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Welcome to our study of 2 Corinthians chapter 8. This is day one in our look at
this great chapter of the scriptures. We're going to look at verses 1 to 3
today.

These are chapters that are all about, well in one way they're about investment.
You think what's the wisest investment to make these days? And I'm not about to
tell you whether it's stocks or real estate or mutual funds.

I don't know. And even the experts can disagree about it. But I do know the
general principle.

And the general principle is the best investment is that which brings the most
return for your money over the longest period of time. So let me invite you to
invest in eternity. Eternity.

You can invest in eternity. You can invest in the plan of God. You can invest in
the people of God.

You can invest yourself and your possessions. That's what surprises many people.
And your possessions in that which last forever.

How do you make a wise investment in eternity? It's in one word. The word is
give.

When you give of yourself, when you give of your time, when you give of your
money, when you give of your things, you're investing in eternity. And what's
the attitude of heart that you need to invest in eternity? It's also in one
word.

The word is generosity. You need to be generous. When you selflessly give of
yourself and your possessions to carry out the plan of God, to love the people
of God, you are making an investment that's going to at last all of us.

Now if you're going to invest with some bank or real estate company, some money,
they'll send you oftentimes an investment proposal telling you why you should
invest with them. You might call 2 Corinthians chapters 8 and 9 God's investment
proposal. He's telling us why when we give, when we invest in other people's
lives, it pays great benefits not only in their lives, but also in our lives and
also in eternity.

These are chapters that tell you and I how to become a generous person. God is
certainly generous. Look at all He's given to us.

Look at all He's given to you. And those who get to know Him desire to be like
Him. Now let me just quickly give you the background.

Paul is taking up an offering in all of the Gentile churches all over the world
of that day for the Jewish churches in Judea which are suffering from a famine.
So as he travels and he preaches, he's also taking up this offering to take back
to those starving people in Judea. Paul believed in the ministry of taking
offerings.

He believed in the importance of churches giving to meet the needs that were in
the world because he knew we're the body of Christ. So as we give, we act like
the body of Christ in the world. Now with all that God's given to us, it may
seem a little strange to realize that we as Christians need encouragements to
give, but I certainly do.

We certainly do. And Paul gives us those kinds of encouragements to be generous
in our lives, that kind of generosity that the end result is joy, the end result
is blessing. He talks about it in this chapter.

Listen to what he has to say in verses 1 to 3 as he starts out. "And now,
brothers, we want you to know about the grace that God has given the Macedonian
churches. Out of the most severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme
poverty welled up in rich generosity.

For I testified that they gave as much as they were able and even beyond their
ability. " Now as Paul starts to talk about giving here, the first thing he says
is giving is a grace. It's a gift.

The grace of giving, the grace that God has given these churches to be able to
give. The word grace, the word give, it's the same word in the Greek language
and he's talking about the giving of grace and the grace of giving. Everything
that he says has the foundation that giving is a gift.

God has given to us so we get to give to others. It's not some duty, it's not
some requirement, it's not some tradition, it is a gift. God gives to us and
it's a grace gift that we can pass those gifts on to others that have needs.

We can pass those gifts on through his church, the body of Christ, to let people
know what Jesus is like. That it's all grace. It's all a gift.

God's given to us so we're giving to others. With that in mind, Paul talks about
how do you become a generous person? Now you have to realize as we walk through
this that most of us are not naturally generous.

We need God's Spirit within us. We need God's encouragement, God's word in our
lives for this to happen. But when we become generous, God opens, he unlocks
some doors in our lives that cannot be unlocked any other way.

How do you become a generous person? First thing that Paul says, just walking
through the principles of what we learn in this chapter is to become generous
you have to give regardless of the circumstances. You give regardless of your
circumstances.

Generosity is not the result of some circumstantial or material abundance. If
you wait for the right circumstances to be generous, you won't be generous.
You'll never get enough to create an attitude of generosity because generosity
is not created by the things that you're surrounded with.

It's created by the love of God within you. It's a real misnomer that you have
to have a lot in order to be really generous. Jesus destroyed that myth as he
taught his disciples the importance of the gift of a widow's might.

Look at those coins that she's given. Look at that little that she's given. They
may be the smallest offering they've ever seen, but Jesus says that's the
greatest offering you've ever seen because she's given all she has.

When you give, you give regardless of your circumstances. Generosity in your
life results in joy in your life when you give in this kind of way. Look at what
Paul says here.

He says they're overwhelming joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich
generosity. He's saying joy triumphed over their circumstances. Joy made the
decision, not their circumstances.

Generosity is an attitude towards your possessions that results from a heart
that's filled with joy. Knowing that God is there, he's going to take care of my
needs. Knowing that God is there, he loves me no matter what.

Joy is the fertile ground from which generosity grows. That's where it starts. A
joyful person is a generous person.

That's how you learn to start to give regardless of your circumstances. That's
generosity. Paul says the second thing about generosity in these verses.

He says that you give beyond your ability. He says they gave in spite of their
circumstances and they gave beyond their ability. Now, what does that mean?

How do you do that? Giving for them, as he talks about these churches in
Macedonia, it wasn't a matter of adding up their accounts and doing what was
possible. He says they had deep poverty.

That word means rock bottom destitution, a beggar with no money and no
prospects. They didn't have anything, but they still gave something what they
could. They found that giving was a matter of sacrifice.

They found they were able to give all that they had and somehow still have some
left over. You'll never invest in eternity if you give what you're able to give,
because what we're able to give is what's left over. And how many of us have
left over time, left over money lying around?

If you give what's left over at the end of the month, there's nothing left over
at the end of the month, so you never give. You may want to give, you may hope
you could give. Well, they gave beyond their ability.

When we give beyond our abilities, it's not a matter then of what's left. It's a
matter of what's commanded by God. It's a matter of what's needed by others.

It's a matter of how do I serve the body of Christ, through the body of Christ
in this world? That's how you start to give beyond your ability. Paul talks
about genuine generosity in these verses.

We're going to talk about it all week. And it starts with a totally different
way of thinking. It's not my circumstances.

It's not my ability. It's what God's done for me. It's not how much.

It's how great He is. That's where you start with generosity. Our Father, as we
pray today, we begin by recognizing what a generous God you are.

You've given us life. You've given us salvation. You've given us eternity.

And then we look around us and we see your creation, and we realize the
generosity, the beauty of what you have made. You're a generous God, and we want
to be like you. So I pray for me, I pray for each of us, that the heart that we
have to be generous, that as we look at your word this week, that you would
unlock some things in our lives.

You would show us some new ways of living in our lives that would take that
heart of wanting to be generous and change it into a place where we could
actually be experiencing, be living out a generosity in our lives. We ask this
in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Tomorrow we're going to see Paul talks to us about where giving always has to
start.