2 Corinthians9v6to15: SOWING GENEROUSLY

(A) Introduction. (Read the reference)

I found it difficult to prepare this exposition because it seems to me that Paul is being over optimistic especially if his words are applied to individuals rather than churches. His statement: Whoever sows generously will also reap generously,' does not sit comfortably with the parable Jesus told about the Sower. A farmer who sows generously on the wayside or stony soil or amongst thorns is bound to be disappointed.

I never prepare sermons with conviction on Bible passages that do not resonate with my experience. It is my experience that you can do a lot of sowing without much reaping. So what follows is unlikely to be one of my better expositions.

The passage gives us advice on how we should give. We should do so:

(C) Generously.

Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. v6.

It is absolutely true that if you sow sparingly you will reap sparingly. If you buy a packet of purple sprouting broccoli seeds the instructions on the packet tell you to plant them out a few inches apart. Then when seedlings appear they should be transplanted a foot or a foot and a half apart. The slapdash gardener who thinks he can start off by planting the seeds 12 to 18 inches apart is in for a nasty surprise. Not all the seeds will germinate and he will be left with plants 3 or 4 feet apart. There is an old country saying about how to sow beans: ‘One for the mouse, One for the crow, One to rot, One to grow.’

So there is a kernel of truth in what Paul says which I can illustrate in several different ways:

  • I have just finished watching the 'School Choir of the Year Contest' on BBC TV's, 'Songs of Praise.' The singing of the choirs was truly magnificent. All of them had an inspirational choir master - or mistress - who gave themselves to the music with boundless enthusiasm. The totally committed teachers got a tremendous response. They reaped what they sowed.

  • I know several women - some of whom attend my church - who have been wonderful caring and generous mothers. In old age their children are a great blessing to them - helping in all sorts of ways. These loving, highly competent mothers reap what they have sowed.

  • Generous giving can in the right circumstances be catching. King David gave extremely lavishly towards the building of the Temple. He was not allowed as a man of blood to oversee the actual construction so, instead, he amassed materials for his son, Solomon, to use later. His good example was followed by all highly placed people in the kingdom. See1Chron29.

  • A generous spirit has its reward. I read this week the obituary of Edgar Parry a vascular surgeon in the forefront of new techniques for treating aneurysms and blocked arteries. He was generous with his time and advice. Consequently: Doctors and nurses loved working with Parry and as a result his team attracted the best.

    The small congregation in my fellowship shows its appreciation generously and this makes it a lot easier for me to find preachers on a Sunday. The itinerant preachers I contact are keen to take our services.

  • I think it is usually true that a giving church is more likely to grow than a mean one. And we must bear in mind throughout this exposition that Paul was addressing churches as a whole.

    Money allows a church to: have a full time pastor, purchase a minibus to pick up children and old people, improve the premises, build a new church, employ a youth leader, help the poor and disadvantaged. Such a fellowship is more likely to receive blessing than one tight with its money!

However, it is not always like this! There are enthusiastic teachers who get little response from their pupils; there are loving, caring mothers that are taken for granted by their children; there are open-handed folk who are exploited by the unscrupulous; there are small causes whose congregations give sacrificially that stagnate.

I am not even convinced that Paul's gift to the Jerusalem Church did all he hoped it would. The little apostle had only been in Jerusalem five minutes when the elders badgered him to show his respect for the law and appease his Jewish Christian critics by going to the Temple and paying for 4 men to complete their vow. All this did was to stir up a riot and get Paul arrested. See Acts21v17to36.

(C) Willingly and cheerfully.

Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. v17.

If we only give under intense pressure and then reluctantly and grudgingly it has little merit. God loves a cheerful - a hilarious - giver. There are some Christians who grudge giving a penny. The three anecdotes below could apply to the tight-fisted brigade.

A pastor stood before his church and said, “I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that the church has all the money it needs. The bad news is that it’s all still in your wallets.”

A teacher says to Billy, “If you have two dollars, and you ask your father for four dollars, how many dollars will you have?” Billy’s answer, “Two dollars.” The teacher said, “Billy, you don’t know your Maths.” To which he responded, “You don’t know my father!”

There was once a young pastor, fresh out of the seminary, and he thought it would help him in his career if he first took a job as a special constable for several months. He passed the physical examination and then took the oral examination to ascertain his alertness of mind and his ability to act quickly and wisely in an emergency. Among other questions, he was asked, "What would you do to disperse a frenzied crowd?" He thought for a moment and then said, “I would take up a collection.”

We should be glad that we have something to give to God. We should be like the upper stratum of Israelite society who gave willingly to the Temple so much so that: The people rejoiced at the willing response of their leaders, for they had given freely and wholeheartedly to the Lord. David the king also rejoiced greatly. 1Chron29v9.

There is no excuse for us in the West not giving liberally to God. He has blessed us with so much as these statistics suggest:

If you have food in your refrigerator and clothes on your back, a roof over your head and a place to sleep, you are richer than 75% of those who live in the world.

If you have money in the bank and in your wallet and spare change in a dish somewhere in your house, you are among the top 8% of the world’s wealthiest.

We must remember that we only give back to God what he first gave to us. Now some might quibble at this. Someone might say, "I've worked hard for all I've got." Well, who gave you the health and strength to do so?

I read this thought provoking illustration on SermonCentral.com: A U.S. Congressman named Bob McCune, told the story of the time when he took his kids out to eat at a local fast-food restaurant. As he they sat down to eat, Bob smelled the fries in front of one of his sons - and reached over to get one.

To his surprise, the young boy grabbed his dad’s hand, pushed it back, and exclaimed, "Dad, Dad, don’t take my fries!" McCune was stunned. He sat in front of his son in silence and wondered, "What happened?"

Then the meaning of this "teachable moment" hit him. He thought, "My son doesn’t know where those fries came from. He doesn’t realize that about five minutes ago I went to the counter, put my hand in my pocket, pulled out the money and bought those fries for him. I am the source of those fries.

My son doesn’t understand that, if I wanted to, I could take those fries away from him.

He doesn’t know that I don’t even need his fries; I could go over to the counter and buy my own. I could go over to the counter and buy a dozen orders and cover him with fries.

What I really wanted from my son was his willingness to share with me what I’d already given him.

It is easy for us to be like that little boy - highly protective of what God has first given to us. He doesn't need what we have but it pleases God when we are willing to share with him what he has given us.

(D) Confidently.

If you sow on reasonable soil in favourable conditions you nearly always reap more than you sow.

If I sow 16 runner bean seeds at the end of April I will get hundreds of succulent beans in July, August and September. What a wonderful return this is on the few seeds I set. This is a very apt illustration of God's grace.

Paul stresses God's grace to the generous sower; to the church liberal with its money. He does so in three ways.

(1) The generous church will be given all it needs to excel in every good work.

And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things, at all times, having all you need, you will abound in every good work. v8.

This is a pretty comprehensive promise!

It is certainly true that a giving church will be given more opportunities for good works than a mean one. When I look at the handbook of the Grace Baptist Churches in East Anglia I am sure that it is the generous churches that run the most activities. Cauldwell Hall Road Baptist Church in Ipswich, for example, hasn't a huge membership but is able to organise a women's fellowship, three youth groups, a Sunday school, a mothers and toddlers group, a friends and neighbours group, a men's fellowship, an older friends fellowship and a divorce care group.

(2) God will increase the resources of a generous church.

Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. v10.

Paul reminds us that it is God who put the system in place that farmers exploit. God designed plants to bear seeds and it is he who ensures that when seeds are sown the resultant plants produce a surplus of seed that can be used as food.

So if money is like seed Paul promises any church that gives generously to the Lord's work will neither be short of money and will always have a surplus to invest in God pleasing and honouring causes. That is a very bold thing to assert!

Does it happen? It is hard for me say because of my limited experience. I have been a member of the same small church for 50 years. It is the only one I really know. So I find it difficult to assess the truth of Paul's assertion. However, I know that there are generous churches - and they tend to stay generous.

(3) A generous church will itself be enriched in many ways and be continually looking for fresh opportunities for giving.

You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion. v11.

My brother Paul was the pastor of an inner city church in London. The majority of people who attended the fellowship were not very wealthy but Courland Grove was a giving church. Paul's wife was very hospitable and kept open house, a 'drop in' was organised once a week to provide the elderly and poor with a meal, a free Christmas lunch was cooked, bags of groceries were distributed, second hand clothing and furniture was made available very cheaply, the old people were taken on holiday, the young people to camp and the mentally ill were helped with their problems. As time progressed and people found out about the work being done at Courland Grove other churches and individuals sent groceries, household appliances and money. So actually my brother, the pastor, discovered the truth of Paul's promise: You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion.

I think we need to be careful when applying Paul's words to individuals instead of churches. Advocates of the 'Health and Welfare Gospel' use Paul's teaching to raise money. They tell there supporters: "Give to us - and God will make you rich." This teaching is not what the apostle intended. He was primarily addressing churches and not individuals. It is one thing to give generously in the hope that your church will be blessed and quite another thing to give in the hope that you will prosper. I enjoyed the following piece discovered on SermonCentral.com:

Ray Stedman shared the true story of a man who lived in Houston that received a letter from a large international Christian radio broadcaster asking for financial support.

They sent out a letter - the kind that is double-spaced, every sentence is a paragraph, and they underline parts of it, etc…

The appeal of the letter was that God cannot be out-given; that if you give to God, he will give back to you. They announced that they needed a certain tremendous sum of money to maintain their broadcast. They had figured the number of their listening audience and they said in the letter that, if every person who heard their broadcasts would send in $76, this need would be met. Furthermore, they would guarantee, on the principle that God cannot be out-given, that he would find a way to give that $76 back three times over.

This was, therefore, the appeal of the letter: Send us the $76 and God will give it back to you; just watch how he does it.

Well, this man in Houston said he wrote a letter back which said, "Sir, I believe what you have written; I believe it is true that God cannot be out-given; and I believe you have a tremendous need for funds. But I would like to suggest that you send me the $76 and God will give it back to you three times over. You can get rid of your debt a lot faster that way."

I’m told that they took him off their mailing list.

Paul's words may apply to individual Christians who give themselves to a great cause and who pour all their resources into it. They may well attract supporters who give more and more to the cause allowing it to achieve greater and greater things for God. It was by this means that Methodism grew, the Salvation Army developed and the Hospice Movement took off.

(E) Hopefully.

Generous Christians can be hopeful of results. Paul mentions three good consequences of generous, willing and confident giving:

(1) Thanksgiving to God.

The service that you perform is not only supplying the needs of God's people but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God.

It is uplifting to access the Gideon's website and listen to testimonies of people who were converted through reading one of the Bibles distributed by that organisation. Almost to a man the Christian converts thank God for the work of the Gideons.

It is wonderful when people thank GOD for the generosity of one of his churches. My brother Paul and I went into a Bexhill cafe in Sussex for lunch one lovely, sunny September day after an exhilarating walk. A rather sad group of old people were gathered in the cafe for meagre meals of poached egg on toast and Welsh rarebit. They were the remnant of a church luncheon group that had been disbandoned by a new pastor with charismatic tendencies but precious little charity. One elderly lady said that the services got so wild and disorganised that she no longer felt comfortable worshipping in her church. So she left and was picked up by a kind Christian couple and taken to another fellowship in Bexhill. The lady said she had made so many friends in her new church that she had more friends in old age than she had in youth. So there we have two churches - one that proved a huge disappointment to its elderly members and another for which one old saint gave God thanks.

(2) Praise to God.

Because of the service by which you have proved yourselves, men will praise God for the obedience that accompanies your confession of the gospel of Christ, and for your generosity in sharing with them and with everyone else. v13.

There are churches in the West that support a great variety of charitable work in poorer countries of the world; plastic surgery, help for AIDs victims, provision for the old or the handicapped or orphans, provision of hospital equipment, tools and expertise, help with church building projects and so on.

I am sure an African congregation that moves into a new church whose roof has been paid for by generous churches in Britain will praise God for the willingness of richer Christians to share with them.

(3) Prayers.

And in their prayers for you their hearts will go out to you, because of the surpassing grace God has given you. v14.

Poorer churches can make a great gift to richer ones - they can pray for those who have been generous to them. We all need the prayers of others - none more so than rich congregations because as Jesus so often pointed out there is a grave danger in being wealthy.

(F) Conclusion.

Paul ends with just a few words that should motivate all our giving: Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift.

Christian's are in receipt of God's greatest, most generous gift - the gift of salvation through Jesus Christ his son. We SHOULD be a generous people! See exposition on 2Cor9v15.

ANY COMMENTS FOR JOHN REED: E-mail jfmreed@talktalk.net

INDEX NEXT