FBC Morning Light – May 12, 2022

Faith Baptist Church

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Well, a good Thursday morning to you, and guess what? Only two more days of speaking to you out of a can, at least that's the way it sounds to me.

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Again, I'm in Ohio recording these sessions at a conference, so I'm away from my office and study where I normally make these recordings and have a much better setup for some better quality camera work and sound and so forth.

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So I miss out on offering that kind of quality level this week.

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But nevertheless, it's the Word that's important and I hope that the messages or the thoughts from God's Word will nevertheless be of some value and quality and help to us.

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Well, today we're reading in 2 Corinthians 8, verse 15, and actually chapters 8 and 9 of 2

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Corinthians, Paul is dealing with the whole matter of giving, financially giving.

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And to be specific and to be precise, he's writing to the church at Corinth to follow through on a promise that the church made earlier regarding helping out with a need of the believers in Jerusalem.

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So basically what Paul is writing about is a benevolence offering, receiving a benevolence offering for the believers in Jerusalem who are suffering under some great impoverishment.

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And so he's writing to remind them of that earlier expression of commitment and willingness to participate.

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They haven't done so yet, but he's writing to them to let them know, okay, it's time to start doing that giving so that I have the funds to take to Jerusalem when

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I come and visit you. So with that background, one of the ways he wants to encourage the people of Corinth to give, the church of Corinth to give, is by sharing the testimony of those in Macedonia who were very generous in their giving.

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And as he talks about the Macedonians giving, he shares some things about their giving that I find to be very helpful and challenging for our giving.

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The first thing is that they were eager to participate. So it wasn't a matter,

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Paul didn't have to engage in arm twisting and manipulative emotional manipulation to get them to give.

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They heard about the need, he presented the need, they heard about the need and they begged him to let them give to this thing, even though they were themselves, they weren't wealthy people, they were just poor, common, everyday people, and yet they begged to participate in that kind of endeavor, in that benevolence offering.

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That challenges me, and I trust it challenges you. Here we are in the

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United States, in Western civilization, in relative prosperity compared to so much of the world, and how eager are we to participate and to give?

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Do we insist on it? We hear about this need and so forth, do we insist on it?

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I want to give to this, I want to help out with this. I know some people who have spoken to me personally and said,

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I want to help out with this thing. That's such a blessing. It's a blessing to the person in need, it's a blessing to me to hear, and it's a blessing to the one who has that attitude.

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So that's the first thing. The second thing about their giving that I find instructive is that Paul says here in chapter 8, he says in verse 5, he says, they gave in this way, not as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the

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Lord, and then by the will of God to us. So their first step of giving was to give themselves to the

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Lord. This is an expression of whole life consecration.

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So that challenges us. That causes us to ask the question, is my life wholly given to the

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Lord in every facet of my life? My marriage, my work life, my free time, my leisure time?

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Then go to your resources. Is my home available for the Lord? My automobile, my vehicle, whatever vehicle

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I have? Are my finances the Lord's? Is all of this given over to the

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Lord? When we do that, then we realize, well, these funds are the

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Lord's funds anyway. I'm just a steward of them, and by the way, you are, and I am.

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We're just stewards of that which the Lord has given to us. Our attitude must be,

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Lord, I'm giving it back to you because it's yours in the first place. Here it is. So they first gave themselves to the

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Lord, and in giving themselves first to the Lord, then it was not a difficult thing for them to want to participate in the giving to this need.

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And then a third idea that comes out here is that the matter of giving is often an overlooked grace.

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It's an overlooked gift. Listen to what Paul says here in verse seven.

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He says, but as you excel in everything, now he's writing to the Corinthians, he says you excel in a whole lot of things.

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You excel in faith, you excel in speech, you excel in knowledge, you excel in all earnestness, you excel in our love for you, you excel in all of these areas.

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But I want you to excel in this gift, in this grace also. See that you excel in this act of grace, of giving to this benevolence offering to meet this need.

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So the idea I get there is, you know, we can be very gifted in a lot of ways.

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You may be very gifted at caring for people and showing compassion. You may be gifted at teaching.

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You may be gifted at administration stuff. You may be gifted with your hands and making things and doing work with your hands.

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You may be a very gifted parent, you may be a gifted teacher, you may be gifted in a lot of ways.

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But Paul exhorts us also to excel in the act of this grace, in this gift of giving as well.

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Excel in this also. So basically, you know, Paul is encouraging us to be, just to be a generous people and not a stingy people.

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You know, I've known of pastors and churches and so forth in my years of ministry, other places.

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And the stories have come my way and I've sat in places, in services like this, where, you know, the pastor presents a need.

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Usually it's kind of like a building program, some kind of a project like that for the church. And he resorts to a bunch of emotional manipulation kind of stuff.

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I've even heard tell of, from firsthand experience, a church where the pastor, you know, exhorted people that if they didn't have enough faith to put their wedding band in the offering plate, then they really didn't have enough love for Jesus and enough faith in God to provide and meet their needs.

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And so they passed the plate around for the third or fourth time. And people were actually doing that.

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They were actually doing that. And I thought, that's really sad to have to, in the first place, resort to such manipulative practices to get people in an emotional state where they feel like,

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I've got to give this. I've got to give this. That's no way to do it.

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That's no way to give. That's no way to ask for the resources, the funds. Paul presents a better way.

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He makes them aware of the need and he reminds them of their commitment that they had made earlier to give.

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And then he says, look, here's how some other people give. Let me encourage you to do the same. May we have that kind of generous heart that is just ready, ready to give when the need presents itself.

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Father, I pray that that would truly be our heart, that we would be generous. We would be ready with the resources you've placed in our hands to give them all back to you and to give to a need as you have so prospered us.

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And this we pray in Jesus name, amen. All right, well have a good rest of your