The Genius of Generosity By Chip Ingram
Part 5: How to Become Winsomely Generous All the Days of Your Life Page 1 of 6
Sermon Outline
Introduction
· 7 blessings of one, simple practice (generosity)
The Difficulties of One, Simple Practice (Generosity)
· The Deceptive Power of Riches
o Mark 4:18-19
· The Luring Promise of “Mammon” Worship
o Luke 6:13
o Illustration: Forbes Top 50 Wealthiest People List
· The Attraction of Now
o Luke 12:13
How Do We Beat Generosity’s Number One Competitor?
· Refuse to Chase After the Wind
o Ecclesiastes 5:10-15
o The More You Have, the More You Want
o The More You Have, the Less Satisfied You Are
o The More You Have, the More Others Will Come after Your Money
§ Illustration: JD Rockefeller said, “I have made many millions but they have brought me no happiness.”
o The More You Have, the More You Have to Worry About
§ Illustration: Andrew Carnegie said, “Millionaires rarely smile.”
o The More You Have, the Greater the Harm in Keeping It to Yourself
§ Illustration: Heddy Green’s enslavement to money
o The More You Have, the More You Have to Lose
§ God is not against wealth, and He is not against wealthy people. God is against you or me chasing wealth and seeking to find fulfillment in it.
· Refuse to View Generosity as Self-Deprivation
o Illustration: R.J. Laturno, “You know what, I just give it away in shovel fulls but God’s shovel is bigger than mine.”
o Lay Up Treasure for Yourself
§ Matthew 6:20, 1 Timothy 6:17
o Gain a Return on Investment
How Do We Become Winsomely Generous?
· Know Where Your True Home Is
o Breakthrough Concept #5: Heaven is my home; earth is merely my hotel room
o Hebrews 11:13, 2 Corinthians 5:20, Philippians 3:20, Hebrews 11:15-16
· Make a Lifelong Commitment
o Illustration: Imagine that your employer transfers you for 2-1/2 months. How would you live?
Sermon Transcript
As we begin, I want to ask you a question: If I told you that there is one simple, measurable practice that you could do that would bless others, meet needs, honor God, produce joy, result in eternal rewards, provide an antidote to greed, and reveal the true condition of your heart anytime you wanted to know it—would you do it?
THE BLESSINGS OF ONE, SIMPLE PRACTICE
One simple practice can do all these seven things.
1. This simple practice can bless others, so that when you do it, they will receive emotional, spiritual benefit. They’ll actually see God.
2. This practice will meet the needs of others. When you do it, people who are hungry will get fed. People’s broken relationships will come back together, and then they’ll see God.
3. Not only that, but this practice honors God. When you practice it, they understand that the gift is from God. They won’t thank you, necessarily; but they thank God, and He gets honored.
4. When you practice this one thing, it produces joy. Every time you do it, you have this amazingly good feeling inside. That feeling is for the now, but there’s more.
5. This practice also produces eternal rewards. The day you cross the threshold of heaven, eternal rewards that are tangible and real will be stacked up for you. It will impact the quality of heaven that you will experience as a child of God.
6. The practice is an antidote to greed. No one who practices it wants to be a Scrooge, ending up some ugly, shriveled-up, old, greedy person. This practice will defang the greed monster in your life.
7. It will reveal the condition of your heart. Anytime you want to do a little inventory on how your heart is with God, practice this. Just like you can take your blood pressure or your pulse at any time, this practice will let you know exactly where your heart is. It will reveal your true lordship.
Now I can’t imagine that anyone who looks at that list would not want what it offers. That list is almost too good to be true. But I can imagine that you are impatiently asking, “So, what’s the practice?” If you’ve been around the last four weeks, you know what the practice is. It’s the genius of generosity that God has built in to life in the Kingdom. The practice is living generously.
It’s amazing. By simply changing your orientation from getting to giving, all the above seven gifts become reality. From what’s in it for me to how can I bless and encourage and help. Simply living generously produces those seven things. It’s not just about your time, it’s not even just about your money, it’s about your attitude—your heart. It’s about knowing that your car, your hairdryer, your money, your clothes, your time, your knowledge, all that you are, all that you’ve been, all that you know—all of this is now available to be given generously to whomever, whenever God directs in order to bless and encourage others. And this genius of the Kingdom will produce radical changes: a radical change in your heart, a radical change in others as it blesses them, a radical change in the Kingdom as people see real live Christianity lived out in action, and dramatic changes even in heaven. All from this very, very simple practice.
Now I imagine that as you’re thinking through these seven blessings, another question begins to bubble up in you: If living generously is so good--I mean if it blesses, meets needs, honors God, produces joy, results in eternal reward, is the anecdote to greed, and reveals the real true condition of my heart--if living generously is so genius and so good, why do so few people live this way? It doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it? Unless…there’s a lot of opposition to this lifestyle. Unless…it’s really hard in a fallen world to live generously. Logically, practically, and spiritually, there are a zillion reasons to be generous with everything you have. But the fact of the matter is that it’s one of the most difficult assignments you’ll ever have. Despite all the benefits we’ve described.
THE DIFFICULTIES OF THIS ONE, SIMPLE PRACTICE
Living generously is difficult for at least three reasons.
1. The Deceptive Power of Riches
Difficulty number one is the deceptive power of riches. The parable of the seeds and the sower is probably Jesus’ hallmark parable. I say that because Jesus said if you don’t get this one, if you don’t understand this, you won’t understand any of My teaching. In this parable, Jesus describes sowing seeds in four different types of soil, and then He describes how the seeds thrive or don’t thrive in each soil and why.
But today I want to focus on one particular kind of soil that Jesus describes in Mark 4:18-19. Jesus says, “Still others,” speaking of the third type of soil, or person, “like a seed sown among thorns, hear the word; but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and they choke the word, making it unfruitful.” Wealth is not neutral. Wealth is powerful. And it is not only powerful but it’s deceptive. When you are being seduced, when you are being tricked, when you are being suckered in, when you’re being drawn in, it is like the lure attracting a fish. It is like watching someone play the shell game and you’re sure you know where the covered object is, so you choose and you put your money down. But once again, the fast-handed man takes your money because you’re a sucker. You’ve been deceived. Jesus says that when the truth of God’s word is planted in your heart, there are things of this world that can begin to bend it and tilt it and deceive you. So rather than responding to the truth of God’s word by faith and with a willingness to risk and love and be generous, the deceptive power of wealth tells you to play it close, look out for you, the more you have the more secure you are, and the more you have the more important you are.
2. The Luring Promise of “Mammon” Worship
The second reason it is so difficult to live a generous life despite all the benefits is the luring promise of “mammon” worship. That’s what Jesus called it, per the King James Version. Other versions say “money.” In Luke 16:13, Jesus says, “No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.” You are either sold out to one or sold out to the other; there’s no middle ground. I call this the luring promises of mammon, because mammon, or wealth, worship comes in insidious forms. No one would say, “I want a big pile of money in front of me so I can look at it and say, look how rich I am.” That’s not how it works, is it?
Every god demands sacrifice and offerings. And the god of mammon promises, “If you worship me, I will make you powerful and successful; I can give you fame. In fact, I can give you enough money to change your looks if you need to. I’ll give you status. I’ll give you a big house, and you’ll impress people. I can give you what will make you a somebody. I can give you security. I can give you control. You can have it all, and you can have it now, if you’ll just worship me.” That’s what the god of mammon promises.
And so like you, like me, you kind of watch the front of People Magazine as you stand in line for the cashier, and you catch a clip out of Entertainment Tonight, and you see all the stars and athletes and those of great wealth, and you can see them bow the knee. And they worship at the shrine of mammon. Some of them are into the accumulation game, and their hearts are caught in the power trap.
I recently had a conversation with an executive in the Silicon Valley who was apparently fairly well connected, and he told me about the Fall issue of Forbes that lists the top 50 wealthiest people in the United States. And number 51 wrote an eight-page letter explaining why he should have been on the list. But they say it’s not about the money; it’s about the power; it’s about the prestige. But wealth can buy you significance. And the accumulation of things is about all about comparison, ego, and power.
Others worship at the shrine of security, and they hoard and hoard, thinking that they’ll finally be safe. Others flaunt what they have, and they have multimillion-dollar weddings. And they fly their friends in from all over and have the most exotic and luxuriant of everything, and they play the impressive game. “I must be worth a lot; look at all these people who came, look at all these nice things I have, look at all these reporters.” And then like all the rest of us, they get up in the morning and brush their teeth and have fights with their spouse, and they usually end up getting a divorce within a few months or a few years.
Some worship mammon in a strange way. It’s not only that they want a lot, but they are ultra frugal and obsessive and want to be in control. And by always buying and always picking up the bill and always having the most, they can control others. They specialize in family members and friends and the people who work for them.
Mammon is a harsh task master, but he promises us the moon. How many people really believe in their heart, “If I just won the lotto, then all my problems would be gone.” But the research tells us that their problems would probably just be beginning.
3. The Attraction of Now
The third reason it is so difficult to be generous is what I call “temporal myopia”—a brief and fleeting lack of foresight. Do you remember the passage in Luke 12:13? Follow along, as I read.
Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”
Jesus replied, “Man who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?”Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”
And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do. I have no place to store my crops.’
“Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my grain and my goods. And I will say to myself, “You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’
“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you prepared for yourself?’
“This is how it will be for anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.”
Temporal myopia. The viewpoint that now is all there is. The desire to accumulate as much as one possibly can and get as much pleasure as possible is hedonism to the max. Whatever this person has that’s bigger, nicer, newer, better will make him happy for at least 15 minutes.
HOW DO WE BEAT GENEROSITY’S NUMBER-ONE COMPETITOR?
So how do we win this insidious battle with materialism in order to develop a lasting lifestyle of generosity? We know the blessings of generosity. You’ve experienced them. I’ve experienced them: We bless others, we meet needs, we honor God, we look forward to eternal reward, we have the antidote to greed, and we can know the condition of our hearts. But it is so hard because wealth is deceptive. And because the mammon god promises the world, and because we get caught up in thinking that right now is all there is.