If you would, turn in your Bibles to 2 Corinthians chapter 8. And we'll begin at verse 16 on through the first part of chapter 9. 2 Corinthians 8, 16 through the first part of chapter 9. And following the reading of scripture, we'll sing together the Gloria Patri. So please stand together for the reading of God's holy word. I thank God who put into the heart of Titus the same concern I have for you. For Titus not only welcomed our appeal, but he is coming to you with much enthusiasm and on his own initiative. We are sending along with him the brother who is praised by all the churches for his service to the gospel. What is more, he was chosen by the churches to accompany us as we carry the offering, which we administer in order to honor the Lord himself, and to show our eagerness to help. We want to avoid any criticism of the way we administer this liberal gift, for we are taking pains to do what is right, not only in the eyes of the Lord, but also in the eyes of men. In addition, we are sending with them our brother, who often proved to us in many ways that he is zealous, and now even more so because of his great confidence in you. As for Titus, he is my partner and fellow worker among you. As for our brothers, they are representatives of the churches and an honor to Christ. Therefore, show these men the proof of your love and the reason for our pride in you so that the churches can see it. There is no need for me to write to you about the service of the saints, for I know your eagerness to help, and I have been boasting about it to the Macedonians, telling them that since last year you and Achaia were ready to give, and your enthusiasm has stirred most of them to action. But I am sending the brothers in order that our boasting about you in this manner should not prove hollow, but that you may be ready as I have said you would be. For if any Macedonians come with me and find you unprepared, we, not to say anything about you, would be ashamed of having been so confident. So I thought it necessary to urge the brothers to visit you in advance and finish the arrangements for the generous gift you had promised. Then it will be ready as a generous gift, not as one grudgingly given. Amen. The sermon today is going to be pretty mundane, dare I say, even boring. So this is a good Sunday. If you're going to take a nap, go ahead. And I will not hold it against you. Because the bulk of the passage that we read today, as you can see, is all about the management of this gift. But that doesn't mean it's not worthy for us to think about, and there are important cautions and lessons we should learn from it. The concept of faithful, generous giving is throughout scripture, and as we've seen it in the early part of this particular chapter, the roots of graceful giving is the fact that it is a grace and it grows out of our appreciation of grace. Verse 9, you know, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, although he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor so that you, through his poverty, might become rich. So out of that incredible grace of the Lord, then we give. We give generously, lovingly, enthusiastically, to the Lord as we're able. We give to the Lord, but it's motivated out of that root of grace. And what Paul is doing in this is helping us to remember it's very important how we handle the funds that the church collects. It would have a secondary application, it's very important how you manage your own finances and how you use your funds, but the church needs to Honor the Lord, and Paul's going to lay out a very careful practice or steps that he's going to take that this gift is administered well to counter the criticism that he's been getting. And I want to take you to a few of the criticisms. There have been a lot of criticisms in the Corinthians about Paul regarding money. Turn back to 2 Corinthians 2.17. And we'll just look at a few of these before and after our passage. In 2 Corinthians 2, 17, he says, unlike so many, we do not peddle the word of God for profit. On the contrary, in Christ we speak before God with sincerity like men sent from God. So he'd been criticized for just preaching for the money. And here he's saying, no, no, I'm not doing that. Turn forward to 2 Corinthians 7, verse 2. 2 Corinthians 7 verse 2, where he says, make room for us in your hearts. We have wronged no one. We have corrupted no one. We have exploited no one. See, his critics were saying he was just in it for the money. He was exploiting them. And then we jump ahead of where we are to 2 Corinthians 11 verse 7. where he says, 2 Corinthians 11, 7, was it a sin for me to lower myself in order to elevate you by preaching the gospel of God to you free of charge? I robbed other churches by receiving support from them so as to serve you. Now you can see the sarcasm just dripping from those comments. But then he goes on, and when I was with you and needed something, I was not a burden to anyone, for the brothers who came from Macedonia supplied what I needed. I have kept myself from being a burden to you in any way and will continue to do so." So contrary to the criticism, he was honorable. And then just one other passage in 2 Corinthians 12 verse 14, he says, now I'm ready to visit you for the third time and I will not be a burden to you because what I want is not your possessions but you. After all, children should not have to save up for their parents, but parents for their children. So I will very gladly spend for you everything I have and expend myself as well. If I love you more, will you love me less? Be that as it may, I have not been a burden to you. Yet, here's sarcasm again, yet crafty fellow that I am, I caught you by trickery. Did I exploit you through any of the men I sent you? I urged Titus to go to you, and I sent our brother with him. Titus did not exploit you, did he? Did we not act in the same spirit and follow the same course?" And so Paul is, in this passage that we're looking at today, trying to lay out a plan for distribution of this particular offering in a way that would uphold his own integrity and counter some of the criticism. And the fact of the matter is we know that the church has often failed in this. There is rightly a lot of criticism to certain ministries in the way they handle their money. And I probably shouldn't go into telling a joke, but I want to tell you a joke. You know the different three men went into a bar type stories. Well, an older man with a lot of money called together three of his confidants, his doctor, his lawyer, and his minister. And he said to them, I know you can't take it with you, at least that's what they say, but I'm going to try. So here's an envelope with $100,000 in each. And as they're about to close the casket, be sure to pitch it in. And they said, fine, we'll do that. And they did just exactly what he had asked them to do. They threw the envelopes in. The casket was closed. And they got in the car and were heading home. And the doctor was having a bit of guilt. And he said, I'm working on this clinic for the indigent. And so I took $50,000 and used it for that and only put 50 in. He says, well, I feel a little guilty, too, because I'm working on this legal defense fund and for people that need help. And so I took $75,000 and put in $25,000. And the minister looked at them and shook his head and said, I am totally ashamed of you. I put in a check for the full amount. And we laugh, and we ought to laugh, but we know that Unfortunately, the reputation of the church has taken a hit. We know of ministries where the leaders of those ministries are just living well and taking money and urging even widows to give their last dime, saying God's going to bless them. In fact, why in the world would we ever even need an organization called the Evangelical Council on Financial Accountability? Why is that even necessary? Why should it exist? But we know why it exists, because the unscrupulous are in every arena of life. And there have been many that have misused money. And so managing the money in the church, personally, is serious business. And so when Paul comes to having to manage this generous offering that the Corinthians are collecting to add to what the Macedonians have collected to be taken to the Saints in Jerusalem who are going through a famine, he sets up a method here that's going to guard the reputation of the church and do it in an effective way. And that's really what this is primarily about. And the plan that he puts in place is he's going to distance himself from the money. He's not going to lay any hands on any of it. And he's going to get three people to come to Corinth to collect the funds and then he may go with them as they take it to Jerusalem. But those three men are going to be the ones responsible. And the three that as we read that are responsible, one we know, he mentions Titus. Titus, God has put into his heart to have the same concern. for the Corinthians, as Paul does, that probably wasn't Titus' opinion initially. Remember, he was first sent to Corinth to check on the Corinthians, and how would you feel like going to a place where everybody, or not everybody, where many people hated the guy that was sending you, and yet he went there and was refreshed by the people, and so he, God put into his heart a great enthusiasm for the people, happy to be of help to them, and so Paul sends Titus, he's one of the three who's going to collect this offering to take it to Jerusalem. The second person is anonymous, we don't know, but he's apparently well known. In verse 18, I'm sending along with him the brother who is praised by all the churches for his service to the gospel. So this is somebody that is well known Throughout Achaia and Macedonia, we don't know who he is. There's lots of speculation in the early church that this was Luke. In fact, one of the prayers collected in the prayer book is Almighty God who called Luke the physician whose praise is in the gospel, and then it continues, and it uses the same phrase from this verse. But not only was this man, this brother, well-known, well-respected for his work in the gospel, but he also had been elected by the churches to take the offering. It says that what is more, he was chosen by the churches to accompany us as we carry the offering so that this would honor the Lord and show our eagerness to help. So we have Titus, and we have this unknown brother who is well respected, who was actually elected by the churches, probably the churches of Macedonia, to be one of the carriers of this collection. And then we have a third brother brought up in verses 20 and 21. Or no, excuse me, in verses, and here I lost my place. There's a brother here that's zealous to help them. 22. In addition, we are sending with them our brother who has often proved to us in many ways that he is zealous, and now even more so because of his great confidence in you. So here's the third brother. We don't know who he is. He's full of zeal for them. So Paul is selecting these three men to be the bearers of these offerings. And the reason he's doing it, he spells out in verses 20 and 21, for we want to avoid any criticism of the way we administer this liberal gift. We are taking pains to do what is right, not only in the eyes of the Lord, but also in the eyes of men. So they want to be, he wants to be totally above board with regard to how this offering is carried. Our church tries to do the same thing. The offerings are collected, two men count them together, and then they're given to the treasurer, who's a third set of eyes on them. And it's good to be above board in every way with the way you handle the money of God's people. John Calvin, commenting on this section, says, there's nothing that so leaves a man open to sinister insinuation as the management of public funds. Thus, the higher the position we occupy, the greater our need to imitate carefully Paul's circumspection and modesty. And so he concludes the chapter with just encouraging the people to receive these men, that they're going to come and receive this offering, to demonstrate the proof of their love by bringing their offering to these people. The collection of our offerings and our gifts to the Lord is an evidence of our love for the Lord and our love for our fellow Christians. And so the encouragement that Paul is telling these Christians is, so receive these men, give them your offering as a demonstration of how you love the Lord and how you love your fellow believers. It will validate your faith. help obviously the impoverished church in Jerusalem and it'll bring glory to the Lord. Then the last little piece of his mechanism for how he's doing this is the first part of chapter 9 where he kind of gets in a subtle dig at the people as well but he says okay I'm gonna send these three men on ahead of me so that they can prepare, get this gift together, prepare this gift. He says, I don't really need to write you about this because you're eager to help and I've been boasting about your help and your enthusiasm has stirred you to action. So he commends them in many ways here. You want to help and I know you want to help. So I'm glad about that, but he says, but I'm sending the brothers anyway just so that my boasting about you won't be hollow. And he says, lest when they come, if they find you unprepared and the Macedonians with them, you would be ashamed. He's kind of giving them in a sort of a dig there. So don't let it be that I'll be ashamed when these men arrive. But their task, because Paul would come later, their task was to go to the Corinthians, gather up the offering, prepare the gift, make it ready to be sent on. And an application for you and for me in that is you and I can't just give off the cuff. Our giving needs to be handled well and our giving needs to be prepared. as in 1 Corinthians 16 when he talked about the offering. He talked about laying up something the first day of the week so that you'd prepare to participate. Don't just arrive in church and say, well, what do I have in my pocket? But think about your giving and your generosity and your love for the church as Paul sent these three men so that the gift would be one of a ready, generous gift and not one grudgingly given. Our, and he's going to go on to talk about that thought in the next section, our giving, and you love to give because you know the grace of the Lord and you have to think and plan for that. And out of delight and love and joy in the Lord, you give to him. And so Paul is encouraging us and kind of what we gain from from him in this is that he was concerned with integrity in the management of the funds of the church, and that's something you and I need to be concerned about. Your elders and deacons are concerned about that, to manage it well, to care for that gift that you give in a way that would honor the Lord and be honorable before men. Secondly, Paul's concern was not only for his own integrity and the way this was handled, but also for the souls of these dear people. When we read the story of Zacchaeus, and you remember the story, the little man who had to climb a tree to see Jesus. And Jesus came by and said, I'm going to stay in your house. And Jesus visits with him. And he comes to know the Lord. And as a demonstration of his knowing the Lord, He says, behold, here I give half my possessions to the poor. And if I've cheated anyone out of anything, I'll pay it back four times. And Jesus' response was, today salvation has come to this house. As we truly know the Lord and truly know his grace, we can't help but give. and give generously or give as we're able and give cheerfully and not grudgingly to the Lord. And so the encouragement for you and for me is for us who've received such wonderful grace, may we be givers with integrity and may we be givers who are willing and faithful and full of grace in our giving. Amen. Let us pray. Father in heaven, thank you so much for your love and faithfulness, we do thank you for the generosity of you toward us. Christ, in taking upon himself the form of a servant and humbling himself, we thank you, O Lord, for his poverty, that through that poverty we became rich, rich in grace, rich in love, rich in the blessings of you, our God Almighty. May you, O Father, help us as we think about our own possessions and our own monies that we would use them well, manage them rightly and appropriately, give willingly and joyfully to your work here on earth, that you would be glorified and the gospel would go forward. Father, we desire that Christ would be the one that would be honored in all ways, in our hearts and in our lives and our actions. We ask all of this in Jesus' name, amen.