If you have your Bible this morning, turn with me to 2 Corinthians chapter 9, verses 6 through 15, which is a pretty large paragraph to take it one time, but that's what we are going to do. And the point of the closing verse, and we'll say more about this a little bit later, but when you get to verse 15, if you link it To the song that we just sang, here's how they link together. Verse 15 says, Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift. Well, we express, we sing a whole bunch of songs expressing the nature of that gift, right? So, what's Paul mean that the gift is inexpressible? Well, it simply means this. It's one thing to know that Jesus is better. It's another thing to know how much better. That's what you don't know. So much better that you can't calculate how much better. That's what he means by inexpressible. It's always with Jesus. He's always more and better than you think. He's always more and better than you imagine. So all of our best expressions come short. Paul is assuring us because if we were more than we are we'd be able to see more of Jesus than we can see but we're created finite he is infinite we can only see so much and so given the nature of Jesus and that he is a gift he's inexpressible he's indescribable He is that much better. So we're on the right track when you sing Jesus is better, but Paul reminds us, but you don't, you just don't even know how much better. You couldn't. You couldn't know. Because it's just too much. It's too much better. That's reality. And what a great thing it is to know that. Let's stand together. 2 Corinthians 9, 6-15. The point is this. Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly. And whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must give as he has made up his mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you. so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work as it is written. He has distributed freely, he has given to the poor, his righteousness endures forever. He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way by all your generosity, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. For the ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints, but also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God. But their approval of this service, they will glorify God because of your submission flowing from your confession of the gospel of Christ and the generosity of your contribution for them and for all others. Will they long for you and pray for you because of the surpassing grace of God upon you. Thanks be to God. for his indescribable gift. Let's look to the Lord in prayer. Our Father in heaven, we are reminded again by the songs that we've already sung together this morning how worthy of praise you are. You are better than anything else we have access to. You are a greater blessing than any other blessing that will ever come our way. And not only better, but inexpressibly better, indescribably better. We will spend eternity figuring out how much better as we experience how much better, quite literally, according to your promise, forever. Lord, may those who are here who have that hope in a fresh way reflect on how truly blessed they really are to have received Eternal life. To have been brought. By your grace to own that light. As we sang repeatedly in our opening song, praise the Lord. I saw the light. As Jesus put it, no one can come unto me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And we see that and believe that and realize that. And so answer back to you. Praise you, Lord. I saw the light. But I only saw the light because you drew me to the light. I only saw the light because you opened my eyes. I only saw the light because you enabled me to see the light. Praise the Lord. I saw the light. And so, Lord, we gather together as those who have seen the light. with this reminder being given to us that having seen the light, we ought to find ourselves becoming generous people. For you are a generous being, the most impressively generous being that has ever existed and ever will exist. And part of our opportunity as followers of yours, as we'll see this morning, is to imitate, reflect your character in our lives. And Father, we are asked to do this often under really difficult circumstances. And a number of people in this room, quite a number, have at one piece of their lives or another extraordinarily difficult circumstances. Their own health is the difficult circumstance. The health of their spouse is the difficult circumstance. Wayward children are their difficult circumstance. All manner of vices that grab hold of us and will not let go are the difficult circumstance of one form of addiction or another. And yet, you assure us that by your power, you can carry us through all of these things. unto the praise of the glory of your own grace through what you have done for us in the Lord Jesus Christ. Lord, may we reflect on that in this hour. May you enable those who will be teaching Sunday School in the next hour to be instruments of that same glorious message in one form or another in various classes through your word. the power of your spirit. We ask for it all in Jesus' name. Amen. Be seated. Remind you again of one of the most basic ideas in all of the New Testament, namely that Christians are disciples and that as disciples the expectation, the norm, the thing that ought to be happening is that we are increasingly growing in the knowledge of what Jesus wants from us But not only growing in the knowledge of it, but we are increasingly becoming a reflection in our own lives. of what Jesus wants for us, and that's why it's at the top, right inside the front cover of our worship folder every week. We are becoming disciples. You know, that participle, becoming, sort of has that idea of it's just a process that goes on throughout your life, and that's exactly what it is, and that's exactly how it works, and that's exactly the New Testament picture of it. And some of the ways the New Testament expresses it are just positively startling. A number of them are, actually, but I'll mention one that almost just seems, it seems arrogant to say such a thing, but Paul tells us to think this way. There's two pieces to it that are both apparently arrogant. Ephesians 5, 1 and 2. Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children. Now that's an audacious statement. Imitate God. Therefore be imitators of God as Beloved children, two audacious statements for the price of one, like an audacious theological sandwich cookie, where the two pieces, we're in the middle, and imitate God as beloved children. But that's how we're supposed to think. Now the only thing that makes that possible, of course, is that as the Bible opens telling us, Genesis 1-27, we're created in the image of God. And it's because we bear that image of God that this audacious goal and activity is even possible, that you could imitate him. Well, you can only imitate him because he created you in his image with the ability with the capacities and the faculties to do things like that. Therefore, be imitators of God as beloved children. The two ideas go together very, very well because we're, as bearing the image of God, as it turns out, we're born imitators. looking ahead at what was supposed to be the forecast this weekend, and it turned out pretty much like they said. It's relatively cold today. I was thinking about my son and I 25 years ago. I don't know why it was just the two of us, but I remember it quite clearly. We only lived about a block from our School. It was walking them up to Horace Mann's school on a cold day like this that also had the wind. And it was a south wind. We're walking straight into it. And, you know, from my own experiences years earlier of walking to school, you just instinctively, at some point when your face gets cold enough, turn around and walk backwards a little bit with your back to the wind. I learned that from my brother years early, walking to school, my older brother. Watched him do that, I started doing that. It took my son about one second to imitate that. I turned around and walked backwards, he leapt up, turned around, started walking backwards. That's how we, that's what, we're made that way. We are born imitators. Therefore, be imitators of God as beloved children. And where this is headed, I'll just tell you in advance, is when you jump to that last verse, the last verse is what it is. Because the big argument in this paragraph is the ultimate reason to be generous is that God's generous. He's indescribably generous. So his followers should be generous, that's the whole argument. Now he says a lot of things in there but that's why verse 15 is where it is. Thank God for his indescribable gift, that is God is indescribably grand in generosity as a giver. His followers, his disciples should be expected to reflect that in their lives. State our thesis for this morning this way, generosity is a God-generated virtue. Generosity is a God-generated virtue. Three angles on it. Number one, we should meditate upon God's promise to generosity. We should meditate on God's promise to generosity. Verses six through nine. The point is this, whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly. Whoever sows bountifully, now if you were here last week, that same surprising word comes forward. In a moment we'll see where he gets it, because he gets it from the text he's been thinking about all the way through this. But behind the translation bountifully is again that same word from the previous paragraph, upon a blessing. So you could say it this way, for whoever sows upon a blessing will also reap a blessing. Or whoever sows blessedly shall also reap blessedly. As I say in a moment, we'll see, why is he getting that language out and inserting it here? Because he has a text from the Septuagint in his mind that he's about to refer to directly. Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. Now Paul almost certainly does most of his Bible reading out of the Septuagint. In the Septuagint he's paraphrased there because it's very straightforward. What the Septuagint says in Proverbs 22.8a is this. God blesses a cheerful giver. Straightforward verb for bless. There, you can't miss it. God blesses a cheerful giver. That's what he's reading in the Subtuagent. And Paul is simply saying, he blesses because he loves it so much. So God loves, God blesses, a cheerful giver, and that's where that language that's been bleeding down toward this quotation has come from, I'm sure, all the way back to the last paragraph. Because this is the dominant idea that he's been looking at as he's trying to promote generosity in us. God is able to make grace abound to you so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work as it is written. he has distributed freely, he has given to the poor, his righteousness endures forever. Now, when we read verse 6 as American evangelicals, the point is, whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. You know, we have flashing lights and sirens go off in our head, right? Like, uh-oh, uh-oh. I was always hoping that Paul would turn out to be nothing like Jesse Duplantis, you know, one of the televangelists who, back in the summer, you remember, the Lord came to Jesse and asked him to trust the Lord for a Falcon 7 jet, $54 million. because when Jesse travels around the world for the Lord, the Lord didn't want him to have to make extra stops. So for sure, Jesse needed this jet of $57 million and was appealing to his donors to help him get the jet so that he wouldn't have to make the stop. Amazingly, he shared at that same time that the reason that he absolutely needed a private jet was that the Lord did not want him riding on the same plane with the sorts of people that he was evangelizing. It's an interesting argument. It's just an interesting argument. But that whole movement, of course, throws great stress on, well, if you give to my ministry, then the Lord will probably give you the hundredfold. You give generously, you will receive back generously. But that's what Paul just said. What is going on? Is Paul more like Jesse Duplantis than we thought? Well, no. No, because the context makes it pretty plain here what Paul means about being dealt with bountifully, and we'll see that in a moment. And he doesn't mean Falcon 7 jets primarily, but some other things, not even all that closely related. to that. And Paul is, you know, Paul doesn't raise money for himself. And he doesn't fleece the people that he's talking with. He's trying to disciple them. So the differences are pretty plain. But you still do come to this. Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly. And whoever sows upon a blessing will also reap upon a blessing, or bountifully, with a view to blessings. Now as I say, that little quotation, when you look it up in the Septuagint, it's really, really plain. I mean, it's just, whoa, there it is. God blesses a cheerful giver. And his word to us is, well, you want God to bless you, so let him bless you through generosity. But as you'll see in the paragraph, what's the big blessing that you get through generosity? And the answer is, you grow in righteousness. I mean, part of Christian righteousness is generosity. And as you become generous, you become righteous in that way. And by the way, he says, righteousness outlasts most everything else in the world. So it's not just valuable for a while, like so many things are, but righteousness remains valuable literally forever. Now notice how he launches us into that, verses 8 and 9. So verse 8 has this really, really emphatic expression for how wise it is to become generous. And God is able to make all grace abound to you. So you give this away and what are you worried about? Well I've given this away and now I might wish I had it back later. I wish I had more resources either to enjoy for myself or to trust. See, if you're a cheap person like I am, you don't generally want to take nicer trips. You want more money to trust. If you're a different sort of person, you always want to take nicer trips. It's the same sin, it just manifests itself slightly differently, right? But it's exactly the same thing. It's the same problem. And what he says here is, here's the solution to that problem. You have to trust God to take care of you after you've given away what he asked you to give away. And God is able, verse eight, he's able to make all grace abound to you, having, and here he puts three words for all together, so greatly emphatic to say he can really, really, really, really, really take care of you. Having all sufficiency in all things at all times. All, all, all. All sufficiency in all things at all times. But then it's in verse nine. that he says the thing that we're supposed to really take note of, because it's what carries the argument. As it is written, he has distributed freely, he has given to the poor, his righteousness endures forever. Now, that's a quotation from Psalm 112, verse 9 and 10. Now, when Paul makes a quotation like that, again, as we've said many, many times, he means for us to know the rest of the line, right? uh... you you think of any any number of lines you know uh... as you know if you if you're if you're a certain age you know when you find yourself in times of trouble mother mary comes to me speaking words of wisdom stop what comes next let it be everybody knows that everybody knows that so you you start that line and you can sort of assume Most people in my audience, they can finish the line. They know what I'm talking about. They've heard that a thousand times, right? That's what he's doing. So when he says, generous righteousness endures forever, he assumes that you and I can finish the line, which includes the statement of the exact opposite. So here's how it reads in Psalm 112 verses nine and 10. He has distributed freely as given to the poor. His righteousness endures forever. His horn is exalted in honor. The wicked may see it and is angry. He gnashes his teeth and melts away. The desire of the wicked will perish." The desires of the wicked will perish. That is, all of the things that wicked people really love and try to grasp onto with both hands perish out of their hands every time. Every time. That's the point in the New Testament that James is making, right? In James 1, 9 through 11. Let the lowly brother rejoice in his exaltation and the rich in his humiliation because like the flower of the grass, he will fade away. So, you know, Warren Buffett is worth $81 billion, but he's got a problem. He's 88 years old, already living on borrowed time. Everything for him personally is about to fade away. That's how it goes for everybody. It's just, I mean, it's like... And he comes to us and says, Righteousness isn't like that. Doesn't fade away. It just morphs into a different realm where it's obviously the main thing. But what you're tempted to hang on to. To the loss of righteousness is like a flower of the grass that passes away. Don't do it. But righteousness lasts forever. Secondly, we should meditate upon God's provision for generosity. I mean, this is almost like an old saw, right? But it's just verse 10 following. Notice the point. He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. Again, you will be enriched in every way, to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God And for the ministry of his service is not only supplying the needs of the saints, but is also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God. By their approval of his service, they glorify God. Now look at this. So now he says, look, this generosity thing, it's a threefer. It's a threefer. So you help poor people. Poor people are helped. They're helped by you. And then they say to you, we thank God for you and your help. So they got help. And now they're thanking God. But as they're thanking God, they're glorifying God. which is the greatest thing that they can ever be involved in. So, you help them, they're helped, they thank God for your help, and in so thanking God, they glorify God. And now, they not only got helped, but they got filled with the glory of God. That's his argument. That's how it works, often. And he's hoping, see, that that should really motivate you. And, he says, and you did it with stuff that God gave to you. Everything you've got, God gave you. He's the one who supplies the seed of the sower, bread for food. God's the one who supplies it all. He's the one that enriches people, right? Who supplies the seed for the sower? Well, God does. Who supplies bread? God does. Who supplies the material seeds? God does. Who supplies the harvest of righteousness in your life? God does. That's the point. So God produces this and then gives it to you. That's how we're to think. 20, 25 years ago, for years, most years, actually most years of the past 34 years, I choose somebody to sort of spend the year with. So you read all kinds of things, but then I attach myself to one person and now you're going to read 10 pages a day of them, so you read 3,650 pages of what they've written for the year or more, but at least that, at least that. And about 20, 25 years ago, my companion was, and he was for a couple of different years because he's got plenty Works of Augustine are in 42 volumes in a translation presently coming out, so you can read lots of years of 3,600 pages and you're not going to run out of Augustine. He was my partner, and that year I happened to read through a particular set of four volumes that's in the midst of that called the Pelagian Writings. in which he's arguing for free grace and so forth. And there was a verse from 1 Corinthians that he kept repeating over and over and over and over again. And it just became, for me, Augustine's text. That's what it says in my Bible next to 1 Corinthians 4, 7. It says Augustine's text. And here's Augustine's text. For who sees you any differently? What do you have that you didn't receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if you didn't receive it? Now, if you think you can argue around him, he's ready for you. He's ready for you. What do you have that you didn't receive? Well, you don't understand. I started out with this and I made this out of it. Okay, he said, but where did you get the intellectual gifts that enabled you to do that? Where did you get the drive? Where did you get, how come you were born in Sioux Falls rather than Calcutta, where that doesn't happen nearly so often, and on and on. So he was just saying, look, I don't care what you say, it's going to be obvious upon serious examination that the context in which you have lived and done everything that you have lived and done and received, it's all God. And that's why Paul just says, what do you have that you didn't receive? And the answer is nothing. Right. Yes. So you look and you are richly blessed because God has richly blessed you. That's not to take away all of your hard work because God blessed you with a drive to do hard work, too. That's a blessing. That's a blessing. So he did that. That's all. What do you have? You don't got anything. Well, if you received it, why do you end up Acting as if you didn't. And we tend to act that way. He says, well, don't. Don't. Instead, live that way. Be generous out of that. And what happens is you'll grow in righteousness. People will give thanks to God and they'll ultimately glorify God. It's a threefer. It's an amazing thing. Now, we could have easily taken several more Sundays to what marks through his argument at the end there because it's very detailed. I've just summarized it very quickly. And now we're at verse 15 as we get ready to wrap it up. Thirdly, we should meditate upon God's personal example of generosity. This goes back to our our closing song again, as I started with, right? So, yeah, Jesus is better. See, Paul's wrong, you know, it's inexpressible. No, we just expressed it, Jesus is better. No, no, no, you're not getting it, you're not getting it. The thing is, yes, you know Jesus is better, but what you don't know is how much better. Now we're gonna figure out how much better. Because there's all kinds of things in the gift that upon examination, you'll realize you don't have a conception of, and you can't. You really can't have a conception of it. You can try, but you can't have a conception of it. Thanks be to God for his inexpressible, a lot of translations have indescribable, you know, two really obvious synonyms, for his inexpressible, indescribable gift. Well, this year, my reading companion for the year is Benjamin Warfield, not dead nearly as long. Most of the people I read are dead. They're dead. They died years ago. Augustine, 1,600 years ago. He's been dead for almost 1,600 years. The year 2030, Augustine will have been dead for 1,600 years exactly. Now, the guy that I'm spending the year with now, Benjamin Warfield, he taught at Princeton Seminary. In two years, he'll have been dead for 100 years. He died 1921. He was the last really conservative theological professor there at Princeton. And he didn't really write much except journal articles, so they put those into a ten-volume set sometime after he died. And one of those articles is on what some of you are taking a Sunday school class on right now downstairs with John and Terry, Person of Christ. He wrote an article for the Standard Theological Encyclopedia on the person of Christ, and in that article, he makes a citation of 1 John 1, 1 and 2, and then writes this about 1 John 1, 1 and 2. Of all the marvels that have ever occurred in the marvelous history of the universe. This is the greatest. What's he talking about? If you look at 1st John 1, 1 and 2, here's what he's talking about. That which is from the beginning. That which is from the beginning, which we have heard. So that which was from the beginning by from the beginning, he means that which never had a beginning. Jesus, second person, the triune Godhead, son of God, the one who never had a beginning. Was on earth in such a way that you could sit in the field and hear him talk. That which was from the beginning, which we have heard. Sermon on the Mount. The group listening to Jesus when he eventually fed the 5,000. They sat there. They heard the one who had existed forever, enfleshed in a body, talking to them. Warfield says that's the most amazing thing that's ever happened in the universe. Is that the Creator came and did such things. We've seen him with our eyes. They're looking at him. The Old Testament. Can't see the face of God and live. Well, it depends on how God reveals himself because they're all looking him straight in the face. And they're living. There he was. That which they've heard, that's what they've seen with their eyes, most amazingly, given all the details. And their hands have touched. Some of the soldiers touched him real good. Touched him right in the face with some force. John laid on his breast. A sinful woman came, burst into tears, wet his feet with her tears, and then dried them with her hair. Touched. The one who was from the beginning. And what's he doing here? Well, that's the other thing that Warfield points out in 1 John 1-2. And the life was made manifest and we have seen it and testify to it and proclaim the eternal life which was with the Father and was made manifest to us. The life was made manifest. One of the great arguments in the world, in our culture in particular, is, is life accidental or divine? Is life just an accident born out of an explosion? Or is it something more than that? We were talking about this at our community group a little bit last night. And just, you know, the bottom line is nobody can live as if life is really just an accident. They can try. They can say it. But they can't really live that way. No one can live as if their thoughts are simply the random product of molecules randomly bouncing about in their heads. Nobody can live like that. Nobody. You cannot live like that. You can't assume that's true and function. No, the only way you can really function is Something like the biblical doctrine of human beings are amazing. They bear the image of God. That'll make sense out of things. That's why surgeons can do what they do. That's why people can develop cell phone technology. That's why we can, you know, send rockets into space. That life comes from God. He's the life. He's the source of all life. And we are who we are because God is life. But God is not only life, he's eternal life. And because Jesus came through a certain sort of relationship with him, many of you here this morning, you don't just have life. You have eternal life. You have eternal life. How did you get that? God gave it to you. Remember John 644, Jesus said, No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. As I've already mentioned, we sang it this morning. Praise the Lord. I saw the light. Why not praise you? I saw the light because I was so insightful. I saw the light because I figured things out. I saw the light because, most people don't, but I saw it because I'm really quite a guy. We're not supposed to think that way. We're supposed to say, praise the Lord. I saw the light because he showed it to me. I saw the light because he drew me into it. And now, through seeing it, I have eternal life. That's what's happened to me. And where did you get it all? It's God's indescribable gift. I am the recipient of inexpressible generosity. the very core of who I am as a Christian. And Paul is arguing here in a broad way as simple as it can be stated how he argued in Ephesians 5.1. Okay then, be imitators of the generous God. Imitate him with your life. unto righteousness that lasts forever. That's the argument. For we who have experienced eternal life through the inexpressible gift of Jesus, who's so much better than anything else that it can't be expressed. We try, we sing, but it's better than we can sing. It's better than we can know. It's better than we can imagine. It's better. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, I ask that you would enable us to have some sense of your indescribable, inexpressible generosity and that we would genuinely See what a beautiful, valuable opportunity it is to be imitators of that generosity unto thanksgiving, unto glory. Through helping people who need help, what an amazing opportunity. We thank you for it and praise you for it in Jesus' name. Amen.