Christmas 2021 T’is the Season to be Generous

Sermon – T’is the Season to be “GENEROUS”
Impact Church London
Dec. 19th, 2021 

Recap: T’is the Season to be “Joyful”  

Luke 2:10-11
Then the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. 11 For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. 

Glad tidings of great joy – for all people. The incarnation, is just as much apart of the Good News as the Easter Story.

Sermon: T’is the Season to be “GENEROUS”

Generosity is:

1. An Action 
2. An Attitude 
3. All Together 

1. An Action 

John 3:16-17
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

For God so loved that he GAVE! His love was demonstrated by his overwhelming generosity in giving his Son who would then GIVE his life. 

Mark 10:45
For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.

Christmas is a season of generosity. But like all new covenant talks on attributes and acts, we have to see that our generosity is connected to his generosity at work in us. God’s love will move us to give.

Philippians 2:12-13
“…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling;  for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.”

What is God working in us to to give? We can give our time, treasure (money), talents, of ourselves. 

A great picture of what it looks like to have God involved in our financial affairs… The story of the poor widow of one of the old Hebrew prophets in 2 Kings 4:1-7. 

Taken from: “Welcome Home:Discover the Place Where You Belong”

“A certain widow owed money that she could not repay. In order to recover his losses, her creditor was going to come and take her two sons, making them slaves who would in turn work off the debt. Naturally, the widow was horrified at the thought of losing her sons and so rushed to the prophet Elisha and asked him to intervene on her behalf. 

Instead of telling the lady that he would cover her debt for her, or even that he would try to ask the creditor to be merciful and forgive the debt, he instead asks her, “…Tell me, what do you have in the house” (2 Kings 4:2 NLT)? She responds by letting him know that she has nothing, only a small flask of oil. 

What the widow didn’t know was that what she had was no ordinary oil. She had the kind of oil that her deceased husband, who was also a prophet, would have used for anointing. In the Bible this oil is highly symbolic. This anointing oil is often a symbol in the Old Testament for the reality of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit that we now have in full after Jesus came and opened the door to this relationship. The prophet knew all of this and he knew what God could do when someone had faith in his loving care and provision. 

“And Elisha said, “Borrow as many empty jars as you can from your friends and neighbours. Then go into your house with your sons and shut the door behind you. Pour olive oil from your flask into the jars, setting each one aside when it is filled.” 

So she did as she was told. Her sons kept bringing jars to her, and she filled one after another. Soon every container was full to the brim! 

‘Bring me another jar,” she said to one of her sons.’

‘There aren’t any more!’ he told her. And then the olive oil stopped flowing. 

When she told the man of God what had happened, he said to her, ‘Now sell the olive oil and pay your debts, and you and your sons can live on what is left over’”    (2 Kings 4:3-7 NLT). 

God doesn’t send us a prophet, he sets us his Son. And we hear Jesus tell us:

Luke 6:38
“Give, and you will receive. Your gift will return to you in full—pressed down, shaken together to make room for more, running over, and poured into your lap. The amount you give will determine the amount you get back.”

The jars God has given us are the needs of the people around us, and the local church. 

Proverbs 3:9-10
“Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the firstfruits of all your crops; then your barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will brim over with new wine”

The local church is that place where our hearts are connected, that place where God is active and through whom he is advancing his purposes. In this way we become partners with God in his ministry in a very tangible, relational, and practical way.

The benefits of partnering our generosity with God’s house are many, and they are not dependent upon the circumstances of the world around us. Inflation, joblessness, disability, hard times. God’s economic system works all the time. 

Genesis 26:1, 12-13
“And there was a famine in the land… Then Isaac sowed in that land, and reaped in the same year a hundredfold; and the Lord blessed him. The man began to prosper, and continued prospering until he became very prosperous…”

Let’s engage the Action of generosity, believing God that as we do, his plans for blessings are being activated in our lives. 

2. An Attitude

Generosity is an action, but it’s also an attitude that describes how and why we perform the act of generosity.

2 Corinthians 9:7
So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity; for God loves a cheerful giver.

Galatians 4:15
“…For I bear you witness that, if possible, you would have plucked out your own eyes and given them to me.

There is an attitude, a cheerful willingness to give, to share, to help that motivates us to follow through in acts of generosity. 

2 Corinthians 8:10-11
“And in this I give advice: It is to your advantage not only to be doing what you began and were desiring to do a year ago; 11 but now you also must complete the doing of it; that as there was a readiness to desire it, so there also may be a completion out of what you have.”

But there is also another type of generous attitude…

John 3:16-17
“For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.

He gave, but his generous attitude extended beyond simply pointing out what is wrong with us, condemning us for it, but saw us at our worst as still worth saving. 

Brene Brown in “Dare to Lead” she talks about generosity as being when you:“extend the most generous interpretation possible to the intentions, words, and actions of others” (p. 226).

“…an assumption of positive intent relies on the core belief that people are doing the best they can with what they’ve got, versus that people are lazy, disengaged, and maybe even trying to &8$#  us off on purpose.” (Dare to Lead page 214) 

We deliberately on purpose, no matter how much it hurts now or has hurt in the past, we decide that we will be generous in our interpretations of the intentions, actions and attitudes of others. 

The upside to doing that: If you assume people are doing the best they can, you can then deal with them as real people. You can set boundaries around behaviours,  and not shame and blame them as people.

Let’s imagine a world where we can all be generous in our attitudes, where acts of kindness come from kind hearts, and where we can be generous in our attitude and assessment towards all this season. 

3. Something we can do All Together! 

Macedonian church that Paul mentions in Corinthians in a great example of this. 

2 Corinthians 8:1-9 (MSG)
1-4 Now, friends, I want to report on the surprising and generous ways in which God is working in the churches in Macedonia province. Fierce troubles came down on the people of those churches, pushing them to the very limit. The trial exposed their true colors: They were incredibly happy, though desperately poor. The pressure triggered something totally unexpected: an outpouring of pure and generous gifts. I was there and saw it for myself. They gave offerings of whatever they could—far more than they could afford!—pleading for the privilege of helping out in the relief of poor Christians.

5-7 This was totally spontaneous, entirely their own idea, and caught us completely off guard. What explains it was that they had first given themselves unreservedly to God and to us. The other giving simply flowed out of the purposes of God working in their lives. That’s what prompted us to ask Titus to bring the relief offering to your attention, so that what was so well begun could be finished up. You do so well in so many things—you trust God, you’re articulate, you’re insightful, you’re passionate, you love us—now, do your best in this, too.

8-9 I’m not trying to order you around against your will. But by bringing in the Macedonians’ enthusiasm as a stimulus to your love, I am hoping to bring the best out of you. You are familiar with the generosity of our Master, Jesus Christ. Rich as he was, he gave it all away for us—in one stroke he became poor and we became rich.

Together, we can do so much more than on our own!

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