Second Corinthians 9:1-6 Readiness of Mind in Giving
2 Corinthians 9:1-6 · Roger Henderson · Jul 31, 2022
Letters to the Corinthians, No. 118
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261927564053

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Well, good morning. Alright, so today we're going to look at the first six verses in chapter 9. And, you know, there's one thing you might notice. We're looking, in Sunday School, we're looking at the Gospel of, not the Gospel, the letters of John. And Andrew did a great job this morning. John is so compact. He just has compact statements. Well, Paul is 180 out from that.

You know, we've been spending, this is, we're into chapter 9, we're going to continue the ministry of giving, and Paul's going to talk even more about that. He's going to explain, he's so careful, Paul is super careful about giving, and we're going to see that today.

So one of the phrases that I came across in these first six verses is this idea of the readiness of mind in giving. So we're going to see what that's all about. Let's first look at an outline, and this is from our brother Hal. So you could actually outline chapters 8 and 9 this way.

Giving of oneself and financially is out from God's grace. And we saw that in the first six verses. Mike talked about this church in Macedonia. They were poor, but they gave out of the grace that God had provided for them. And then 7-15 that Mike covered are a proof of his love, and there's a statement about the sincerity of his love in those verses. And then last week he talked about the glory of God in the last remaining verses, 16-24. It's a glorious ministry. Giving is a glorious ministry.

We don't actually think of that many times. We don't think of that as being one of the ministries that a believer has, but it is. And Paul points it out over and over again. So today we're going to talk about this idea of being the readiness of mind in giving. The first six verses. Then we're going to talk about not giving grudgingly out of necessity. And then we'll close it out again with God's grace and sufficiency in our giving.

So Paul spent, if you look back in chapter 16 of 1 Corinthians, we talked about giving a little bit in the first part of that, and now we have two full chapters on giving. And one thing to observe is that Paul uses this ministry to the poor saints in Jerusalem, he uses that ministry And actually, it's funny, when you start studying in more detail, you realize that as Paul traveled on his missionary journeys, he collected money for the poor saints in Jerusalem. And you may have read through his missionary journeys and understand part of it, but I missed that until I started getting in more detail into this giving chapters here. That was part of his ministry, collecting money for the poor saints in Jerusalem. And that's how he teaches us about giving in the local body.

I want to review a couple of things from chapter 8 here. I've used Brother Hal again. Just a couple of great charts here to look at. Three principles. Mike talked about this quite a bit. There are three aspects of our giving. The first aspect of our giving is that we give of ourselves. If we don't give of ourselves, then that starts the process. You know we see that and how has a bunch of references there, but the one that comes to mind to me is the one in Romans 12 1 Therefore I urge you brethren by the mercies of God to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God which is your spiritual service of worship worship So that's the starting point for this giving. We first give of ourselves to the Lord. Then secondly, we give of ourselves to the ministry that God has us involved in.

And Paul details the ministry that he had, collecting money for the Well, his ministry was preaching the gospel, right? As part of that ministry was collecting money for the poor saints in Jerusalem. And there's many verses that are quoted there. One that kind of strikes me is that he talks about, no church shared with me in the matter of giving more than the Philippians did.

And we're going to see that also there's a picture as you look through the map, and we're going to show a map of that region. Galatia, Macedonia is kind of to the north, and Achaia is toward the bottom. When Paul's travels, he typically traveled through Galatia up into Macedonia and then down into Achaia. And all those churches, he spread the gospel, and he also spread the message, the needs of the saints in Jerusalem.

And then lastly in this picture is the financial part. Once you have settled with your relationship with the Lord, once you have trusted that the ministry that you're giving to is one that God desires you to do, then the last part is actually giving financially. So that comes last, and we're going to see about that. But then two additional aspects that our brother Hal kind of presented here, and this is back from 2004. to other principles in giving. And we kind of know this, it's out of His grace, and Mike covered that quite a bit. Our giving of ourselves to the Lord and His ministry and finances is a grace gift. And we often think about, we state Chafer's 33 Riches of God's Grace.

And it probably is in there, I haven't actually checked the list recently. We study that. We have a whole class on that in Sunday school. But giving is part of that. Actually, think about that. It's actually part of that, which is pretty cool. And then the last part of that, giving is a fellowship. If you think about it, you're sharing in common. God has laid a need in your heart. You're sharing in common with the people you're giving to. And you're a conduit for that. Our sharing is in common.

It's totally of God's eternal purpose. And it's the edification of the body of Christ. So I haven't finished with the review. We're going to keep going here. I have a Hal picture. Andrew's following his footsteps pretty well. So here's a Hal picture coming up here. So here's those three parts of the puzzle. He put it into one circle here. We have the three parts.

God's grace overlays the entire thing. But we have kind of in the center top, we have giving ourselves to the Lord. The lower left we have giving ourselves to the ministry and then thirdly in the right lower we have giving ourselves financially. It's all part of that under God's grace. That's all part of Christian giving. But then some additional bullet points on that.

If you look at 2 Corinthians 8, 7 it says, but just as you abound in everything in faith and in utterance and in knowledge and in all Earnestness and the love we inspire you see to it that you abound in this gracious work And so this gracious work is again referring back to that giving that he's talking about in these chapters to the to the saints in Jerusalem And that's the word of abound is the eye to excel And it's actually not a command. It's it's something that you're to be excelling in that's part of the Christian life what you're doing Grace giving is a manifestation of the life of Christ within you and The grace of God must be owned, you must believe it and trust in it, and that's the source of our giving. Financial giving is meaningless unless we are first giving ourselves to the Lord. And then lastly, the point that they make, actually in verse 8, Paul even says this, he says basically that, I'm not speaking this as a commandment to you. This is just part of your Christian life.

Okay, a couple of review charts here. And then another overview, if you haven't had enough, we'll keep going here. I'll do this in bubble form this time. So this is going to set the stage. You know, Paul is very detailed here. He goes through how the brethren gave in Macedonia, and he talks about Achaia. So let's just kind of go through this.

So the concern was for the ministry. It's called the ministry, if you look in Scripture, or the collection for the poor saints in Jerusalem. That was the concern. And the background was, as Paul traveled in his missionary journeys, the churches in Galatia, Macedonia, and Achaia, he asked them to put aside, we see this in chapter 16 of 1 Corinthians, he asked them to put aside each week what they proposed to give.

And we studied that, you know, it's been quite a while since we studied that, but that's part of the process, you do this in advance. so that when Paul came there would be no collection on the spot so to speak. And it seems like God is very careful about that. The idea of a last minute thing where a person kind of walks in the door. I was kind of thinking about My mind is going here.

Chester McCauley. Chester McCauley, according to, I talked with Wayne here a little bit on Wednesday. We were listening to his tapes on Revelation. But he would occasionally come to Holly Hills historically. I was kind of thinking, I don't know where they ever was. Did we ever give a gift? We maybe have.

But I can imagine, imagine if you waited until Chester came and then you went around the room and you kind of said, well, how much are you giving Mike? How much are you giving Ingrid? How much, you know, that'd be kind of embarrassing. On the spot giving is not what God is about. He's about planning ahead and preparing that. And Paul's going to be very concerned about, he doesn't want that to happen with this gift that the Corinthians have promised. He doesn't want them to be put on the spot at the last moment. He's very, very careful about that. So let's just continue on here.

So the status was that the churches of Macedonia, the northern churches, had given immediately. They responded out of their poverty, right? By God's grace. But the Corinthian church in Achaia, they had what Paul calls this readiness of mind. They were ready to give. They started their giving a year ago, but had not completed it. And they didn't have the money in hand. They said, yeah, I'm going to give, but they hadn't actually done it.

So Paul, he's concerned about this, so he wants to make sure, so he sends some trusted brothers to go and make sure that things are ready when he comes. Okay, so let's start. Here's the verses, I'm not going to re-read this again, but just a couple things I've underlined here. Paul says, I know your readiness. He knows they're ready to give.

But he has some concerns, and so based upon his concerns, he sends his brethren. He sends Titus, along with two brethren, and Mike talked about that last week, and they're unnamed. He sends them to kind of get things in order, and he says, And he said it was necessary to not only send them, but he wanted to urge them to follow, to get things that the promised gift would be in order, so that when he comes, there would be no on-the-spot button-holding, so to speak.

Or actually, the word is used, extortion. It's kind of, if you look at the original Greek word, you think about it, somebody comes on the spot and says, well, you promised a year ago to give me X, Y, and Z. Well, you can say, well, a year ago, I had a job a year ago, right?

You know, you can have all kinds of reasons. And that's human nature. So Paul wants those issues to be solved and put out of the picture. Okay. So starting in the verse, we're going to tackle this word here. Okay. For it is superfluous for me to write to you Corinthians. So you say, well, why did Paul even write this? The idea is it's over the top. He doesn't need to, but he's going to.

It was beyond what was required and necessary of Paul to write about the saints. So it was for the saints, and that's another word, if you read carefully, you can trace through 1 and 2 Corinthians, you'll see that he's talking about these poor saints in Jerusalem and the ministry of giving to them. And Constable addresses that, he says, it seems that the Corinthian Christians had heard about the collection called the extra collection, Paul was getting together for the poor saints in Jerusalem and wanted to make a contribution. They wanted to contribute.

So I just want to kind of go back. This may have backtracked a little bit. So there's three regions. There's Galatia, which is underlying blue there to the right. Then we have Macedonia, where there's Philippi, Thessalonica, and Berea. And then we have what's called Achaia, which is the southern churches, Corinth, I'm not sure, maybe there are other churches in there, but I don't think they're named. So Paul, as he travels, he travels from Galatia up to Macedonia, down to Achaia. And as he's preaching the gospel, he's collecting the money for these four saints. OK, so hopefully that helps a little bit. So now he starts off with, I know your readiness. So he knew it factually. It's a perfect tense, past completed action with abiding results. He knew it. He was convinced of it. I've known it. It was settled in his mind.

He didn't worry about that they were going to give. He was worried about more the mechanics of the giving that it might get misconstrued or the timing might not be there, but he knew they desired to give. He knew their readiness, their eagerness, their willing to give. He uses readiness of mind. He knew the desire was out from God's grace and not out from themselves. He knew that they were totally sincere. So he was totally convinced. He knew their readiness. But even though he knew their readiness, he wants to make sure.

And I think that speaks to us. As we conduct our lives, sometimes there's opportunities that things may be misunderstood. And Paul is a perfect example of making sure that things don't get misunderstood or misconstrued. And that people are embarrassed by that.

And so he talks about, he says, For I know your readiness, of which I boasted about you to the Macedonians. So what I found was, and I noticed this before when I say this word boasted, it can be translated glory, and it's interesting, different translations go different directions. The authorized version, which is what we call the King James, it uses boasted. The New American Standard uses boasted for this verse. But some versions, like the Revised Standard, they use glory. And I really think glory fits better, and I like what our brother Hal had to say about this.

He said, would Paul be boasting about himself or believers? Wouldn't he be glorying and thanking God for them? Wouldn't that be his mindset? Boasting to me has kind of a possible negative connotation. You may boast unnecessarily or for wrong motives. But glorying, it's the same original word, but it's what English word we attach to it. Glorying seems to fit, in my mind, better. So I'm going to use glorying. So here's a verse that uses that.

It says Philippians 3, 3b. who worship in the spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus putting no confidence in the flesh and then here Paul is glorifying God for the Corinthians and their desire and their zeal to serve the Lord in their desire and zeal to serve the Lord so we're going to see that in the last part of the verse so Paul here refers to when he says Achaia you know the math that I showed you Achaia included the Corinthian church so it That's the terminology. We might say Colorado, and we would mean Denver, but we could say a larger area speaking of a particular church or whatever. And that's what I think is happening here. Achaia is speaking of the Corinthian church.

So Achaia, speaking of the Corinthians, had been prepared since last year. And we saw this back in chapter 8 that Mike taught. It says, who Corinthians were the first to begin a year ago Not only to do this, but also to desire to do it. So they were ready. It speaks to their readiness. But they also, they were so excited, they had a zeal for it. And they stirred up most of the other believers there. Zeal is the idea of a fervent mind, ferventness. Their minds were set passionately about supporting this ministry. And they stirred or incited or stimulated each other. It affected most of the people in Corinth, which is really wonderful.

So now he goes on... So he said, we didn't really need to know this, but now he's going to tell us we do need to know this. He says, but... So now he's going to explain here in the next couple of verses, three through five, he's going to explain his extra carefulness, if you will. He's going to be very careful about the handling of the money and what should be done before he actually arrives. He says, but...

Even though you're stirred up, you're excited about this ministry, I know you have a zeal for it, I sent the brethren, Titus and the two others, unnamed, as Mike pointed out last week, in order that, with a purpose that, your boasting or glorying about these Corinthians may not be empty. So he was concerned, empty is the idea, to make void, to make of no consequence, so he was concerned that they would The Corinthians and even himself would come under a bad light if he talked about how given they were going to be, but it didn't come to pass.

So he says, in the last part of this, he says, as I was saying, you may be prepared. So he wants them to be prepared, that's his focus. I know you have a zeal for this, but I want you to be prepared, is his point. Otherwise, so here's his concern, otherwise, as is the case so so this is assumed to be true otherwise as is the case any Macedonians come with me and find you Corinthians unprepared so he the assumption is the Macedonians are coming with him and so that could cause embarrassment if they don't don't have their gift ready so we're expecting your gift to be ready or so in this case it's gone from the stage of You promised to do something.

So it's been collected So when Paul arrives the money's been collected and there's no issue about how much a brother or sister is going to give It's already collected and it's waiting for Paul to take with him So he says so here's this concern its concern is that Paul we Paul not to speak of you Corinthians will be put to shame by this confidence and it's a little bit hard to understand but if you look at I like the amplified translation, by our being so confident. You'll be put to shame or disgrace. He says, we were so confident about you, but then when we got there, the money wasn't available.

So that kind of shed a bad light on the whole thing. That's not a good thing. So this is the last verse in this topic for a bit. It does get to be kind of tedious as I found it. He said, well, come on, Paul, let's get, come on, tell me what you want to say. Okay, you said it about three different ways. So now he's going to finally sum it up here. So I use the interlinear here to kind of bring this across better.

Therefore, I, Paul, consider it necessary to encourage the brothers. So he's not only going to send them, he wants to encourage, he's going to give them some final words of encouragement and direction on what to do. It's necessary, so it's a necessary thing to encourage them. So there's no question in Paul's mind about the necessity of what needs to happen when he arrives.

So first thing, that they, Titus and the other brothers, should go before to the Corinthians to address the gift issue. Because they have a desire to give, but they haven't actually collected it yet. And so here's the part. having arranged beforehand the gift, having been previously promised. So their task, Titus and the other brothers, are to arrive there and make sure that the gift actually winds up being collected and is ready for Paul.

The idea is having arranged or rendered fit, he's going to get it together. And the third point is, this gift so as to be a blessing. The gift is to be a blessing. He doesn't want the mechanics to get in the way and not an exaction. That's actually the original word. It's translated in other translations differently, but it's an exaction.

So that's... exactions doesn't sound very friendly, right? If I say I'm going to exact something from you, you're not going to be too excited about that, right? So Paul doesn't... Can you imagine if I did go around and I said, Well how come you didn't, you promised a year ago, but you said, now you said that, what's going on here?

That's all to be put to rest. Alright, so exaction is the idea of, it has covetousnesses in there, fraud, extortion. So actually in the definition they had, they quoted this passage, they said you could render it not as exhorted by us Paul from you Corinthians. Okay. Since it had been a year, Paul is concerned that the previously promised gifts might be views in exaction.

So all that, the brothers go, and it's all going to be taken care of. Okay. So now we come to the cool verse. This is the verse we've been waiting for the whole message, right? Actually, we have three really neat verses. I divided them up. So now I say, so Paul is saying here, this is the point I wish to make. He wants to make this point. So he's going to make a point here about sewing.

It turns out that our family, actually my She's two years old, and my daughter Carrie has a little garden outside, and they plant seeds. They put seeds in the ground, and believe it or not, they're growing, and things should happen, right? It's watered automatically now in the sprinkler system. And Lila goes out there, and she looks at the strawberries. She pokes them with her fingers, and I said, don't pull them off. She'll poke this one, those tomatoes, and she's just having a great old time.

Well, when you plant something in the ground, you don't lose the seeds. You don't say, well, I lost those. Those seeds are lost. No. You expect something to come out, right? You expect there to be something that's going to come out of the ground. Well, that's what giving is about.

Paul's going to use the sowing of seed idea. About giving but it occurred to me. We see that a lot in scripture in terms of sowing God's Word and we see that like in passages like this and it's talked about the different kinds of soil and those are the ones on whom the seed was sown on the good soil and and they heard the word and accepted it, and it bare fruit thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold. So the sowing of God's word produced something. So now if you think about that and carry it over, the sowing of financial things, money, will produce something.

But giving, but undergrace what we see, and Constable Viah Hughes here points this out. What is given is not lost, but is like the seeds sown by the farmer. Contrary to all appearances, it possesses the potency of life and increase. So what is sown in giving is to grow in accordance with God's will for that purpose. So let's look at the last part of verse 6.

Now, he who sows sparingly also reaps sparingly, and he who sows bountifully also reaps bountifully. Well, you know, that's actually a principle of life, right? You might tell that to your son or daughter. You might say, you know, the amount of time you put into something is directly related to what you get out of it. So it's not only in the giving domain, it's a life principle.

But in this principle of giving, he or the one who sows sparingly Sparingly is the idea of not as moderately, slightly, just a little bit, not too much. Sparingly tells us, and it modifies the verb here, it tells us the way in which we are sowing. We're not putting a lot into it. But the motivation, we know, should be gracious. We'll also reap sparingly. So the reaping is in the manner that we sowed. If you put in slightly or a little bit, you'll get a little bit in return. And several verses in scripture, Galatians is one of those ones that speaks to that. Do not be deceived. God is not mocked. Whatever a man sows, this will he also reap. And then Proverbs, it talks about this principle.

There are those who withhold more than is fitting, or what is justly due, but its result is only want. So, sowing sparingly is not the way to go in giving. The way to go in giving is the last part of this verse. And it's interesting, I didn't, you know, once again, it pays to spend some time looking at the There's actually some words that are there in the original but don't come out in the translation. So you could render an expanded version of this last part of the verse.

The one sowing and the preposition therefore are for the purpose of a blessing or bounty to others. So what you're sowing has a purpose. You're sowing for a blessing or for a bounty. So grace giving looks at the benefit of the receiver. When you give something under grace, you're looking, this is to benefit God's work in some ministry. That's what you're looking for. You're not looking to yourself and saying, well that's going to make me look like a better person.

You're looking to what the effect it will have under God's grace. In reality, God's gift Through us, we're only conduits by His grace. Also, God is the only one that can bestow a blessing. We aren't blessing people by giving money to that ministry. God is blessing them and using that money for His purposes.

Shall also reap a blessing and again that there's a prep that preposition was left out and you know though with a blessing is That preposition was left out. So it's with a blessing and reminded me of this from Acts 20 35 Remember the words that the Lord Jesus himself said it's more blessed to give than to receive So next week we're going to go back. We're going to review this first a little bit and go on to verse 7 which talks more about the idea of giving and But here's a summary for this week. My brother Hal's comments here again.

Paul was in a settled state about the readiness of the Corinthian gifts and it's pretty obvious. Paul is sending Titus and the others to get the gift organized and the Macedonians are coming with him so it can be received properly when he comes. Paul's focus in his missionary travels is on the gospel, the good news. He does not want it to be encumbered by the collection for the poor saints in Jerusalem. This collection from the Macedonians and the Achaia was for God's glory.

So hopefully that's helpful. We have two more sessions on giving. Paul doesn't let us go. Mike and I kind of, wow, Paul, you know how to You know it's God's Word, and so we treat every bit as important, so we're going to teach it that way so and there's some cool next week There's some cool verses so Let's close in prayer dear Heavenly Father. We thank you so much Lord for them the blessings We have we thank you that we can we can serve you as we as we've given ourselves I mean to you and to the to admit the ministry that you have us involved in Lord and then we can think about giving help us to have that in the right order and to glorify You. In Christ's name, Amen.