Pastor Jen: And all God's people said, amen. Oh, well, church, I don't know about you but in our house, for some reason, when we are doing just life together and not just in our home but when we're out and about, Friends seems to come up. And I I don't mean Friends like we have friends. I mean, Friends, the TV series. Do we have any fans in here? Alright. Well, today, we are gonna be talking about generosity, and I thought, you know what? This is a good illustration on what not to do and friends came up. And so I have a little bit of a funny and I'm gonna let you listen here for a moment.
Phoebe: A great time last night. Yeah. So you gonna call this one back?
Joey: No.
Phoebe: What what are you talking about? Sarah's great.
Joey: Oh, really? You don't know what your great friend did? We're out to dinner. Okay? We were getting along, having a really nice time. I was thinking she was really cool. And then, out of nowhere,
Phoebe: That's it? That's why you won't go out with her again? So she took some fries. Big deal.
Joey: Hey. Hey. Look. It's not about a few fries. It's about what the fries represent.
Phoebe: What?
Joey: All food.
Phoebe: Oh, I'm I'm sorry. I I I can't believe I set you up with such a monster.
Joey: Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Look. I take a girl out. She can order whatever she wants. The more, the better. Alright? Just don't order a garden salad and then eat my food. That's a good way to lose some fingers.
Phoebe: Oh, my God, you're here. Listen to this.
Rachael: Uh-huh.
Phoebe: So, Joy and my friend are out last night. They're having dinner and she reaches over and takes a few of his fries.
Rachael: Oh, no.
Phoebe: What? You you know about that the the plate thing?
Rachael: Oh, yeah. Yeah. No. Joey doesn't share food. I mean, just just last week, we were having breakfast and and he had a couple grapes on his plate.
Phoebe: You wouldn't let her have a grape?
Rachael: Oh, no. Not me. Emma.
Joey: Joey doesn't share food.
Pastor Jen: Do we have any Joeys? Thank you for admitting because you are gonna hear that we are not to be Joeys in our life. If you you have children or maybe a spouse, you know that when you have something on your plate, it's bound to happen that if it is really good, someone is going to be reaching across to your plate and taking that chocolate cheesecake from you. And we do it, don't we? I mean, really.
At least we should. If we love the person that is sitting across from us and they really want to have a bite of our steak, we are going to share it with them. Peer parents understand sharing food the best, especially parents with littles. I remember when when my girls were teeny tiny, we would go and we would sit down at a restaurant and instead of getting two or three entrees, I would just get one entree and I would share it with the girls because there would always be enough for me and them as littles to share. We share because we care.
We share because we love the people who are across from us. And this is how you know I love my children more than life itself. Remember this. Because I am now sharing my clothing with my 11 year old. She can wear my shirts. She can wear my shorts and ready. She can wear my shoes. This is a big deal because there are things in our life worth sharing. But even more importantly, there are people in our life worth sharing with. To share, to give, it's a biblical concept. All throughout scripture, we see God giving and sharing and giving and sharing. God gave Adam and Eve life.
God gave creation for them and all of us to care for it. God provided safety for the Israelites when they were leaving Egypt. God parted the Red Sea for Moses. God parted the Jordan River for Joshua. God gives and god shares always.
One of the most famous passages, if not the most famous passage and I guarantee you, if you have been raised in the church or even if you are new to the church, you have either heard of this or you haven't memorized. I'm going to ask you to say it with me from John three sixteen. Let's say the first half of that scripture together. For God so loved the world that he gave his Son, his only Son. You've got it better than I do.
That's my point. For God so, what is it? Loved that he gave. What did God do? Loved and gave and we were created in God's image to say it with me, love and give.
We are to be generous. God was generous. We are to be generous. Jesus, if we follow him in his life and his ministry, Jesus was generous. And as followers of Jesus, if we are gonna call ourselves Christian, then we are to be generous too.
Like it or not, we cannot not, Nicholas, share food. Kyle. We cannot not share our food. We cannot not share anything that we have or have been given. We were created to be this way and as followers of Jesus, we are commanded to be generous.
The apostle Paul, he was speaking to the leaders of the church of Ephesus and he gathered them together. He sat down with the elders and he reminded them of this, of their call as followers of Jesus. He said, in everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work, we must help the weak remembering the words of Jesus that he said himself, it is more blessed to give than receive. And isn't this true? Have you ever done something nice for someone and you just felt so good inside of you because you went out of your way.
You went out of your way to make the phone call, went out of your way to sit down and have a conversation with another person. You called the new mom and said, hey, can I come over? And when you got there, you not only brought her a dinner, but then you sat and you did her dishes and you helped fold her laundry. When you do for others, you are blessed. It is more blessed to give than receive.
And something happens inside of our body. God has created us to release oxytocin. This is like the feel good drug that's legal when we share. You are blessed when you give. You are blessed when you do for others.
You are blessed when you love. Now, here's the tricky part. We have to be keenly aware that this can be easier said than what? It can be. Maybe for you, especially if you weren't raised this way or even if you have gotten out of practice to share and to give.
Because if we are not careful, we can easily fall into the trap of it's my food. You order your own food. Or it's my money. It's my toy. And when I'm talking about toys, I'm talking about cars and boats and all of the stuff that we collect, even my shoes.
It's my friend. It's my family. Well, it's my time. It's my position. It's mine.
That's not very giving, is it? And I'll let y'all decide where to fill in that blank because this is the Lord speaking to each of us as individuals and as a church. We especially can fall into this trap because of the nature in which we live or the nature of of of our culture. Right? And I am proud to be an American, but we have some work to do around this individualistic ideology or the consumerism that keeps our economy afloat.
So we have to balance this and really take a hard look into the mirror at ourself and into our heart. We're taught that we are to say, well, I've earned that role or I worked hard to to buy this toy or this is my money or this is. Again, fill in the blank. We somehow put up barriers and walls and we don't let others in and we don't want to share. And if you don't like this sermon, you're gonna have to take it up with Jesus.
Because I don't necessarily like it either. But he loves us. And like a good parent who loves us, they tell us the things we don't necessarily want to hear, but they know it's gonna make us, what, better. And as a people of God, as a people of God, we cannot think about self all the time. In fact, God's word and just a few places I'm gonna share today but all throughout scripture, he teaches us this from Psalm 24:1.
It reads, the earth is the lord's and everything in it. The world and all who live in it. Who does it belong to? God. Hebrews two ten, everything belongs to God.
Now, look at the person next to you and say, you belong to God. Now, look into the person on the other side of you or behind you for Ashley. Say, you belong to God. You belong to God. Now, go back to the first person and say, what you have belongs to God.
And to the other person say, what you have belongs to God. You know, our deed, our our name might be written on the deed that we hold in our hands and our name and this is a hard one. Our name might be passed on to our children but the house belongs to God. The church belongs to God. Our children belong to God.
Colossians 1:16-17 read, for in him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth visible and invisible whether thrones or powers or authorities, let that sink in. What position you hold, what throne, what power, what authority you have. Those are our leaders in our world. Those are our leaders in our country. Those are our leaders in our state and our local government, but those are also our leaders right here within our churches, within our schools, within our places of work, within our nonprofits in which we serve and volunteer our time.
In him, all things were created in heaven and earth. All things have been created through him and for who? God. Not me, not you, but God. What do we know about God?
We've said it earlier that God loves and God gives. Tell me again, God loves and God gives. And as God's creation, we are to love and give. We're to be generous and I'm not talking about random acts of generosity here, not offering one day to buy someone's meal or randomly putting money in an offering plate to help the children or the youth ministry or randomly offering to mow our neighbor's front lawn. Those are all good and I would encourage you to continue to do something but generosity looks like being purpose full in the gifts that we have been given.
In the resources that we have been given, generosity looks like always loving God and always giving for God. Generosity is purposeful. Think about Jesus. Jesus didn't say, worship the lord your God with some of your heart.
Phoebe: What did he say? All of your Jesus didn't just give some of his life for us. Jesus gave what? All of his life for us. And as followers of Jesus, this is exactly what generosity looks like. Loving God and loving people with all of our hearts, being purposeful in choosing each day, each gift, each opportunity, each dollar to love God and to love our neighbor as ourself.
Pastor Jen: And this is why I think sharing food for a parent is so easy to do because we love our children. I think it becomes a little harder when my husband says, Jen, I want a piece of your cheesecake. And we've got to wrestle with that and we have to name it and then we have to say you can have it all. And that's hard because I like me some cheesecake with strawberry drizzled over top of it. Cake is so good.
As Jesus followers, we have to make the choice to use each day to love God and to love others. We've gotta get up in the morning and choose to give to our families, choose to give to our work, choose to give to our churches, choose to give to our communities because God gave to us and if we're gonna follow Jesus, then we're going to live like Jesus. Here are a few examples. What this looks like. It's choosing in the realms of our influence to say that the person who looks up to us, maybe our children, maybe a colleague, coming alongside, mentoring, and saying, I believe in you.
But not just saying it one time, but all of the time, and walking with them through life, investing in that person. It's staying late at work or at church to help clean up and to complete a project. When we allow our shoulder to be used for someone to cry on, when we use our voice to speak up for a friend or a family member who might not necessarily be in the room, but we are gonna speak up on their behalf. We are going to use our time and our gift of our voice to love them. I heard Simon Sinek say that what could be more powerful sometimes, sometimes what can be more powerful than money is our time and our energy.
Isn't it true? He used the example of someone who is moving, that you might be able to write a $5,000 check for them to move their family from one place to another. But sometimes what's more valuable, and this is physically if you are able to, because money is sometimes the best thing you can do is give because you can't physically be present. But what might be even more important to your relationship, to your friendship, is showing up at the house and help packing the boxes, and then loading the boxes onto the truck, and then getting in the truck and driving across town or driving across the state or driving across the country to unload again and to unpack again. Because what matters most to God is the relationships that we have with others and the time and the energy that we put in to loving one another because Jesus did that for us.
Amen? So, we need to be generous. We need to give. We need to share. Rebecca Rice at our Bible study last week, she said, she said, you know, you don't follow a casket to a graveside and behind it is a U Haul.
We can't take our stuff with us. I wonder what stuff we're trying to hold onto. And ultimately, the stuff that we consume won't ever really bring us satisfaction. We have to change our mindset. We have to change the way we act and do life.
And I get it that this is all counterculture but the last time I checked Jesus was all counterculture and we have to fix our eyes and our hearts heavenward and we have to follow him and to follow him is to love and to give. So, I'm gonna ask you church. I want you to be in prayer. I want you to go home and I want you to sit around the table with your spouse or your family or with friends. And instead of having conversations about, oh, man, I really wish Jen would have said this or I wish Jen would have said that, forget forget all the itty nitty gritty picking stuff.
We do that sometimes, don't we? I'm using me as an example. Sometimes, we sit around the table to just unload about other people. Can we knock that off? But what I really want you to do is I want you to go and sit around the table and talk about the hard stuff, the good stuff, the Jesus stuff that we're learning today.
And I want you to really be in prayer with your family and ask yourself, am I living as generous as god has been generous to me? I want you to think it in the context of your finances because something about where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. But I also want you to think about it in the context of your relationships and what are you putting into the relationships around you with your spouse and your children, with your family and your friends and your church and community? Are you being generous?
And ask God, God, what are you calling me to do? What are you calling us to do as a family? What are you calling us to do as a church? Where is my presence needed the most? Where are my gifts needed the most? Can I serve more within the church?
Are there places outside of the church, nonprofits where I can pour out my time and my energy? What about the teens that God has placed in our midst or the teens we have yet to reach with the gospel of Jesus or our children or maybe it's with our young adults or older adults. I want you to take what we talk about on Sunday and really think about it and talk about it and then step out in faith and say, yeah. This is the area of ministry that my family has been called to, or this is the ministry that I have been called to as individuals because I guarantee you, I'm gonna be asking those questions and trying to answer them as a church. We need to love as God loved, and we need to give as Jesus gave.
Over the next year, we're gonna be having some serious conversations about this very subject. I shared last week that we're gonna look hard at starting a second service, that we're gonna look hard at ways we can be an outreach to Rutter High School and continue to do the work that we've started. And how can we be an active church that is being generous? Church, I want you to pray with me and be a part of the conversation to love God, to love people, and to share hope. Amen?
Amen. Now I bet there's some folks who are wondering what happened on Joey's last date. So I'm gonna close with this video.
Waiter: Garden salad for the lady.
Joey: Oh, that looks great. Good ordering.
Waiter: Seafood platter for the gentlemen and extra fries. Enjoy.
Joey's date: Those fries look delicious.
Joey: Oh, didn't know you like french fries. Help yourself. What's mine is yours.
Joey's date: Wow. Are those stuffed clams?
Joey: Yes. They are my stuffed clams. How about those fries, though?
Joey's date: They are delicious.
Joey: Yeah. You are beautiful. You know?
Joey's date: That is so sweet.
Joey: Now look what you did.
Joey's date: What is the matter with you?
Joey: I don't like it when people take food off of my plate. Okay?
Joey's date: But you just said what's mine is yours.
Joey: Well, didn't mean it.
Joey's date: Fine. Sorry. I didn't think it was that big a deal.
Joey: I'm sorry. I I'm overreacting. Okay? Just when it comes to food, I have certain rules. Okay? I mean, there are things you do and, you know, things that you that you don't do. I really am sorry about before.
And the moral of the story, as believers in Jesus, do not be a Joey in this situation. Be a Jesus follower. Love and give. And all God's people said, amen. Let us pray.
Pastor Jen: Most gracious God, I thank you for this day, and I thank you for the word that you challenge us with. I ask that we can continue to lean in and to listen to your word. Help us be a giving church, a giving people who give as you have gave your Son, Jesus, for us. I thank you and I praise you in Jesus name. Amen.