Turn with me now in the Word of God once again to the 2nd Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians and this time at the beginning of the 8th chapter. 2nd Corinthians and the 8th chapter and reading there from verse 1 to verse 7. Moreover, brethren, we make known to you the grace of God bestowed on the churches of Macedonia, that in a great trial of affliction, the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded in the riches of their liberality. For I bear witness that according to their ability, yes, and beyond their ability, they were freely willing. imploring us with much urgency that we would receive the gift and the fellowship of the ministering to the saints. And not only as we had hoped, but they first gave themselves to the Lord, and then to us by the will of God. So we urged Titus that as he had begun, so he would also complete this grace in you as well. But as you abound in everything, in faith and speech and knowledge and all diligence and in your love for us, see that you abound in this grace also. Thus far, the Word of God. When you become a Communicant member of this church, you solemnly promise among many other things to, and I quote, give to the Lord's work as he shall prosper you. That's part of the fifth question in the covenant of Communicant membership of our denomination. And we call these gifts by use and want tithes and offerings. And that's what you see in the bulletin every week there right at the middle of the order of worship. The general rule of thumb has been, and I say general rule of thumb, it's not some kind of a law, the general rule of thumb has been that since folks in the Old Testament church were to give at least a tithe, i.e. one-tenth of their increase, we read about that in Deuteronomy 14, then Christians should give at least 10% of their income to the Lord's work. And that, at least, notion rests on Jesus' words in the Sermon on the Mount when he says, For I say to you that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 5 verse 20. Now that said, there are significant differences between Old Testament and New Testament patterns of giving. For a start, the Old Testament had multiple tithes. You got a whiff of that in Deuteronomy 14, where there is mention of a first tithe, a first ten percent, and then there is the mention of a second tithe, the second one being set aside every third year and dedicated particularly to the poor, although there's mention there of the Levites who did not have land to themselves, didn't have an inheritance like the other tribes. There is in another passage in the Old Testament yet another mention of a tithe which I don't think any commentators have managed to sort out as to whether it's the same as the first one, the annual 10%, or is a second tithe. So, at any rate, the state of things as far as the Old Testament tithes is concerned, that there seem to have been as many as two annual tithes and then the third year tithe. and that amounts to up to 23% of your income, which is probably something like, oh, being in certain strands, bands in the US tax system and above. Now, in the New Testament, well, in the Old Testament also, we ought to point out that the funding through the tithes of the Lord's people was, of course, to cover the expenses not only of the church, but the state. It was to cover the expenses of the theocratic state. And in the New Testament, of course, the theocratic state was pagan. It was the Romans and they did their own taxation. And in the New Testament, only the church is in view when the apostle speaks, as he does in 2 Corinthians 8, of giving to the Lord's work. In the church, the funding is always presented as an obligation of grace. from the heart, by a free conscience, and by a people giving out of love for the Lord who saves and provides his people with their life. We're often reminded in the Bible of the fact that God is the one who gives us our life and everything to do with it, and we're to seek To serve Him, therefore, is the one to whom we have this indebtedness that is infinite and eternal, in the sense that He is the one who has infinitely and eternally sent us a Savior to save us with the salvation we didn't deserve. James puts it beautifully in James 1, verse 17, every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights. with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning." So, what I want us to understand is that the biblical pattern for giving in the New Testament then is preeminently a grace, whereas it seems in a way to be a tax in the Old Testament. I don't think that's fair to the Old Testament to say God's people are taxed there because a figure is given. and now they're not. But it was grace also in the Old Testament. It was an obligation of grace. But in the New Testament, that element of the grace of giving is something that comes to the fore in a new way. And so, biblical giving, your giving, Christian friends, is to be fueled primarily by a voluntary impulse that arises from gratitude to the Lord who gave Himself to be the Savior of sinners such as you. And as we look at this more over the coming weeks in these passages in 2 Corinthians, what we will see again and again is a connection between Grace, the grace of God, grace given to us, grace in the heart, and generosity in the way in which we expend ourselves, not merely in financial terms, but in the whole of our life. This is true, of course, but you'll see a connection between grace and generosity, and that that is foundational to the apostles' appeal. What Paul is doing here is teaching the church to be grace-driven givers. Well, how does he start? He makes a start in the passage that we have read here in chapter 8, verses 1 through 7. And in the first two verses, he points out that we have an example to follow. He's speaking to the Corinthians here, something of a new experience for them, I think, to get serious about their giving. And so, he gives them an example from the church in Macedonia. Now, before we A look at that in detail, let me just remind you that there is a back story here. The apostle is aiming to collect, it's a special gift in this case, it's not the regular expenses of the church, but he aims to collect a monetary gift from the largely Gentile Christian churches in Greece for the relief of the largely Jewish Christians who are suffering from famine in Judea. And that is first mentioned in the first Corinthian epistle, some six months before or so, in 1 Corinthians 16, verses 1 and following. He mentions this project. And here, six months later, in 2 Corinthians 8 and 9, he's writing about the arrangements for this. And he also, by the way, wrote to the Romans after he had been in Corinth, and there he mentions, in Romans 15, his hopes of traveling to Jerusalem with this gift after it had been gathered together. Now, after he'd been in Jerusalem, and you know he was arrested there and sent in chains to Caesarea, he, on his way to Rome eventually, He says to Felix, the governor, he tells him about this trip, just mentions that this trip had happened and something of the circumstances. So that's the back story. This was a project of gathering relief funds and it took a long time to arrange and of course it took some care in gathering the funds and then in the transition, transmitting these funds to the church in Jerusalem for their help. Well, with that in mind we come to the Macedonian model. Paul's in Macedonia at this point And that would include the churches in Thessalonica, to which he writes the Thessalonian epistles. It includes the church in Philippi. It may even go as far south as the church in Berea, where you know they were famous in Acts 17 for checking out in the Bible, in the Old Testament Scriptures, to see whether the things that Paul had preached to them were true. So Paul is sharing then with the church in Corinth, which has come through some pretty serious trouble in the recent times, and since it was formed actually, he is sharing what he knows about the liberality, the generosity, the giving to the church in northern Greece. And this is to be an encouragement then to their own ongoing efforts in southern Greece where Corinth is sited. Now I would like you to notice here three things in these two verses. First of all, we're told about the source of our giving. Moreover, brethren, we make known to you the grace of God bestowed on the churches of Macedonia." Now, he is not here, when he uses the term grace of God, he is not here referring to, for example, the state of their souls or their piety as such. He is focusing upon their giving their liberality with funds in the end. People would have given in kind and like the saints of old that lived a long way from the temple, they would have taken these animals and sold them and given money to the elders in the churches ready for the, on the first day of the week was the day of the collection, every week, and ready for the apostle to come and take it to Jerusalem. What's the source of their interest and their practice of giving? It is the grace of God. The grace of God bestowed on the churches of Macedonia. Now, I'm afraid that we are so used to being hounded for money or being manipulated by worldly inducements to part with our money. It can be anything, you know, from, oh, if you send us such and such, we'll send you a free book, or we'll send you a pebble from the Jordan, or we'll send you a piece of cloth you can pray over, or some kind. I mean, it gets to the realm of superstition almost. We're used to hearing about that kind of thing in our whole world, and alas, also sometimes in the name of Christ in some churches. maybe even your name on a wall or your name on a brick in the floor of some entryway to a Christian institution. We're so used to this kind of way of doing things, of marketing, that the grace of God seems to be a long way away from the whole business. And alas, that can often be true in the church itself. What Paul is doing here is he's putting the emphasis right where it ought to be. Matthew Henry comments aptly on this, and he points out that the grace of God is, as he says, the root and fountain of all the good that is in us or done by us at any time. And you see, it's our carnality, our desire to be the center of ourselves, that perverts that and said, oh, it's not the grace of God, it's me that have done it. I've done this, I've done that, I've done the next thing. I once had the experience in a church of which I was a member of bumping into a, I shouldn't say bumping into, I say, I met a lady who was at the service and I hadn't seen her before and it turned out that she came once a year or something like that, came for the communion, And I said, oh, and she was a member actually, but never attended except on a communion. And as I got talking to her, she said, oh, yeah, I've been here a long time. And see, that pointed to various parts of the room, you know, and said, well, yes, I gave that in memory of my father, and I gave that, and I gave that, and I gave that. All the bric-a-brac around the room came from her. Now I'm sure that it was with a love for her departed relatives and even for the church that she was kind in that way to give things. But you see, it ceases to be the grace of God, doesn't it? You will often go to churches and you'll see names in the stained glass window. The grace of God. The grace of God. The grace of God. This is what Paul is saying. Let's be aware of our tendency to want to be remembered and to translate it into a whole pattern of giving in the church or in the world. Let the world build their buildings and name their beneficence after themselves. But let us keep our focus solely on Christ, solely on the grace of God in the gospel. That's the root and fountain. And you see, if we're not there in our hearts, so all of grace in Christ, then what we do will not be as good as we think it is. Remember that Scripture tells us that whatsoever is not from faith is sin. Paul wants to put them straight from the beginning. And I want you to notice also here that this grace, he says, is bestowed Now, that's a perfect tense in the Greek, and that means it's a fact. It's an accomplishment of God in the life of the people. It is now the character of the life of the people of God in the Macedonian churches. that they have that sense and that awareness of the grace of God in their hearts, the grace that has given them newness of life and undergirds everything that they know in their experience, that that grace is bestowed. It's had a permanent effect on the lives of the individual believers. and the life, therefore, of the congregation as a whole. That doesn't mean that there weren't folks in the congregation who had to learn a lot about serving the Lord. That's always the case. We are always going to be at different stages in our obedience and sanctification in the Lord, and we have much to learn. And it doesn't matter how long we live, we will always have something more to learn. But the point is that that grace is so bestowed upon these churches that they are now in the grip of the desire to serve the Lord and to praise Him and to give of themselves, and it's all of grace. Now, of course, God's grace in giving us His Son Jesus to be our Savior is what defines His generosity. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. We are none of us called to that, to give our only begotten Son in the way that Jesus was given, of course, because He is the only Savior. But you get something, don't you, of the depth of commitment and of love, of free grace when God gives His only Son to this terrible death, this terrible punishment for sin. so that He can be a substitute for those who don't deserve to be substituted for, and don't deserve to experience redemption through anybody's blood, through the Son of God Himself dying on the cross. That's grace, you see. And that defines the generosity of God, and that in turn is to elicit from us, ought to elicit from us, you and myself, us all, it ought to elicit a grace-driven response that abounds in a similar kind of generosity of spirit. Paul says to the Galatians in Galatians 6.10, he says, Do good to all men, and especially Those who are of the household of faith. Now you understand when you see that. You hear that. You read that. And you understand that Christ is the great, gracious gift of God that Christ has given Himself. to be our Savior, that this is the context, then you understand God is not asking us to pay some kind of church tax. He's calling us to share freely, out of His free grace to us. No shaming, no making people feel bad, so to speak, unless it's the Spirit of God that stirs our consciences. There's no call for us to be manipulating people. in giving them guilt trips they shouldn't have. But rather it's just grace from and in our Lord Jesus Christ. So he's really challenging his readers in Corinth. He's saying the folks in Macedonia are really moved by the grace of God. And that's what what you want to be, isn't it? Moved by the grace of God. And so, it is an invitation to re-examine how you're serving God. That's the source then. The second thing he mentions here is the result. The result is that this great trial, verse 2, this great trial of affliction that they had experienced, persecution principally, I suppose, and the monetary and financial effects of being persecuted, which is losing jobs and people wrecking your property and things like that. He says, in this great trial of affliction, move to the end of the verse, they abounded in the riches of their liberality. There are two paradoxes in verse two. The first is this one, the beginning and the end of the verse. In a great trial of affliction, they abounded in the riches of their liberality. And then the other paradox we'll look at in a moment is in between the joy and poverty connection. Anyway, first of all, first great paradox, their troubles ended up making them more generous than ever. Paul speaks, I think, of this effect in his letter to the Thessalonians, the second one, 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 verse 14, he says, For you, brethren, became imitators of the churches of God which are in Judea in Christ Jesus. For you also suffered the same things from your own countrymen, just as they did from the Judeans. Here are these Gentiles in Thessalonica, and they are persecuted by their Gentile relatives, so to speak. Church in Jerusalem, made up of Jewish Christians, and they're persecuted by their fellow countrymen as well. You see, there was like precious faith and the fellowship of Jesus' sufferings, making for love for the brethren, and so they gave as if they were rich. They were moved by the plight of the folks in Jerusalem. In fact, they maybe overgave, if you like, so full of Christ were their hearts toward their suffering fellow Christians. You know, we often talk about the widow's mite, but let me tell you, this is how—it's two mites, actually, in Luke 21 that the lady gives, two copper coins. This is how mites become mighty. should remember the word mighty in connection with mites. They don't share any etymological origin, but the point that is made in Luke 21 is the same, in effect, that Paul is making when he's describing what moved the Macedonians to help the Judeans. And he's showing in this case, too, that the grace of their giving started in a personal relationship with the Lord who had saved them by grace, who loves them out of his free grace. That's why Peter says, in 1 Peter 1.22, he says, seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently. There's the root of it. They're loving one another with a pure heart fervently. And their hearts are so moved By the grace of God that they give of what they have and seem even to give more than they have. Well, they didn't have credit cards. Some revival meetings you could go to, you know, where they have a machine. I've heard of this machine at the front. You can make a pledge of money you don't have. Just stick your card in the machine. No, they emptied their pockets of real cash. Well, the explanation is in the second paragraph. The abundance of their joy, you see, in Christ was applied to their deep poverty. Great trial of affliction. The abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded. These two things you see combined. to turn the great trial of affliction into the riches of their liberality. This is the explanation for their giving as sacrificially, or rather, they didn't see it as a sacrifice. This was liberality, not sacrifice, although it was sacrificial in the sense that it was giving, giving, giving. They were so moved. They applied the abundance of their joy in being saved people, in fellowship with these saved people who were suffering far away. They applied that to their deep poverty. They didn't say the idea of deep poverty there is the idea of a kind of empty bucket. The point is really that their joy in the Lord is so great even under persecution, that its application to the needs of the church in Judea issues in a generosity that's out of all proportion, like the widow's mites, out of all proportion to their real situation. It's God's free grace then applied to the pressing financial needs of that church in Judea. And one commentator, Peter Naylor, a recent commentator, observes that this induced them to part with what money they had. Persecution, he says, becomes the furnace in which the grace of giving is refined to a high state of purity. Well, you see, taking all that we've learned in these verses 1 and 2 together, there's a very simple principle here for all of us. And it's just this. Is it an abundance of joy that moves you to give to the Lord's work in your tithes and offerings? Because God does not need grudged gifts given out of a spirit of legal obligation. He wants your heart. He rejoices in the gifts of grace in your heart and from the heart. Now, of course, if you give absolutely nothing or nothing much relative to what God has given you, that tells him something about your heart, doesn't it? Isn't that what comes out of this experience of the church in Macedonia relative to the brethren elsewhere? So that's the first thing to be grasped here. This great example is given for us to follow ourselves. It's being given to the church in Corinth, of course, but through them to ourselves. Second point is that we are given, Paul gives us a motive to positive action in verses 3 through 5. He moves to motives, and his plan of course for this collection is simple, and it was We'll get to the motive part in a minute, but his plan was simply laid out in 1 Corinthians 16 verse 2. On the first day of the week, let each one of you lay something aside, storing up as he may prosper, that there be no collections when I come. Well, then he would come eventually and take the money to Jerusalem. That was the operational plan. But there are Two vital needs in this whole process. It isn't simply a matter of having a mechanism to get money together in this place and that place and then get it from point A to point B. There are two vital needs if this is to come to anything and be pleasing to God. They both involve willingness. The willingness of God's people to commit wholeheartedly to the project. Two things in particular to note. First thing is that willingness needs to reach beyond apparent ability. And that's what happened. Here's what he says in verse 3. For I bear witness that according to their ability, yes, and beyond their ability, they were freely willing. Freely willing. beyond their ability. Understand that things were tight for the folks in Macedonia, and they were tight for the folks in Corinth no doubt as well. So that anything from their slender means was going to very quickly reach beyond their ability by any other way of measuring it. Now Paul doesn't talk numbers, you notice. He doesn't trot out. Texts from the Old Testament to back this up. What he does is he just lays before them the Corinthians, the fact that he is observed about willingness. And obviously he's saying to them, this is the kind of willingness you need to think about yourself in your relationship to the Lord. Paul doesn't talk numbers, but he knows the value of their gifts. And if you want an example of how it's not to be done, you can go to Luke chapter 18, And there in verses 11 and 12, the Pharisee, you know the two men went up to the temple to pray, and one was a Pharisee and the other was a tax collector. And the Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week. I give tithes. of all I possess." The mint and the anise and the cumin, the very herbs that people grow in their gardens just to season their meat. Matthew 23. There's the legalist in action. I do this, I do that, I polish my medals and feel good about myself and I can look down on other people. There's nothing of that in the Apostle Paul, is there? Freely willing. Are you freely willing? Are you freely willing to reach beyond your apparent ability as God lays it on us, on our hearts? It's an attitude thing. It's a relationship thing with the Lord. Secondly, we need to remember that willingness needs to be driven by love, verse 4. Now you may find it curious why one would say willingness needs to be driven by love when the verse doesn't On the face of it, mention love. It says, they were imploring with us, the folks in Macedonia, imploring with us, rather, with much urgency that we would receive the gift and the fellowship of ministering to the saints. They're earnest. They're wanting to get this money to work. They want to get these resources at the point, applied to the point of the need of the time. And so they come to the apostle and said, Are you going to do this? Are you going to take the gifts and get them there to Jerusalem so that they can get to work helping our brethren who are suffering from this dreadful famine? Now, just note three words in verse four that are key words. The first one is gift, which is the Greek word charis, from which we get charismatic. But charis just is a gift. It's a gift. And that's essentially telling us that we are called to imitate God's gift, God's gift-giving, God's kindness to us. When you give an offering to the church, this is where it goes—gift. imitating God in His gift to you, His gift of a Savior, His gift of whatever in your life—your job, your place where you live, your family, your experience in life, your sustenance through difficulties—gift. Second key word is fellowship, koinonia. We're a living part of God's people. Use that word. You're talking about people. You're talking about God's people. You're talking about God's work of grace in the hearts of so many. And the third word is ministry, which is diakonia, from which we have deacon, ministry of mercy. It's a general word for service. Jesus is called a deacon even. We are serving God, in this case with monetary gifts. We want that service to God to bear fruition. So you see that they are conscious of the unity of the work of God's kingdom in the world. We're gathering this gift for people beyond the seas. And they are giving according to the overflow of their hearts for that work. And so that has its application to us. It's a standing encouragement for us today. Willingness needs to be driven by love. A third thing, willingness, verse 5, needs to be connected with the Lord's will. It needs to be toward the fulfillment of the Lord's will. Look at verse 5. And not only as we had hoped, but they first gave themselves to the Lord and then to us by the will of God. Now, the point he's making here is that they didn't merely follow the leader and go along with Paul and say, well, that's what the leadership wants us to do. It's true that Paul wanted them to go along with him and be part of this ministry, be part of the sustenance of the work of God beyond the seas and at home, of course, but he didn't want any man-centered obedience. Not only as we had hoped, but they first gave themselves to the Lord and then to us. You know, then I came into the picture as part of the service, actually, of gathering the funds and seeing them to their destination. And it's worth saying also, too, that their giving of themselves is a powerful giving. It's a weighty giving. It's not tokenism. I remember hearing a sermon, an address anyway, it was on a weeknight, some night in 1969, in a hall in Edinburgh in Scotland, and the preacher was Jack Glass, who was a rootin' tootin' fire-breathing Reformed Baptist from Glasgow. And when they had a collection for the work of the Scottish Reformation Society meeting, they had a collection for the work of the society, the preacher felt that he ought to give us a bit of encouragement in our giving. And he said, oh, he says, there was wailing and gnashing of teeth in Scotland when they abolished the ha'penny, the half penny. Coinage was changing at the time. He says, and now they'll have to put a whole penny in the plate. And then he looked at the pouches, you know these velvet pouches with handles on either side and you hand along the row and he said, oh he says, see they wee pouches. He said in Mr. Paisley's church in Ireland they use buckets. And he would see they wee pouches and he would say to his, oh ye of little faith. Well, I don't think we filled the pouches to overflowing, but the point he was making, of course, in this particularly down-to-earth manner was, please don't deal with God in tokenism. It's not about doing your bit or doing something minimal. It's about the heart. It's about your attitude, your own attitude that nobody can see in your heart but only the Lord. I may say it's interesting that the Apostle Paul needed to be prevailed upon to get busy taking this money to the other side of the sea. And one commentator makes a right point there. He says that this indicates that pastors need to keep out of the money business in the church. I don't know what anybody gives to this church. I don't want to know. I ought not to know. Because how could I preach on a passage like this if I had certain knowledge and then somebody could say, well, you were picking on me? Paul faced the same kind of problem as any preacher and every preacher in the history of the world. What we need to be convicted by is God's Word to us, which happens to come to us in the context of preaching on the passage or even Jack Glass's little thing about the abolition of the ha'penny. Finally, we have a grace in which to abound, verses 6 through 7. Paul knows very well the Corinthian church is a young church. He knows very well that it's finding giving to be something new in their experience. Many of us have had that experience ourselves. I would say in my own experience, it took me 10 years to finally grasp the significance and the application of the principle of tithing and exceeding the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees. It took me ten years in my Christian life to come to that. I was not an inconsiderable giver, but I was a less than satisfactory giver from the point of view of the Lord himself and my own attitude. We've all had learning experiences here. Paul understands this, and so he's making his application in verses 6 and 7 with, on the one hand, an avoidance of any note of censure. This is a learning experience. It is not an application of a judgment and a sentence. He's making application to his readers, including us, on the one hand, with an avoidance of any note of censure, and on the other, an expansive element of positive encouragement. The first point is in verse 6, and basically it says, it's your turn now to lay hold on this grace of giving. You haven't been challenged to do this hitherto, and now you're being challenged, and the time has come. It's a positive thing. So we urged Titus," he says, that as he had begun, he'd got the idea going, and then he'd come to Paul, and he was heading back. So we urged Titus that as he had begun, so he would also complete this grace in you as well. In other words, that it would be his privilege to see in them the kind of grace-driven giving that Paul had seen in the Macedonian church. Your time has come. That's the first thing, you know, if you've been brought up in the church. You come to realize that when you actually start to earn money as a kid, as a teenager, or you finally, you know, you have a real job and you have some money. Wow, I have a responsibility now I didn't quite have before. It's your turn now. Your time has come. We urge Titus, complete this grace in you as well. Of course, it's a work of God in their hearts. It's not fundraising. and beating the bushes with a stick to get everything out of them he can. Second thing, the other thing, is grow also in the grace of giving. Notice what he says in the seventh verse. He says, but as you abound, you Corinthians, and you Southsiders, but as you abound in everything, in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in all diligence, and in your love for us, which is your love for the church, really, see that you are bound in this grace also. Now, I rather think that giving to the church is a kind of Cinderella among the graces of even the evangelical Christian life. It's not something we think of naturally as a grace. Like faith, like the knowledge of the truth, like fellowship, We think, well, it's something we have to do, you know? Bills have to be paid. My friends, don't make your giving to this church or whatever a Cinderella. Just something that you do. It's a grace from God. So there may be folks here this morning, for all I know, that need to hear that for the first time they're hearing it. It's a grace, the grace of giving. Perhaps your giving, pattern of giving, has never been organized. It's never been regular. And this is crucial, it's never been made a priority in your personal budgeting. It's been an afterthought, not a first thought. I can tell you from my own personal testimony that it was a great liberation to me to get the idea in my head that the first check I wrote from my salary would be to the church. And then I would arrange my other expenses. Because I'd seen too many people who just spend, spend, spend, spend, spend on this and that, and they've nothing left for the church. They didn't plan. It was an afterthought. It was not a first thought. It was if I had something extra kind of thing, you know? Christian friends, God does not print money for us like the federal government. God gives us jobs. God gives us employment. God gives us His grace that we may comprehensively live for Him across the whole spectrum of our life. He gives us lives in which to serve Him and which to minister in the world. And you see, what Paul's saying is the grace of giving is part of that. It's necessary to that. So I want to leave you with Peter's words in that great passage in which he tells us to make our calling and election sure. In 2 Peter 1 verse 5, but also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these things is short-sighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins. Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure. For if you do these things you will never stumble, for so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. where you can add the grace of giving to all these other graces as you make your calling and election sure. Let us pray. O Lord and our God, we thank you that you provide for us, O God. We thank you, O Lord, that you provide also through your people for your work in the world. We thank you, O Lord, that you have given us the ministry of giving as a real ministry, as a grace-driven ministry. and that that flows from your grace toward us in Christ. So we pray, Lord, that you will teach us as we live through our lives to serve you in this as in every other aspect of our life, that we might be full of your grace and so be a blessing. in the work of the kingdom, and a joy even in heaven itself. So we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.