sense, that's what I owe and likewise we are not bound to the tithe either.
Ultimately this text tells us that we ought to give as we have decided in our heart.
Now I bring up my previous video because I had somebody challenge me.
Somebody wrote in the comments because I had said we should give what God has laid on our heart and someone says well the passage doesn't say that and that is technically correct.
The passage doesn't say that God lays it on our heart.
The passage says that it's what we have decided in our heart.
And yet as a person who believes in the sovereignty of God and as a person who believes that all Christians are filled with the Holy Spirit of God because Romans 8 tells us that if we do not have the Spirit of Christ we don't belong to Him, then I can say that if I have this desire in my heart to give a certain amount, when I say God has laid it on my heart, I'm simply saying, it's sort of a theological shorthand for saying that as a Christian believer I should be led not by my fleshly desires but I should be led by spiritual desires and I believe and trust that those spiritual desires come from Christ.
So in all sense, yes it is correct to say that it doesn't technically say that God will lay it on our heart but at the same time we must understand that as believers anything that we do that is for God should be seeking God's will in the matter and hopefully by His will and by His Spirit He will lead us into what He would have us do.
And to move on into the passage I want to mention something else.
It says that we should give not reluctantly or under compulsion for God loves a cheerful giver.
This is such an important reality because I know that even in the life of a believer sometimes financial situations can be tough and it can be hard to think through how much you're able to give versus how much you need to live and sometimes we wonder am I really doing this for the right reasons or am I doing this because I'm being compelled to give and when this text tells me that I shouldn't be compelled that I should give it willingly that can cause some difficulty in our decision making.
It can cause some difficulty in our heart because in a sense there can be sort of a guilt situation that comes into our heart and it really shouldn't be that way.
As believers one of the things that we need to realize is that giving is mirroring what our Savior has done for us and it's mirroring what God has done for us for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.
Jesus loved us so much that He gave His life.
Yesterday we looked at the passage where it says though He was rich yet for our sakes He became poor and so our Savior our God has given us an example of absolute and unfettered generosity in that He loves us and that He shares with us His riches, His heavenly glories and so my encouragement is to say whenever we're thinking about the subject of giving is to say to ourselves what is it that I see as the example from my Savior and in that sense how ought I to live in light of that example and in that sense it should help to encourage our willingness to give rather than being compelled and the idea of being compelled is being forced and rather than feeling like we're being forced to give we should as believers seek in every area to try to imitate our Savior to try to imitate our Lord and one of the areas in which we imitate Him is in generosity because He has been so generous to us and again that's going to look different for everybody and I think that's why Paul says it the way he says it.