Sunday Sermon: He Became Poor, You Became Rich (2 Corinthians 8:9-24)

You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a New Testament book.

On Thursday is our Old Testament study, and then we answer questions from listeners on Friday. Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series, presently going through the letters to the Corinthians.

This is the sermon that was preached last week from our pulpit. Here's Pastor Gabe.

Christ Became Poor So That We Might Become Rich

2 Corinthians 8, beginning in verse 8. Paul writes to the church in Corinth, I say this not as a command, but to prove by the earnestness of others that your love is also genuine. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.

And in this matter, I give my judgment, this benefits you, who a year ago started not only to do this work, but also to desire to do it. So now finish doing it as well, so that your readiness in desiring it may be matched by your completing it out of what you have.

For if the readiness is there, it is acceptable according to what a person has, not according to what a person does not have. For I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened, but as a matter of fairness, your abundance at the present time should supply their needs so that their abundance may supply your need, that there may be fairness.

As it is written, whoever gathered much had nothing left over and whoever gathered little had no lack. Let us pray. Our great God, we thank you for your many provisions that you have given to us. And if anything, we can start every single day by praising you for the salvation that has been given to us in Jesus Christ, our Lord.

Thank you that by your grace and your mercy, we have another day to take another breath. And with that breath, may we praise you for the good God that you are. May we not have attitudes that as we're waking up every morning, we're looking for the next thing that we can complain about or be angry about, or claim a victim status that we have been wounded somehow by something just so we have something to complain about, but we understand that we deserve nothing.

And yet all who are followers of Jesus Christ have been given everything so that we would lack nothing. And we might give our appreciation and our praise for everything that has been given to us in Christ, our Savior.

We were once sinners, dead in our transgressions in which we once walked. And it is by your mercy and grace that we have been turned from the direction we were on, we were in on that path, and we have been turned in a direction of Christ.

Once going away from you, now we're moving toward you and being sanctified and being made holy in Christ, our Savior. We've been rescued out of darkness. We've been transferred into your kingdom of light.

And so may we praise God for this continued work that is being done in our lives through our Savior. So as we go throughout this world and we will no doubt face disappointments, we will no doubt face antagonism, animosity, adversity.

Yet we know that we've been given everything in Christ, and there is nothing in this world that can take that away. We are safe and secure in the hand of our loving Father. Give us hearts that delight to worship you with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

And we might demonstrate that devotion to our God by giving even of the material things that we have, for it's even these material things that you have blessed us with. You've blessed us with spiritual things in the heavenly places, and you have blessed us with the material things that we have on this earth.

Whether we have much or we have little, all comes from God. And it's in the name of Christ, our Savior, that we pray, amen. Thank you. You may be seated. So that last song that we sang there, Take My Life and Let It Be, I heard a pastor tell a story about that particular song.

He was speaking at a youth conference. And at this youth conference, they sang that song. But they changed it a little bit, as youth conferences are prone to do to hymns. They'll change them a little bit.

But this one wasn't necessarily changing the content of the hymn. As a matter of fact, they were trying to make it more relevant and more applicable to the students who were singing it. How does this apply to you?

Why is this important for you? So here was what the music leader did with the song. They would sing that first phrase, and then there would be an extra measure of rest in the singing so that the students could praise God and shout amen and their yeses to God for the blessings that were being given to them, for the things that they had been given by God according to the first lines of each of those verses.

So for example, the first line is, take my life and let it be. Then there would be an extra measure of resting after the students would sing that. Then they would say, yes, amen, take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee.

And then they would resume singing again. And it would be the same thing with the next verse. Take my hands and let them move. Amen, take my hands. Take my voice and let me sing. Amen, God, take my voice and let me sing.

So it would be like this over and over again. They would sing the first line, the students would shout amen, and then they would sing the rest of the verse. But then they got to the verse, take my silver and my gold.

And the pastor who was telling this story, who was there to speak at this particular youth conference, he said, when they got to that verse, the students weren't nearly as enthusiastic with their amens as they had been in the other places.

It's easy to say amen, to take my voice and let me sing, because that's what we're doing right now, singing praise to God, take my voice. But then once it came to sacrificing something like money, they were a little bit more hesitant to do that with a cheerful heart.

Take my silver and my gold. The song, Take My Life and Let It Be, was written by Frances Havergal. And reading something about Frances Havergal this past week, she was a very learned biblical scholar, spoke several languages as well as Greek and Hebrew.

So she could read the Old Testament in Hebrew, and read the New Testament in Greek, and then communicate the gospel to people in various different languages. She was a very smart, very wise woman. She wrote the song, Take My Life and Let It Be, we even know the date, February 4th, 1874, was the day that she wrote that song.

Four years later, Ms. Havergal wrote to a friend. She said, the Lord has shown me another little step in my life. And of course, I have taken it with extreme delight. Take my silver and my gold now means shipping off all of my possessions to the church missionary house, including a jewel cabinet that is really fit for a countess, where all will be accepted and disposed of for me, sold that it may benefit the missionaries.

Nearly 50 articles are being packed up, and I don't think I have ever packed a box with such pleasure. That's an interesting anecdote about somebody who wrote Take My Silver and My Gold and then learned four years later an even more real application of that passage than she had known when she initially had written it.

As we read here in 2 Corinthians 8 -9, picking up where we left off last week, the Apostle Paul says to the church in Corinth, For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.

He literally became poor so that you spiritually might become rich. And even more than that, there is a day that will come in which you will inherit your heavenly Father's kingdom, and you will literally prosper as Christ is prosperous.

For our sake, he became poor. And my friends, we will never know a sacrifice like that. You will never sacrifice to the extent that you will match the sacrifice of Christ, even that very first step of leaving his throne in heaven and being born in a babe in a stable.

You will never make a transition in your life that drastic. Whatever you sacrifice unto the Lord will never be as great as the sacrifice that he has given to us. And then even more than that, the Lord Christ gave his own life.

He who came as King of kings and Lord of lords, he came as a king. For we know in Matthew chapter 2 that the magi came and worshipped him as a king. And yet he wasn't given the pomp and circumstance of a king that rides into a city and is received by the people.

But rather he arrived on a lowly donkey to shouts of, Hosanna, Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord by those who are with him. And then yet others still in Jerusalem who are going, who is this guy?

Who are you talking about? Oh, this is Jesus, the prophet of Nazareth. They didn't even know who he was. And so though he deserved all of the glory and the acclaim that the world could possibly offer, yet that's not how he came.

And even less than a week after that entry into Jerusalem, he was sacrificed and crucified on a thief's cross, hung naked and ashamed by the people who were supposed to be worshipping him, by the very people that he himself created.

And yet he was giving up his own life for them so that we would have everything. Jesus Christ for our sake became poor so that by his poverty we might become rich. Our Lord Christ gave his very life for our sins, and the scripture says that he did it to the glory of God, Philippians 2 .11.

And he did it for the joy that was set before him, Hebrews 12 .2. Therefore, God has given him the name that is above every name, as Philippians 2 goes on to say, and he is seated at the right hand of the throne of God, as Hebrews 12 goes on to say.

Likewise, if we give all of ourselves to the Lord God and we do it for his glory and we do it for the joy that is set before us, we likewise will be given a throne to sit upon. Revelation 3 .21, Jesus said this, To the one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne.

As John says in the book of 1 John, who is he who overcomes the world but he who believes that Jesus Christ is Lord? And Jesus said to his disciples, if you endure to the end, you will be saved. If you believe in your heart that this is true, that on the day of judgment all created things will be burned up and dissolved and melted.

Burned up, dissolved, melted. Those are the three descriptors that Peter has of this world in 2 Peter 3 verses 10 through 12. If you believe that, on the day of judgment, everything will be burned up, dissolved, and melted, then why do you cling so tightly to your things that will be burned up, dissolved, and melted?

Basically, this describes for us that the things that we possess here in this world do not have any eternal significance. We don't take them with us into eternity. But what we do with them will have eternal significance.

Why do you spend the money that you have on yourself on things which are going out of date the moment that you bought them? Instead of managing a budget responsibly for the purpose of being able to sacrifice more of yourself and give more unto the Lord, Jesus gave us everything and some of us are hesitant to even give something.

And I'm preaching to myself when I say that. If you believe that we are fellow heirs of the kingdom as described in Titus 3, 7, and that it is the pleasure of our heavenly Father to give us His kingdom, as Jesus said in Luke 12, 32, then you delight to give up the currency of this fallen kingdom for treasure in God's heavenly kingdom.

If you believe that the meek shall inherit the earth, as Jesus said in Matthew 5, 5, and that everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands for the sake of Christ will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life, as Jesus said in Matthew 19, 29, then why, with such faith, should it be so difficult for you to give the little that you have when you know that God is going to give you so much more?

My friends, my brothers and sisters in the Lord, there is not a soul in this room who is going to get to heaven and stand before God's royal throne and think to yourself, I wish I had given less. None of us are going to think that.

I don't know what it's going to be like when we stand there in front of the judgment seat of God. I don't know if there's going to be like a moment of remorse that we will feel. Because over and over again, like we read in Revelation 21, and I think I've even quoted this passage the last two Sundays, that a day is coming in which there will be no more crying, no more tears, no more pain, for the former things will have passed away.

Our Lord Christ is making all things new. We're looking forward to that day, and we know when we join our Father in His heavenly kingdom, it will be that day, and there will be no more evil. There will be no more disappointment.

There will be no more heartbreak, for we will have inherited our God's perfect kingdom. But somewhere in there, I don't know if we stand before the judgment seat, the moment that we come into that kingdom, if we're allowed a moment where we might feel remorse or awareness or something, I don't know, some amount of guilt or regret for the way that we live life.

Because it is a judgment seat. The difference for us who are Christians is that we have nothing to fear of that judgment, because we know we will be accepted into that kingdom by the atoning blood of Jesus Christ, for all who believed in Him.

Those who did not believe and did not follow Christ, their works will not save them before the throne of judgment, and they will be cast into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, as described for us in Matthew 25.

So we have nothing to fear of that judgment in the sense that we will not face condemnation for those who are in Christ. Romans 8 .1, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

There's no condemnation for you now. There will be no condemnation for you before the throne of judgment. But standing there before that throne, do we still have a moment in which we will experience remorse for the things that we could have done better in life that we did not do as well as we could have?

Will there be a perspective of eternity in mind which we could not, we literally could not have as we were inhabiting this flesh, but now that we see it in our spirits, now that we are perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect, will we see some things in light of the way that we live life and wish we had done more with the life that we had been given?

I don't know that. I don't know what that moment will be like or if that moment will even exist. But I can tell you this, none of us will get there before God and wish we had given less in this life than we gave.

I think the person who has even sacrificed the most that they could have possibly sacrificed of everything they had been given in this world will still wish that they had done more than they did. And yet there's also a part of me that believes that the Spirit will fully satisfy us and everything that is in Christ so that we have no lack, even to the extent that we will know we've given everything that we could give.

The Apostle Paul had such assurance, as a matter of fact. When we read in 2 Timothy, his last letter before he was to be martyred and he would go home to be with his Lord, he said to Timothy, I've fought the good fight.

I've run the race. He's saying to Timothy, I'm finishing well. I'm done. And yet was still asking Timothy for the parchments that he would bring them with him so he could write a few more letters before he was going to be taken away by Nero's men and beheaded.

So he still gave more that he could give even while he still had breath in his lungs. But we kind of have an indication from the Apostle Paul there in 2 Timothy that he did not have a guilty conscience at all.

As he was facing the end of his life, he gave everything that the Lord asked him to give. And so may we not have any regrets when it comes to what we have been blessed with by God and what we give back to the service of God.

We give because it is an act of worship to give. Does God need your money? No. The Apostle Paul even says this in Acts 17 .25 when he was speaking at the Areopagus. He said that God is not served by human hands as though he needed anything since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.

So it is not for God's benefit that we give our money. It is for our benefit that we delight to give. Now that might seem a little self-centered, but honestly, I mean, who looks at somebody else giving money for the purpose of advancing the gospel of Christ and looks at that person and goes, oh, there's a selfish person.

This is an act of worship. Paul says here in 2 Corinthians 8 .10, in this matter I give my judgment. This benefits you who a year ago started not only to do this work, but also to desire to do it. It was their delight to do God's work.

When Paul says a year ago, this is a reference back to the previous letter, 1 Corinthians, and we talked about this a little bit last week, where in chapter 16, Paul talked about a gathering for the saints in Jerusalem.

The Corinthians have contributed to this in the past, and it is their delight to continue to do that work. In verse 11, Paul says, so now finish doing it well, so that your readiness in desiring it may be matched by your completing it out of what you have.

In other words, if you desire to give, if you express that, I want to give, I desire to give to God, then may your giving match the desire that you express that you have. You know the saying that goes with this?

Put your money where your mouth is, right? Give according to the desire that you say is in your heart. If that desire is truly in your heart, then give according to that desire. For if the readiness is there, Paul goes on to say here in verse 12, it is acceptable according to what a person has, not according to what he does not have.

So Paul is encouraging the Corinthians to give freely out of what they have, not what they could not afford to give. You understand? So it's like if somebody has 100 bucks, that's all I can give right now.

I have $100 here. Paul's not standing there going, oh, come on, 120, come on, give a little bit more in there. You can do better than that, right? That's not what Paul is doing. He's not trying to guilt them into giving beyond their means.

What you have and what you can give, give, and delight to give it. Don't give beyond your means, give what the Lord has impressed upon your heart to give. If you went home and you maxed out a credit card, and you gave every bit of that maxed out credit card to the church, you would actually be giving what you could not afford to give.

And that would be incredibly irresponsible. You would also be heaping a burden upon yourself that you would now be obligated to pay back using somebody else's money to give to the Lord, which you didn't have in the first place.

You have bills to pay. You must pay those bills. It would be irresponsible for you not to pay them. You would be bringing a burden upon yourself, giving to the church, and then not paying your bills. But there are plenty of other things that perhaps you spend money on that you don't have to spend money on.

And maybe the Lord would impress upon your heart this money would be better served advancing His kingdom than pleasing myself. And I say that not to guilt you, but just to know that all of us have places where we could probably not spend that on ourselves as much as we could give it to the Lord.

Paul goes on in verses 13 through 15 to say,. For I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened, but that as a matter of fairness, your abundance at the present time should supply their need, so that their abundance may supply your need, that there may be fairness.

As it is written, whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack. Now, this is a reference from Exodus chapter 16 verse 18, and it is referring to the bread from heaven that God gave the Israelites.

What was that bread called? Do you remember that? Manna. Right. Manna. What is it? The people are, they've been delivered out of Egypt. They're going to the promised land, but they're wandering in the desert.

There's over a million of them. Where do we get food from? Where is food for a million people? They're not stopping at a McDonald's in the Sinai desert. So where does this food come from? The Lord provides for them with bread from heaven.

And they wake up in the morning and the bread was covering the ground as dew. And they didn't recognize this substance, so they called it manna, a word which means what is it? And it was sweet to their taste like honey, is what the scripture describes for us.

My wife loves honey bread as a snack. That's one of her favorite things to snack on at night before bed. She doesn't want something heavy, so it's sitting in her stomach before she's going to sleep, but she wants something a little bit light, maybe a little bit sweet.

So I'll get a piece of bread for her, put a little honey on it. She loves honey bread. I think manna might have been something like that, sweet to the taste, something like honey, a little bit of sugar and starch and some carbs in there for you, give you the energy that you need.

The people would gather up the bread that they wanted to eat. The instruction for them was that they would not gather more than they needed. If they gathered too much, it would mold, like instantly be done.

By the end of the day, you couldn't eat it anymore. It would be the next day when manna would cover the ground and they would only gather what it was that they needed. Anybody who gathered a lot, they ate all of it.

Anybody who gathered a little, they ate only a little, but no one was lacking anything. Even those who ate a little were fully satisfied. So whoever gathered much had nothing left over. Whoever gathered little had no lack.

May we manage our finances in such a way that by the time we get to the end of our life, there's not U-Haul trailers following us to the cemetery going, what are we going to do with all of this stuff now?

We don't even know what this person had so much extra left over. But rather we receive what it is the Lord has blessed us with and we use it for the needs that he is providing for, but also to give back to him that we might worship God with what he has given to us so that we need nothing else.

We are fully satisfied in our Savior and we lack nothing. He has given everything to us and we might also use that which he has blessed us with for the advancement of his kingdom. So here, as Paul is using that story from Exodus in verses 13 through 15, where he mentions that there would be fairness, he says, again, that you should be eased, or I'm sorry, that others be eased and you burden.

I don't mean that that should happen, but that is a matter of fairness. Your abundance at the present time should supply their needs so that their abundance may supply your need that there may be fairness.

There are three different ways that I think that this could be interpreted. All of these interpretations are valid, but there's only one that I think that really applies. So Paul says, as a matter of fairness, your abundance at the present time should supply their need so that their abundance may supply your need.

This could be contrasting the Christians in Corinth with the Christians in Jerusalem, because remember that the Christians in Corinth were gathering to provide for the need of the Christians that were in Jerusalem who were under a famine.

The Christians at Corinth were materially wealthy, a lot of wealth there on the Corinthian peninsula, the region that was known as Achaia. And they were giving out of their material wealth to the Christians in Jerusalem who were struggling because of the economic downturn, because of the famine, because of a lot of different reasons, the persecution that they were facing there as well.

But what the Christians in Jerusalem lacked in material things, they had an abundance of in the spirit. So they would rejoice to receive a material gift from the Corinthians, and the Corinthians would receive spiritual blessing, knowing that they were able to contribute to their brothers and their sisters in this way.

Perhaps this applies to you in that the Lord has given you much, but to another he's not given as much. And this would be so that you might be able to bless another out of your abundance, and they would be blessed by your giving, and you would be blessed by their receiving.

Do you understand? Kind of get how that works? So when Paul was in prison in Rome, let me use an example from the Apostle Paul that we have in the book of Philippians. When Paul was in prison in Rome, the first time, the second time he was like in a prison cell, the first time he was under house arrest.

So he was in prison there, and the Philippians heard about it. And how they heard about it was because there were some other pastors who were giving Paul a hard time. They believed if a person had gone to prison, well, they were truly doing something bad.

God would not allow a person to go to prison unless they were really doing something bad. So because Paul was in prison in Rome, some of these ministers were going, Paul must not be behaving himself, and God is punishing him, and so now he's been thrown in prison.

That was how the Philippians heard about this. But they knew the Apostle Paul, and they knew that this man was preaching the gospel, and that's why he was in prison in Rome. He had been thrown in prison for preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, for preaching Jesus is Lord instead of Caesar is Lord.

And that was precisely what happened in Jerusalem, that Paul had been proclaiming Christ, and the Jews seized him, and then he appealed to Caesar, and so he was shipped over to Rome. And so the Philippians, to show their support of the Apostle Paul, they basically got together and they said, okay, Paul is being antagonized by these other preachers, and he's also in Rome under house arrest.

So what can we do to show Paul that we stand with him? How can we show that we support him and what he's doing? I know, let's take up an offering. So from the Philippian church, they took up a money offering and they gave it to a man named Epaphras.

And Epaphras took that offering that the Philippians had gathered to Rome to give it to Paul. Even though he was under house arrest, people could still come to his house. He couldn't go work, he couldn't go out into Rome and preach the gospel, but people could come to him.

And so the Philippians said, well, to support that work that he's doing there in Rome, let's take up an offering, we'll send it with Epaphras, he'll give it to Paul in Rome, and that's how Paul will know that we love him, and we're praying for him, and we're suffering with him.

And Epaphras on this journey almost died, it almost killed him. We don't know why, Paul doesn't describe it for us in the book of Philippians, but we just know that the journey was so grueling, and Epaphras got so sick on that trip that it almost killed him.

And so Paul, when he wrote back to the Philippians, which is the letter of Philippians that we have, he was thanking the Philippians for this gift that they had taken up for him, but also to take that opportunity to instruct the Philippians in a few things.

And it was all things that they had heard Paul say before, because he says in Philippians 3, 1, these things that I'm saying to you are no trouble for me, and they're good for you, okay? It's good for you to hear these things again.

It's no trouble for me to say it to you again. So we took an opportunity to encourage the Philippians to thank them for their gift, and to instruct them in some other things, but also to alert them to the fact, hey, Epaphras is okay.

I know that you've heard that he got sick, he's with me, he's fine. And so I want you to know, and it be your delight so that you would not mourn over the condition of Epaphras, that he is here and he's all right.

So we may rejoice together in this sacrifice that Epaphras has made for me and on your behalf. Now, Paul gets to a point in the letter when he basically says to the Philippians, and this is in chapter four, he basically says to the Philippians, I didn't actually need the gift that you sent me.

I'm fine, I'm taken care of. I know that you think being under house arrest, I can't get out and work, that's true, but people are coming to me. The palace guard has heard about what has happened to me, and some of them have even become worshipers of Christ because they've heard about the persecution that I've endured for the sake of the gospel.

Everything is good here, I'm well taken care of, I didn't need your gift. But Paul says, I'm gonna accept your gift though, for your benefit, because it blesses you for me to receive this gift. And it's in that same section, it's in that same place where Paul is thanking the Philippians for their gift and saying, I'm gonna receive this gift, that we have one of the most famous verses in the Bible.

And I know that you've heard this, you've probably quoted it many times. Philippians 4 .13, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, right? That is a popular passage, especially among Christian athletes.

But Philippians 4 .13 is not a saying, it's not saying that with enough faith you could win an NBA championship. That's not what Philippians 4 .13 is about. If you start in verse 10, you read this. I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at length, you have revived your concern for me.

You were indeed concerned for me, but you had no opportunity. You didn't have an opportunity to express that concern for me. Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.

I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

Suddenly that verse takes on a whole new meaning, doesn't it? Paul is saying that whether I have nothing or whether I'm living rich, it is God who sustains my soul. I have the strength to endure in Christ because Christ gives me that strength.

And so he's assuring the Philippians, yeah, you've heard rumors about me. You know that I am under house arrest here in Rome. I'm doing great because the Lord is my strength. But he goes on to tell them, I'm going to receive your gift because it is for your benefit.

It is to your delight that I receive this gift. It is for your spiritual edification. And there might be an occasion in which somebody wants to offer you a money gift. I think the most common place that we encounter this is at a restaurant.

Or you might be at a restaurant with somebody and they offer to pay. How do you respond? No, no, no, I'll get it, I'll get it, let me be the one, right? Have you ever done that? You ever done that battle before?