2 Corinthians 9:6-15 (The Dangerous Principle of Sowing and Reaping, Jeff Kliewer)

Here, help us to be a comfort to others. Help us by the scriptures this morning to grow in our relationship with you, to take seriously the word that you give us, and to stay out of danger as we do that, Lord.

In Jesus' name we pray, amen. So when I went to Florida this last week, I didn't remember the address of my parents. And because of that, I just put in the Moe's Mexican Grill, which is just right around the corner from where my parents live.

So I thought, I might be able to get a little Mexican on the way in and grab a burrito, go see my dad. But it was only 200 yards from where he lived. When I called my dad and I got there, I said, I'm at the Moe's.

I'm going to just come walking up. He thought I said Lowe's instead of Moe's, which is like five miles away. So he's looking out the window like, what is this guy doing, walking this distance? So he's looking out of the window of his house.

And as I approach from afar, you know, I live 1 ,000 miles away, he saw me coming. And he came out to the street. And then just being the silly guy that he is, he thought he would reenact a prodigal son moment.

So as I approached, he came running. I'm like, what is this? The prodigal has come home. We had a good laugh. So it was a fun time with my dad there. But you know, in a hard time. It was a fun time in the midst of a hard time.

Standing on the Promises in Psalm 112

And I want to share with you this morning one of the passages that, over the course of the last two weeks, has been a rock under my feet. The promises of God. Puritan Samuel Clark says, a fixed, constant attention to the promises.

And a firm belief of them would prevent anxiety about the concerns of this life. A fixed, constant attention to the promises. And so what this Puritan did was, Samuel Clark, he wrote a book where he compiled the promises that we have in the Bible.

And you can go and flip through that book and just look up what has God promised to the believer. Well, for me, it was Psalm 112. Let's open there this morning. And then we'll come to 2 Corinthians. Psalm 112 has been a rock under my feet for the last two weeks.

It ministered to my heart when I was sad. It lifted me from that pit. Psalm 112 is filled with powerful promises. I want you to notice a few of the promises. Psalm 112, verse 1, praise the Lord. Blessed is the man who fears the Lord.

That's a promise, that if you fear the Lord, you will be blessed, who greatly delights in his commands. His offspring will be mighty in the land. The generation of the upright will be blessed. For all the parents who have offspring who are here this morning, that is a promise that we hold on to.

Number three, wealth and riches are in his house. That's material things. And his righteousness endures forever. That's an immaterial promise, that we would be righteous in God's eye. But look, it doesn't say that everything will be smooth sailing.

Because the very next verse, verse 4, says, light dawns in the darkness for the upright. That means there's going to be darkness, and light will dawn. He is gracious, merciful, and righteous. It is well, reminds me of the old hymn, it is well with my soul.

It is well with the man who deals generously and lends, who conducts his affairs with justice. For the righteous will never be moved. He will be remembered forever. He is not afraid of bad news. And that's the verse that I held on to.

That's the rock that stood under my feet in these last couple of weeks. He is not afraid of bad news. It doesn't mean that you won't get bad news. It means you don't have to be afraid of it. His heart is firm, trusting in the Lord.

His heart is steady. He will not be afraid until he looks in triumph on his adversaries. And here again, if you're going to look in triumph at your adversaries, what does that mean? You have adversaries, right.

I saw you mouthing the words there. You have adversaries. He has distributed freely. He has given to the poor. His righteousness endures forever. His horn is exalted in honor. The wicked man sees it and is angry.

So you have angry adversaries. He gnashes his teeth and melts away. The desire of the wicked will perish. I think especially of spiritual foes that we have. Demons that would delight to see us fall. Lucifer, the wicked.

Well, here it's the wicked man. So humans as well see it and is angry. We have adversaries. We have darkness. We have bad news. But God, we have the promises. To learn to stand on the promises of God and we will not be moved.

Sowing and Reaping in 2 Corinthians 9

So the main idea this morning is that Paul teaches Psalm 112. Did you know that? We're going to turn now to 2 Corinthians 9. And where we pick up, Paul will actually exposit and quote directly from this chapter.

And the theme of that chapter, Psalm 112, is very much in Paul's mind. You can tell from the things that come of it. So we're looking at 2 Corinthians 9, verse 6 to 12. This is the famous principle of sowing and reaping.

You reap what you sow. And to the proportion that you sow it is how you reap. It's a powerful principle not to be ignored. But there is danger to the right and there is danger to the left when it comes to this principle of sowing and reaping.

So we'll expose that danger as we go through and make sure we don't fall off in either direction, but stand on the promises and walk securely along the road that he has for us. 2 Corinthians 9, 6 and following.

The point is this. Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly. And whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion.

For God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work. As it is written, and here's the quote from Psalm 112.

He has distributed freely. He has given to the poor. His righteousness endures forever. He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness.

You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. For the ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints, but is also overwhelming, I'm sorry, overflowing in many thanksgivings to God.

By their approval of this service, they will glorify God because of your submission that comes from your confession of the gospel of Christ and the generosity of your contribution for them and for all others.

While they long for you and pray for you because of the surpassing grace of God upon you. Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift. And so concludes this section of 2 Corinthians, the second section, where Paul is collecting an offering to help with the poor saints in Jerusalem.

He spends chapter eight and chapter nine motivating, and he motivates them by the gospel, chapter eight, verse nine. He motivates them to give generously and to give cheerfully for God loves a cheerful giver.

And so let's take a look more in depth now at this passage to see how he wraps up this big argument of his, this point he's trying to make. Verse six, the point is this. Don't you wish we'd always, as preachers, would just get to the point sometimes?

The text is helping me here. The point is this. Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver, and God is able to make all grace abound to you so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.

You reap what you sow, and you reap in proportion to what you sow. If you were to sow a peach seed, what kind of tree would you get? A peach. If you were to sow a banana, because within the banana is the seed evidently, what would you get?

A banana tree. So why is it that if you call someone a peach, it's a compliment, but if you call someone bananas, it's an insult? Ever think about that? That is fruit discrimination. And it is tearing our society apart.

But you get back from the ground what you sow into it, isn't it true? And now Paul is saying that that's the case with money. If you financially sow into the church, into the offering plate as it's passed around, that you will reap in some way.

Get this, we are talking about money in this case, but we'll find out not money only. Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly. Whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. That's quite a promise and that's a really big deal.

We don't wanna miss that. But notice in verse seven, it's not that you're sowing in order to reap. That's not the motivation. We've been given the motivation in chapter eight, verse nine and now here again in verse seven of chapter nine, God loves a cheerful giver.

Someone who gives out of joy. That something has happened in the heart of this person, that they're joyful and they desire to give. God loves that. He loves the cheerful giver. He loves three wise men who come from afar bearing gold, frankincense and myrrh.

And when they see that baby, they delight and they rejoice and they are happy to pour out their gold, pour out their silver or their frankincense and their myrrh and give it to the feet of this child, this baby.

Now by the way, does the Bible say that there were three wise men? No, it says there were three gifts. And we assume because they have gold, frankincense and myrrh that there were three wise men but the Bible doesn't actually say that.

Could be 10 wise men, we don't know. But the point is the joy, the cheerfulness of the gift. Mary, when she poured out a year's worth of salary of perfume on the feet of the Savior, she did it joyfully.

Yes, with tears and wiping his feet but because of adoration in her heart, it was an outpouring of love, not expecting to get anything back. And the same we're told in Luke 8 3 as the 12 male disciples followed Jesus, there were women who followed him as well, joyfully giving.

Johanna, I'm sorry, Johanna, she was the wife of the manager of Herod's household and yet she was a secret follower of Jesus and was funding, giving joyfully. Same with Susanna and some other women. Luke 8 3, the Bible is very clear that giving must come from the heart and from a place of joy.

These are great examples for us. There is a danger to the left of us. It's a danger of not believing the promises of God. We empty the scripture of their power because we don't believe that God can accomplish what he says he will do.

And that danger to the left of us, that liberalism, if you will, is an idea of God that he's not really here. He won't really punish and he won't really reward. There won't be blessing for doing the right thing.

And there won't be punishment for doing what the flesh wants and the world and the devil want. It is an idea of God that he doesn't keep his promise. Zephaniah is an interesting book in the Old Testament where God has sent a mighty revival through Josiah the king.

However, after this period of revival, the people are slipping back into their old ways, no longer joyfully serving God. And in Zephaniah 1, verse 12, we learn the way they think. They say, God will not do anything good or anything bad.

He's not relevant. God isn't here and he's not blessing. That's the idea and that's the danger to the left of us when we read a promise like this, to not take it seriously, to think it doesn't matter what we give or how we give of ourselves or our time, talent and treasure.

But the point is this, God says it does matter. The level to which we sow is how we reap in his economy, in his kingdom. There's a danger to the left of us. In a minute here, we'll see the danger to the right.

Look at chapter nine, verse nine. As it is written, he has distributed freely, he has given to the poor, his righteousness endures forever. In order to really understand what Paul is saying there, this is why I began the sermon the way I did, we have to go to Psalm 112, where he's quoting from.

So flip back again, we'll just spend another couple minutes here. We really have two passages we're expositing today. Psalm 112 and 2 Corinthians 9. Psalm 112, there are some very important things I want you to see in Psalm 112.

And I stress them in my introduction. The giving is here in the text. Look at verse nine. He has distributed freely. This is part of what makes a righteous man. A righteous man is not a stingy man. A righteous man is one who gladly, cheerfully gives for the sake of the kingdom of God.

We're told in verse nine, he has distributed freely, he has given to the poor. When he sees that Operation Christmas Child video play, his heart is moved toward the children. That if you can provide a box to send to the poor across seas, your heart is moved towards that.

The righteous man cares about the poor. His righteousness endures forever. His horn is exalted in honor. That's what we're told in verse nine. But let's underscore this. It doesn't mean that you are without darkness, without bad news, without adversaries.

And this is the danger of prosperity theology. The danger to the right of us says that when you sow a seed for God, he will sow back to you material blessing and health and wealth and prosperity, and he will make your path smooth and you will not have darkness.

You will not experience darkness. You will not experience pain and the death of loved ones. You will not experience the difficulties of this life, but that is a lie because look at what Psalm 112 is really saying.

In verse four, it says, light dawns in the darkness. That means you do walk through the valley of the shadow of death, but he walks with you with his shepherd staff. What does it say in verse seven? He is not afraid of bad news.

There is a place in the Christian walk where you can have bad news coming at you and not be afraid. And yet, isn't it true that so many of us struggle with anxiety? Part of that comes from this prosperity teaching that you'll see on TBN and the television teachers that are begging for money, and they'll tell you, sow a seed into my ministry and you will reap a harvest of wealth.

Sow a 777 seed, a super seed, $777, and God will multiply that back to you seven times over. We'll need Tom to do the math on that one. How much money you get back if you sow that particular seed. The prosperity teachers promise you financial reward for your giving, a smooth sailing.

Prosperity theology is a misreading of Psalm 112. It's missing it by a mile. It's missing the point. We do go through hard times. We do go through pain. We do go through struggles. We do have adversaries that gnash their teeth, and yet in the end, they will melt away.

So back with me now to 2 Corinthians chapter nine. Avoid the danger to the right. And here's what happens. We take a true point, which is that there is blessing in the giving. There is a blessing in the giving.

God is near, and he does reward and bless the righteous. That's what we just read. That was the point in verses six to eight. But we isolate that point and miss the larger context. Because not only does God promise us blessing, he promises us suffering.

Philippians 1 .29, he says, even as you believed in Christ, it was appointed to you to suffer for him. Appointed to you. It's part of his plan. It's appointed to you to suffer with Christ. Philippians 1 .29.

So as we see this principle again, keep that in mind. Now look at verse 10 and 11. He underscores the point again. He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness.

You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. Look carefully at the text. Which element is material and which is spiritual? In verse 10, the seed in context here is material.

It's seed. We're talking about from the whole context of chapter eight and nine, sowing sparingly. Paul is collecting an actual monetary offering from the church. But notice the kind of promise that he attaches to it.

Seed to the sower, bread for food, will supply and multiply your seed for sowing, your opportunity to continue to give, but an immaterial harvest. What is the harvest in verse 10? Increase the harvest of your righteousness.

So for the believer who's sowing from a cheerful heart, we're expecting a harvest, not a financial blessing, 770, whatever, dollars back to us. We're expecting righteousness. We're pursuing righteousness.

We want to be right with God, desiring to know Him and walk with Him. But it does say your seed for sowing will be increased. You see that in verse 10? Not only do you get a harvest of righteousness, but it does say here, multiply your seed for sowing.

Is there a true principle there about financial reward? Can God, according to this text, reward us financially for financial giving? I think He can. I think we just saw Him do it. About three months ago, the church had a surplus.

Used to saying shortfall, right? But now we say there's a surplus of $10 ,000 beyond what we had budgeted to spend. More giving than what we had budgeted to give. And so as the board prayed about this change of events, we had heard that one of our missionaries in Portugal was way behind in their giving.

Some major churches had stopped supporting them. So we decided to sow a seed with the excess money that we had of $3 ,600 that wasn't in the budget. The whole church actually approved that. We had a congregational meeting and approved that.

And you think, well, in our human math, that means we're down to about $6 ,000 surplus. Just over. But here we are three months later, and instead of a $10 ,000 surplus, we have a $24 ,000 surplus. The Lord increased our seed, and what did we do with it at this next congregational meeting last week?

We sowed it again into another missionary family that was struggling and had fallen behind. It's not a promise that, as a prosperity teacher says, you can't outgive God. That's not the nature of this promise.

In one sense, that's probably true because God is the greatest giver of all. He gives his son, he gives the blood of his son for the forgiveness of our sin. No one will ever outgive God, amen. But the teaching of the prosperity theologian is that you can't outgive God.

If you sow $3 ,600, you'll get $14 ,000 right back. There's danger down that road. And yet he can provide more seed for sowing, which he happened to do in our case. But can you outgive God when it comes to giving and receiving?

If you today take everything in your bank account and the deed for your home and your car and you sell them all and give it to the poor, God is not promising that he will give that back so that you can sow to the poor again.

That's not the nature of the promise. It's not a give-to-get transaction. You missed the point if that's what you think this is saying. In fact, if you followed that train of thought, you can easily outgive God, can't you?

Every time you get money, you give it away and you never have anything. But that's not the wisdom that's being taught at this particular point. And if you took the prosperity theologian's logic to its conclusion, that's where you would wind up.

But it's not wise. It's not the teaching of the scripture. We need to look farther. So that's why we move on in the text. The word thanksgiving in verse 11. Thanksgiving is more important than material blessing.

We are not in the game of making money. The church is not a for-profit organization. We're not just dealers of money even to the mission field. What we are in the business of doing is glorifying God.

And here the connection is through thanksgiving. I love Richard Baxter's way of putting this. Ye saints who toil below, adore your heavenly king. And onward as ye go, some joyful anthem sing. Take what he gives and praise him still through good and ill, whoever lives.

Richard Baxter is saying we as Christians go forth with a thankful heart, with a song in our heart, joyful, thankful for whatever he gives. He says, take what he gives. And Paul said to Timothy, 1 Timothy 6, verse six, godliness with contentment is great gain.

What matters to God is the contentment and the thankfulness of the heart, however much or how little any one of us is given. Take what he gives and praise him still through good and ill. Take what he gives.

But the issue is thanksgiving at the end of verse 12, but thanksgiving is not the end game. Thanksgiving is our responsive heart toward the end game. The final conclusion of the matter, the most important thing is found in the next verse, verse 13, by their approval of this service, that means those who are receiving the gift, the poor saints in Jerusalem who are receiving the gift that's being sent from Corinth and from Macedonia, by their approval of this service, they will glorify God.

That's what matters in this life, the glory of God. Because of your submission that comes from your confession of the gospel of Christ, when they see that you walk in the light of the gospel, you confess Christ and you give from the heart.

When they see this kind of Christianity, they will glorify God. And that's the highest end game here, the generosity of your contribution for them and all others while they long for you and pray for you because of the surpassing grace of God upon you.

Seeing the grace of God in your life, they praise him. They thank him, the thanksgiving goes to him and he receives the glory. That's the point of life. And this is what we need to understand. Prosperity theologians fall off to the right of us because they're looking at earthly material things and missing what matters most.

Job didn't miss it. Job was richer than all of them, the richest man in the world. And yet God allowed him to be struck. All of his children died, all of his possessions were taken away. His very body was struck with boils so that he scraped himself with a pot shirt.

And we're told in Job 1 .22, in all this, Job did not sin or charge God with wrong. The issue, he glorified God. He accepted, he took from God not just good but painful things as well. He accepted that as coming from his hand and he glorified God.

And that was in keeping with our Savior. In Isaiah 53 .3, he was despised and rejected by men. A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And as one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised and we esteemed him not.

And this whole book of 2 Corinthians has been laying out this principle for us. Early on, the God of all comfort, in chapter one, verse seven, we're told our hope for you is unshaken. For we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.

Paul, from the very beginning of this book, is teaching a maturity that suffers well. Not a maturity that's only able to delight in the good things. I like the way J .I. Packer explained the maturity of this kind of thinking.

He said there's a lot of Christians that are like the person who wants to see how the train station operates. He was thinking of a very busy train station in Ireland, or it might have been in Scotland.

And in the book, Knowing God, he says, many people want to be taken to the control room where they can see why it is one train is caused to stop and another is put on the side track and how everything is orchestrated together to understand why trains are derailed or why you have to hesitate and wait.

And he said, but that's not wisdom. Wisdom is a man who operates his own car, not worried about why everything happens. The man who's driving a car sees an accident on his right and carefully avoids it and knows that he has to turn right.

Wisdom is doing with whatever you are given what God has called you to do. Wisdom is not knowing the mind of God. And here's where we go wrong. We look at the sufferings in our life, the conditions that we face, the problems, financial, the hardships of life, and we're all going through those things and we ask the question, why?

I need to see why. And we think if we're more mature, then we just can put the pieces together. But that's not maturity. The book of Ecclesiastes talks about this much. In this life, there is great suffering.

What we need is to be real, to recognize that there are sufferings and we don't need to know why. We need to enjoy God in the midst of these things. We need to go about our work, driving the car, carrying on with what God has called us to do.

Maturity is suffering well. This is the point in this text. They're glorifying God. That's what matters. It's a much higher end than the fact that a financial blessing has come into their lives. Because glorifying God does not depend on the financial blessing.

Like Job, it accepts the good and it accepts the pain from the hand of God. So let's not fall to the left or to the right. And finally, in verses 13 and 14, glorifying God is the end game that supersedes all concerns.

And then verse 15, we close with this part. Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift. Where does Paul end this discussion of financial giving? Right back where he was in chapter eight, verse nine. 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 ends with the gospel. He ends with Christ was given as an inexpressible gift. He emptied himself, he humbled himself, he became poor. Taking the weight of our sin on his back and being treated, mistreated with crucifixion.

Killed in our place. Emptied of all that he had in the earthly body. His very blood poured out from him, so he was emptied for us. Complete poverty for our sake. This is the inexpressible gift. And so Paul ends there.

He says thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift. Whatever we can throw into the offering plate for missions, for the church, to advance the gospel in this region, we can never out give God. Not in this sense.

Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift. To glorify him. And so in closing, what do we need to remember from this passage? One, the promise is there, the point is there. When you sow abundantly, you reap abundantly.

When you sow into righteous activities in your life, when you read the scripture, when you pray, there is a blessing that comes from it, right? Doesn't the Bible teach us that? Psalm chapter one, blessed is the man who does not walk in the way of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of the scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord and on his word he meditates day and night.

That's what we're supposed to do, right? What's he like? He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in season. This tree yields fruit in season. Whatever he does prospers. Let's not empty the weight of that promise.

Not sow the wicked, they're like chaff that the wind blows away. That's a terrible end. There's a difference between sowing to the flesh and sowing to the spirit. You sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind.

You sow to the spirit, you reap from the spirit eternal life. So it does matter how we live this life, how we give financially, how we give our lives away to one another, how we care and serve. Don't miss that bigger point.

That's the point. The second part, there is though bad news. Just don't be afraid of it. This is not a promise of an easy road. This is not a promise of prosperity in the sense that things don't go wrong or that you have plenty of money all the time or that God must now give you $14 ,000 back if you sow a seed to a missionary.

That's not the point. There's no promise of a certain kind of blessing in a certain way. Don't isolate that principle, but keep it in the larger context. Serve and seek the higher things, that you would be righteous, that you would be thankful, that you would glorify God, that you would say thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift.

That's why we do what we do. So let's close in a word of prayer. And worship team, come on up. So Lord, we do thank you so much for this passage of scripture. We thank you for the weighty things. Lord, I just personally want to thank you for Psalm 112 because you've held me by your promises.

And your promises once again have proven sure. And I pray Psalm 112 over this congregation that everybody who's walking through a dark valley and experiencing deep grief, that they would find in Psalm 112 the hope that comes from walking with a sovereign God, who holds all things in his hands, a trustworthy God.

Lord, I pray that we wouldn't think that we needed to see the why, because that is a path of folly. We don't need to see how we're blessed and every way in which you're working all things together for our good.

We only need to know that you are working all things together for our good. So open our eyes to see you, to see the gospel, to see Christ who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the Father.

Give us the joy of the Lord, for that is our strength. Strengthen us this morning by your word. We give you all the glory, all the praise, because our hearts are filled with thanksgiving. In Jesus' name.