Learn to live with less, and be generous to others. God will Bless your living and your life. Be like Jesus; Don’t just look down the ladder, Climb down! Dr. Roger Barrier #preachitteachit#casaschurch#money#finances#generosity
Holly Jolly Generosity
CLIMBING DOWN THE LADDER
2 CORINTHIANS 8:1-15
R6-1786
Turn Bibles to 2 Corinthians 8.
USA Today: Now this downturn really hurts. Families that cut a little last year are cutting a lot more this year.
The financial pain Americans are experiencing cuts a lot deeper today than it did just a year ago. Back then, six readers spoke with USA TODAY about small cuts their families were making to help make ends meet. Today, that has required much bigger life changes from almost all of them.
SLIDE #: Then:Jason Jepson of Huntington Beach, Calif., stopped buying PowerBars at his health club.
Now: He’s moved from a $1,200 apartment to a $700 room in a house.
SLIDE #:Then: Angela Harris of Richmond, Va., stopped going to Starbucks for her daily caffeine fix.
Now: Her husband has transferred hundreds of miles away to keep his job.
SLIDE #:Then: Deshaun Davis of Lewisville, Texas, cut back on spa treatments at Nordstrom.
Now: She recently took a second job and has downsized from a four-bedroom, three-bath home to a three-bedroom, two-bath one. “I never saved a thing before,” Davis says. “But now I think about every dime I spend.”
SLIDE #: CORINTHIANS 8:1: And now, brothers, we want you to know about the grace that God has given the Macedonian churches.
SLIDE #: 2 CORINTHIANS 8:2-4: Out of the most severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity.
Under pressure…” A great way to describe our culture right now, under pressure, stressed, anxious, fearful. All you have to do is mention the word “economy,” and people start getting stressed, getting jittery. Some of you are spilling your coffee right now. Though some of the news is getting slightly more positive, most of the news about money over these last weeks and months has been brutal. They say we’ve likely averted a complete meltdown of the global economy, but we are still in the too early to tell phase on how it is going to shake out. All this produces incredible pressure and anxiety. Will I lose my job? I was already in trouble financially, now how am I going to be able to dig out of that trouble? Will I have enough to retire? What is going to happen? Do you feel stressed enough yet? Glad you came to church yet? Anybody want a valium? Because today we are going to hear Jesus say something very radical. 2000 years ago in a culture facing far worse economic times than we are seeing today, in a time of great fear and anxiety, Jesus said then the same thing he’d say if he were here today. He is going to say, “Stop it. Stop being afraid. Do not worry, at least not about all this. Money is the wrong thing to be worried about.
In tough economic times Jesus has a lot to say about faith, trust, God’s care.
Glenn talked about these things last Sunday. How to find peace and faith in an economically struggling culture.
Says something else that might really surprise you.
SLIDE #: Now, more than any time Give to those less fortunate.
SLIDE #: CORINTHIANS 8:1: And now, brothers, we want you to know about the grace that God has given the Macedonian churches.
SLIDE #: 2 CORINTHIANS 8:2-4: Out of the most severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity. 3 For I testify that they gave as much as they were able, and even beyond their ability. Entirely on their own, 4 they urgently pleaded with us for the privilege of sharing in this service to the saints.
Context
SLIDE #: [Maps of Macedonia to Corinth to Jerusalem.] Paul picks up an agenda item that had been introduced almost a year before – the offering for the impoverished Christians in Jerusalem in 1 Corinthians 16:1-4.
The members of the mother church in Jerusalem were suffering from extreme poverty. The poverty could have come from several sources: a drought, or persecution by their employers because of their faith, or both.
(Point on map to who is giving to whom and who is not.
THREE THINGS I WANT TO KNOW:
SLIDE #: [Julie, put all three points on one slide if possible] 1. WHY DID THE MACEDONIANS GIVE SO MUCH?
2. WHY DID THE CORINTHIANS GIVE SO LITTLE?
SLIDE #: 3. IN LIGHT OF TOUGH ECONOMIC TIMES, WHAT WOULD GOD HAVE ME TO DO?
DRAW SLIDE #: [Ladder pix with title and with room to write] THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC LADDER.
Nine Strata
9 $1M+
8 $500K+
7 $100K
6
5
4 70K
3
2 $34K Poverty line
1 $12K
Who is on the Ladder and where are they?
How they congregate: Local bars
Cowboys stadium
Sky boxes
Associate with one up and two down.
Trust: no yes no
[Ladder pix with title and with room to write] Over time, we all tend to move up the ladder.
Raises
Building Net worth
Credit cards (illusion)
Better empolyees
•The ladder differs from culture to culture. If you own a car in Africa you may be rich.
But you can be a single mom on minimum wage with two children and no child support in America and drive an old clunker in constant need of repair to get to work, and no one could call you rich.
We tend to look up the ladder and compare ourselves with those above. We don’t look down the ladder very often. This is why in America we seldom consider ourselves to be rich. Someone is always higher up the ladder. “I’m not rich!.” And we look up the ladder and say, “He’s rich.” If only we would look down the ladder and see how many are below us. We would see how rich we really are. But it is hard to look down the ladder.
The average American 5-year-old has 250 toys. They’ve only been alive about 250 weeks, which means that the average 5 year old has grown up getting one new toy a week for his or her whole life.
And we wonder why as they get older they never seem to appreciate what they have but always want more? We’ve trained them well! We are a culture consumed with more. We have pushed our children up an artificial ladder.
DRAW SLIDE #: Once we have climbed up the ladder, it is almost impossible to climb back down.
I can climb down the ladder. I once was down there. Key word is once was. Easy to go up. Hard to climb down.
Made $13K per year.
Julie hated Fridays when I paid bills.
Bronwyn takes me downtown with $25.
SLIDE #: What Rich People Have … That You Don’t Want by Richard Watts
Have you ever thought about what happens as you climb up the ladder?
Rich people—it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.
Richard Watts has. He even wrote a book about it.
Soap-Opera Family Drama
“The Money-Proof Marriage”
Children of Entitlement”
“Under the Thumbs of Rich In-Laws”
“Unrelenting Competition”
“Inevitable Alienation”
“Artificial Intelligence”
Myopic Vision”
“Leading a Double Life”
I’d Rather Not Be Rich
“The Myth of Midas” everything turns to gold. Baby, wife water, cup, shirt,
SLIDE #: 1 Timothy 1:9-10: People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction.
So maybe climbing up the ladder is not so wonderful after all.
SLIDE #: Ecclesiastes 5:12: The sleep of a laborer is sweet, whether he eats little or much, but the abundance of a rich man permits him no sleep.
DRAW SLIDE #: Today, some falling off the ladder. Really hard.
SLIDE #: [with title and space for writing below the title] #: WHY DID THE MACEDONIANS GIVE SO MUCH?
SLIDE #: CORINTHIANS 8:1-4: And now, brothers, we want you to know about the grace that God has given the Macedonian churches. Out of the most severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity.
SLIDE #: 2 CORINTHIANS 8:5. And they did not do as we expected, BUT THEY GAVE THEMSELVES FIRST TO THE LORD and then to us in keeping with God’s will.
Why? They Experienced The Grace Of Giving As They Gave Themselves To The Lord.
What might giving yourself to the Lord,” look like?
Matthew 6:24-34; Luke 12:32-34
No one 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.
Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about
your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more
important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store
away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more
valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? And why
do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow? They do not labor or
spin. Yet I tell you not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If
that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is hear today and tomorrow is
thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not
worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or “What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’
We know we have given ourselves to the Lord when we trust our care to Him. This means that we have trusted our very lives to him.
We get worried about the economy and our
money because we realize in times like this how out of control of the whole thing we
really are. But Jesus is God and he is in complete control, and he is telling us not to
worry. So, do you feel worry right now? Turn it off. Stop it. Quit worrying, and ask him
to replace that worry with faith, so that you can focus on what is really important.
Worry and fear makes us irrational, and right now there is a lot of irrational fear going
around. For Christians, that is really dangerous, because that fear can keep us from living
the life we’ve been sent here to live. It can easily keep us hugging the pole, refusing to
give our lives away for what matters, because we are afraid to fall.
It’s like the fear many people have of sharks in the ocean. Thousands of people never
experience the ocean because they are afraid that the minute they do, Jaws is going to
come and chomp on them for his lunch. But the reality is the chances of you being
attacked by a shark are incredibly small. Over the last 420 years, the deaths by shark
attack average about to about 1 a year worldwide. In this country, in the last 300 years,
only 40 people have been killed by sharks. Death by shark attack is hardly worth
worrying about, but next time you go to the beach, let me give you something bigger to
worry about. Coconuts. Yes, the dreaded coconut. Coconuts dropping from trees kill
about 150 people each year, far more dangerous than sharks. So, next time you go to the
beach, beware of coconuts…that’s worth worrying about.
Jesus is saying with much more significant consequences: Don’t worry about money and
material things. Instead, be consumed by something far more significant than that. The
truth is, there is something far worse than losing every material thing you have. The
worst thing that could happen is that you and I would be so consumed with money and
fear that we hang on the pole and never fully give ourselves to God’s kingdom. Jesus
SLIDE #: THEY EXPERIENCED THE GRACE OF GIVING AS THEY WATCHED JESUS CLIMB DOWN THE LADDER.
2 CORINTHIANS 8:9: For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.
Think of the richness of Christ: The whole universe was His. He had only to speak one word and a new world would be created. He could put His finger on every star and say, “Mine!”
Jesus Christ was rich in honor and love. Think of the multitude of heavenly hosts that bowed before him in praise and adoration. Isaiah saw the Lord sitting upon the throne high and lifted up, and the cherubim and seraphim in worship and adoration around Him.
Yet he became poor. What amazement there was in heaven when the announcement was made that He was about to depart. Can you see Him stripping Himself of His glory? Philippians 2 “kenosis” or emptying Himself of His glory.
Can you see how the angels followed Him as far as they could into outer space, and even into the sky around us, crying, “Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, good will to men”?
See Him in a dirty stable.
See Jesus, who dug the ocean beds, saying to a woman, “Give me to drink.”
He saw the foxes and the birds going back to their nests and resting-places, and He had to say, “Foxes have holes, bird have nests; but, I have nowhere to lay My head.”
Once He has been honored by the “Hallelujahs!” of heaven, and all the courts of glory had shouted His praise. Now He is spat upon, struck, and cursed.
He was put upon a cross to bleed and die;
SLIDE #: PHILIPPIANS 2:5-11: “Your attitude should be the same as Christ Jesus . . .”
SLIDE #: PHILIPPIANS 9: Therefore God exalted Him to the highest place, and gave Him the name above every name.
Our DOWN and UP:
SLIDE #: Luke 12:33-34: “Sell your possessions and give to the poor; provide purses for yourselves which won’t wear out, a treasure in heaven.”
To Cornelius: Acts 10:4: “The angel answered, your prayers and your gifts to the poor have come up as a memorial offering before God.”
This is why the Macedonians gave so much.
DRAW SLIDE #: They looked down the ladder at Jesus and they saw the people farther down the ladder.
SLIDE #: WHY DID THE CORINTHIANS GIVE SO LITTLE?
Paul compared them with others and they weren’t doing so well.
SLIDE #: 2 CORINTHIANS 8:10-11: And here is my advice about what is best for you in this matter: Last year you were the first not only to give but also to have the desire to do so. 11 Now finish the work, so that your eager willingness to do it may be matched by your completion of it, according to your means.
There is a great difference between promise and performance. The Corinthians boasted a year before that they would share in the collection, but they did not keep their promise.
SLIDE #: [with title and space for writing below the title] #: WHY DID THE CORINTHIANS GIVE SO LITTLE?
Struggled to give themselves to the Lord.
Returned to fear, (probably not afraid, they had plenty of money
Will we have enough?
Greed and materialism? Yes.
The result:
They stopped looking down the ladder. They had gone up the ladder and forgotten what it was like at the bottom of the ladder.
DRAW SLIDE #: It is not those who are most wealthy and who are most generous.
People at the bottom of the ladder tend to give much more generously than people at the top.
“It is the poor who help the poor,” because they know what poverty is like.
Most generous givers are in the $10,000 to $20,000 bracket – 18% to charity
Over $100,000 bracket give less than 1.5 % to charity.
Why did the Corinthians give so little?
SLIDE #: IN TOUGH ECONOMIC TIMES, WHAT WOULD JESUS HAVE ME TO DO?
1. LOOK DOWN THE LADDER AND GIVE ACCORDINGLY.
Man last week met me at the blue tent: “I live high on the ladder. I don’t know many people down the ladder anymore. I want to help some one. You know who is down the ladder.” Handed me eight $100 bills.
Is that an encouragement or what? Better if he were to climb down the ladder.
I REMEMBER ROBERT SIMPSON. Casas People looked down the Ladder.
I talked to Robert this week. He did not have a picture available. But this one can easily represent him. Robert is in his late 40s-early 50s. Moved to Tucson from Louisville, KY this summer. Had diabetes for several years; but when he arrived diabetes went out of control. He has not been able to work. Was falling through the cracks. Met some Casas folks. We began to minister to him and his family. This week his foot was amputated.
I called him Thursday night to check on him. “Been to a lot of churches: Casas really has heart. Will you thank your congregation this Sunday for all they have done for me? Tell them thanks.”
What if you don’t have very much at all? What if you are at the bottom of the Ladder?
You are a single mom; or husband is not a Xn and does not want you to give to the Lord?
SLIDE #: 2 CORINTHIANS 8:12: For if the willingness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what he does not have.
God sees the “heart gift” and not the “hand gift”. If the heart wanted to give more, but was unable to do so, God sees it and records it accordingly.
SLIDE #: [Christmas tree with packages being opened]. To practice looking down the ladder, generosity in touch time, I’m going to encourage you to consider starting living differently by doing Christmas this year differently. Typically Christmas is the time where we amp up our consumerism even more, buying a bunch of things for each other to celebrate Jesus’ birthday. Often we even say, “Oh, I hate buying for him or her. They are so hard to buy for.”
Why? Because they already have everything they need, and if they need something they just get it. So why are we buying something then?
Sit with family and decide how much to spend on each.
Don’t spend it all on self: give to someone in need?
If you have a 5 year old kid or an 8 year old, don’t give them this little piece of paper that says, “I gave your Christmas gift money away this year to the poor. Merry Christmas.” Don’t do that to kids, but why not consider limiting it considerably. Most of our kids are not destitute.
You can even include them in the conversation. Let them decide how much to enjoy themselves and how much to give. For your friends our spouse, get creative and spend less so that you can give more. Every Christmas we take an out-of-control consumer culture and then drink consumerism red bull, get all hyped up in our spending, then we have this crash in January. Let’s do this Christmas differently.
At the Jewish Feast of Purim there is a regulation which says that, however poor a man is, he must find someone poorer than himself and give him a gift.
Make this Christmas like the Feast of Purim: Find someone who is less fortunate and help them. Be like Jesus: climb down the ladder.
Hard, to give down the ladder: because we don’t know many who are down the ladder.
Start with some around you. Travel so much, need housekeeper. (up the ladder)
House keeper has less than we do.
Looked down the ladder and gave her money to buy Christmas for her children.
SLIDE #: 3. BE LIKE JESUS: DON’T JUST LOOK DOWN THE LADDER, CLIMB DOWN.
Eric and Joyce Small – First Steps Ministry at Casas: Climb down the ladder spiritually. Tucson Saturday Night – Evangelize Saturday on 4th street. Go down to park at 22nd and 6th where homeless people hang out and take food and visit with them and share the gospel.
Rancho Feliz: Aqua Pieta Orphanage – John and Karin Jenning’s Sunday School class
Playhouse and playground; Chapel built by Casas and funded by a N. Carolina church; new basketball court with Casas members and orphanage kids.
Senior Adult Care Groups Adopt a Single Mom Ministry headed by Bill and Dot Hutchison – mentoring, benevolence needs, grandparent the children.