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How Does God Measure Generosity?, Part 2

From the series The Genius of Generosity

Wouldn’t it be great to enjoy the "Christmas Spirit” 365 days year? In this message, Chip shares how you can cultivate that winsome spirit of Christmas in your heart 24/7.

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Message Transcript

For most of you, not for all, but for most of you your time is more valuable than your money. But it goes beyond that.

The Christmas story then introduces a new character and we get Joseph who is engaged. And as you read this the engagement period in the Jewish culture is the families would be involved and the families would agree this is the right man, this is the right girl and in this culture it would be a semi-arranged marriage.

And then there would be what’s called the betrothal and so you would get engaged and then you’d have up to sometimes a year and the man would then get the house ready and get financially responsible and where they’re going to live.

And the betrothal period was very official. It wasn’t like today when you’re engaged and say, “Hey I’m not sure this is really right. Let’s break the engagement.” The only way to break an engagement then was to have a divorce.

Now listen to Joseph’s story and think of what it would be like, especially guys. Think of this as your girlfriend and you hear this story about her.

Matthew chapter 1 beginning at verse 18 it says, “This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about. His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man he didn’t want to expose her to public disgrace but he had in mind to divorce her quietly.

“But after he considered this, an angel of the Lord,” that phrase often, “angel of the Lord,” is the pre-incarnate Christ. “The angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son. You will give Him His name Jesus, because He will save His people from their sins.’

“And all this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: ‘The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son and they will call Him Immanuel’ (which means ‘God is with us’).

“When Joseph woke up he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and he took Mary home to be his wife.”

Now just, you talk about your reputation, all right? Guys? Those of you that, think about way, way back for some of you when you were engaged. And your girlfriend comes to you and says, “Hey, I just want you to know, I’ve never been with another man, but I’m pregnant.”

And you say, “Well how can this be?” And she says, “Well it’s God.” “Oh, really?” “Yeah, it’s God. Angel told me.” “Ohhhhhh!”

Yeah, okay so let’s get now you have an angelic visit. And this angel, literally, I mean, in the middle of the night, you have this dream and he speaks to you and says it’s okay and then he says, “This is the Savior of the world. The Messiah is coming. Mary told you the truth. This is the real deal. I want you to do it.”

Now sometimes we read these Bible stories like Joseph is some wind-up religious robot. “Oh yes. God said it, I will do it. God said it, I will do it.” He’s a guy. He’s thinking, “Now wait a second.” This is when the sexual morays were way different than they are now. You could get stoned for adultery. You don’t have babies out of wedlock.

So now Joseph is going to marry a girl that’s pregnant? What are the guys down at the bar going to say? “Joseph, you fool! Joseph, you idiot! Can you believe that?

I mean, all of his life, the suspect. The suspicion. How in the world could any man marry some woman who is pregnant with someone else’s kid? In that day his reputation…gone.

Let me ask you: When you start thinking about money or time or reputation what’s the most valuable? What’s the hardest to give? I’m going to guess, with a group this size, we have people that probably give your money faithfully. And I bet there’s people in this room that actually are pretty willing to give your time.

But I bet there’s some of us that, as relatives come in, or when a topic comes up at work and it’s one of those black and white issues and you know the Bible says this and it’s really clear and your personal convictions are here but you know if you would fly your flag and verbalize that, they would think you’re one of those Bible-thumping, anti-intellectual, evangelical weirdoes and you know what you do? You don’t say anything. Because what people think of you matters more than what God thinks of you. And how you appear and it might impact your career and it might impact the future, right?

You tell people you go to church here and they look at you like, “So, you’re just not smart or what? You’re not a thinking person? You’re, you’re not an intellectual?”

Are you willing to give God your reputation? Are you willing to kind of go out there on the limb and say, “You know, Lord…?” And by the way, I don’t mean be stupid. I don’t mean be argumentative. There’s a lot of Christians that, please, act in ways that actually hurt God’s reputation.

I’m talking about you know those areas when the Spirit of God is prompting you to step up and verbalize and model what you really believe and all this pressure that you are so afraid of what people think.

Generous people. Joseph gave his reputation. For Mary it was beyond her reputation. I mean, her reputation was ruined but she gave her future.

We pick the story up in Luke chapter 1. It’s in the sixth month. God sent the, now notice the angel, Gabriel, he’s the great messenger of God who announces the greatest announcements in Scripture.

“Gabriel goes to Nazareth to a town of Galilee to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendent of David. The virgin’s name was Mary and the angel went to her and said, ‘Greetings, you are highly favored, the Lord is with you.’”

I just, I don’t know how or where this happened but I just picture it had to be in a private place and you know maybe Mary was just getting ready for bed or maybe she couldn’t sleep that night and all of a sudden, whoo, an angel is in the room. I mean light emanating out of him. He starts to speak to her. Her response is, “Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be.” Wouldn’t you?

“But the angel said, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son and you’re to give Him His name, Jesus.’” This is really good because at least Joseph gets a dream that says Jesus is the name and Mary gets a visit says Jesus is the name. So when they talk together they’re on the same page.

Then notice, “He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give Him the throne of David and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever and His kingdom will never end.”

Mary understood what was going on here. The throne of David. His kingdom. Later in the same book she has this prayer, this magnificent prayer and she talks about how God is faithful to the humble and she quotes twelve to fifteen different parts of Old Testament passages.

This young girl was godly. Maybe fifteen, sixteen years old. Knew God, loved God, found favor. Those words, “The throne of David,” He’ll be called The Son of God, she understood, “The long awaited Messiah, God visiting the earth, fully God, fully man is going to take up residence inside my body. And I will give physical birth to the Son of God and I will be the mother of the Messiah.”

But she sort of had a methodology question. And so her response is, “How can this be since I’m a virgin?” And the angel said, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you so that the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God.”

And then almost as though, can you imagine a little fifteen, sixteen-year-old girl trying to take all this in and it’s like the angel said, “You know, by the way, let me give you a little touch of reality. You know Elizabeth, your aunt?” “Yeah.” “You know the old lady who can’t have kids?” “Yeah.” “I mean way past child bearing?” “Yeah.” “Right now, she’s six months pregnant.”

And what we find is after this Mary goes and visits her and I think it was a great encouragement to her faith especially when she walked in the room and John the Baptist would leap inside of Elizabeth in recognition of, “This is the mother of the Savior of the world.”

And he says, “For nothing is impossible with God.” And then I love her response because now I want to talk to you ladies. And I don’t know much about this except I have one daughter and one wife. And I talk to my wife a lot about the dreams she had someday and what the wedding would look like and this guy that she was going to marry and the kind of person he would be and maybe two or three kids or…

When you’re a young girl, don’t you have dreams about your future and what it’s going to look like and who he might be and where are you going to live and back then I don’t think they had white, picket fences but I, you know?

Mary gave her future away. Her life was never normal. And her response was, “I am the servant of the Lord. Be it unto me according to Your Word.”

Here’s what you've got to grab. God who actually made all that there is wants to do things in you and through you beyond your wildest imagination but He doesn’t have your heart and can’t start to guide you until you can demonstrate you trust Him and you say, “Lord, I’ll trust You with the training wheels of my money.”

And then you begin to say, “I’ll give You the best of my time,” and then it’s your reputation and then here’s, a lot of people get there and what they say is, “Now, God, here’s what I want You to know, inside this box for my future, as long as I work at this kind of job, marry this kind of person, never get geographically beyond where I am. You know, I just want You to know inside this box You could do whatever You want with my life.”

And you know what God does with most people’s lives? He does exactly what you let Him do inside that little box and you can go to church and you can write your first check to the Lord and you can read your Bible and you can go to a little Bible study now and then, and even share your faith now and then and feel like…

But God’s been tapping on your shoulder and saying, “What about your future? What about your future? You willing to go anywhere?”

Eighty percent of all the people in America have a job they hate. But they won’t leave it because the economic income is greater than doing what they were made to do.

See, it’s a scary, you’re starting to get generous when you say, “God, I want to do with Your future anything You want done in my future.” And that usually requires some sort of step of faith and then people that we interview or people that you know that have this sort of winsome, attractive love for God that oozes out of them and it’s the kind of Christians we all someday kind of want to be.

I will tell you what, they’ve given their future to God. And they’re doing some things and experiencing things they never dreamed would ever happen. They thought it only happened to “really spiritual” people, or really smart people, or really holy people.

And what I will tell you is the Bible is filled with only ordinary people through whom God does extraordinary things and the prerequisite isn’t gift, or talent, or smarts, or heritage, or background. The prerequisite is trust and availability.

And that’s why the Christmas story is a graduate level in generosity because it’s unlikely people who God does improbable, impossible, amazing things as increasing levels of generosity.

And she gives her future and then Jesus does what? He gives his life. Mark 10:45, “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and give His life for many.” The word “for” there means “in the place of, as a substitute for.”

And you can kind of see, I sort of picture down here they see a star. Little bit of revelation, they respond to it. They get an angelic visit. Over here, wow, he gets a dream with an angel of the Lord. She gets a visit from Gabriel. Jesus, before the foundations of the earth, looks through the portals of time in the eternal now and who, for the joy, not reluctantly, who for the joy. Was it hard? Yes. Did He anguish in his soul? Yes. Was it, in the garden was it a struggle? Completely.

I like that because it is for me too. But when He gave His life it wasn’t a reluctant, it was: who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, offering Himself so He could pay for you and you and me and you and you and whosoever would believe in Him.

The Father goes beyond that. The Father gave His Son and that window in that moment of time when Jesus hung upon the cross. For the first time in eternity the Father would turn away from the Son and the just wrath of God, your sin and my sin and the sins of all people of all time would be placed on Him as a sin offering and so He would cry, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”

And, whoo, and He would take on your sin and mine and the Father would give.

And for some of us, as you learn to become generous, and God uses you there’s an Isaac in your life. That’s why that picture’s in the Old Testament. There’s been times when one of my kids has been an idol in my life and God, “Are you willing to let him loose?” And go away and pursue this career that I thought he’s never going to make any money, he’s never going to have a life, and it’s probably not going to work out. And it’s a long way from here. Yes, Lord. Or letting your kid go to a mission field.

There’s another time in my life when my wife was an idol. And she would tell you now that’s one of the hardest, most difficult times but what God did in and then through…

What precious possession, what are you hanging on to that God just wants to pry your little fingers off of so He could let you experience His love?

Last night at the end of the service there was a guy waiting around for quite a while and he, I thought, “What’s up?” And he said, “I just came here to thank you.” I said, “What for?” He said, “Well I’ve been kind of involved in ministry and twenty-nine years old, I’m in a graduate program now and I do some teaching in my church and I’ve told people all kind of stuff for lots of years. But in the last two weeks, three of the biggest things happened that just shattered my life.”

And he said, “You know something? There were two or three things that I’ve always held back even though I was involved in ministry and read the Bible, and two or three things that were just, ‘Mm, mm, God. I’m not trusting You with those.’

And I, for the first time in my life, told God I’m all in. And I surrendered my life. I mean, I’ve been a Christian for years but I surrendered all that I am, all that I have. God, I want you to know, I’m afraid. But I believe that You are good and that You’re kind; You’re a sun and a shield. You give grace and glory. You won’t withhold any good thing. But now I’m taking that step.”

And he said, “I just can’t tell you what’s happened in my life and my heart. And I’ve been a Christian most all my life but the power and the experience of God and the love of God that I’ve heard about but never experienced came because I gave.”

Why? What’s the Scripture teach? Give and it will be given, good measure, pressed down, shaken together, run over back into your lap. But it’s not about money. Money is the training wheels. Yeah, when you give, yeah but time, same. Reputation, future, life, precious possession.

There are three little things I want you to fill in. I’ve shared these but I want you to just jot down three observations about the Christmas story and graduate level generosity.

Number one, generosity is not so much a virtuous act as it is a virtuous response.

Second, God doesn’t measure generosity by the size of your gift but the size of your sacrifice.

And finally, increasing levels of generosity bring increasing levels of reward and blessing. I mean, each time the blessing is greater and greater and greater and greater and greater. Because you give and God always gives back.