Scripture: 2 Corinthians 9:6-15
My mother was a collector of Lladró porcelain figurines. They were these beautiful, delicate ceramic knickknacks that she put on a shelf behind glass in a hutch in the so-called “living room” of the house I grew up in. “Living room” was an ironic name for this room—since no one actually lived in the living room. We lived in the den of our home. That’s where the TV was. We lived in the kitchen of our home. We lived in our bedrooms. We only ventured into the “living room” once or twice year!
Basically no one was allowed in the living room unless we were entertaining Queen Elizabeth II or something! Which was not very often. The living room looked like a museum. Mom kept it that way!
But my point is, Mom’s Lladró figurines were for decoration only; they were not to be played with; they were not action figures, for instance. Even though, to a four- or five-year-old kid, they looked deceptively like action figures. And if I played with them—which is to say, if I actually took them off the shelf and put them to use—I got into big trouble. They were not to be used; they were to be put on a shelf, where they looked pretty and collected dust.
I confess that, at my sinful worst, I often want my Christian faith to be like these Lladró figurines. Something I possess—something that has great value to me—but something that I don’t need to put into practice in any meaningful way! “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding,” the proverb says…? No thanks! I love to lean on my own understanding, thank you very much!
No, at my sinful worst, I would rather depend not on God, whom I can’t see, but on things that I can see and touch. Because that’s so much easier!
Yet our Lord insists that we live by faith in him alone—and not by what we can see or feel or even reason our way through with logic and common sense—as if God weren’t at the center of our lives, our world, and our universe!
Pastor and author Randy Alcorn describes a trip to Egypt to visit some missionary friends there. These missionaries took him to a graveyard. They showed Alcorn the dusty tombstone of missionary “William Borden 1887–1913.” Alcorn writes,
Borden, a Yale graduate and heir to great wealth, rejected a life of ease in order to bring the gospel to Muslims. Refusing even to buy himself a car, Borden gave away hundreds of thousands of dollars to missions. After only four months of zealous ministry in Egypt, he contracted spinal meningitis and died at age twenty-five.
I dusted off the epitaph on Borden’s grave. After describing his love for God and sacrifices for Muslim people, the inscription ended with a phrase I’ve never forgotten:
“Apart from faith in Christ, there is no explanation for such a life.”[1]
Apart from faith in Christ, there is no explanation for such a life.
Oh, Lord, may the same be said of me and your people at Five Forks Methodist some day! May observers and onlookers, even critics and enemies, be unable to make sense of the things we do in our lives and in our church unless they understand that we’re doing it for you, Lord! Amen.
That’s how the apostle James wants us Christians to live in chapter 2 of his letter when he says, “Faith without works is dead.”[2] The faith that will save us, in the future, when we stand before God in Final Judgment—is a faith that expresses itself right now through our actions, through our good works… Our faith will only save us if it’s a faith that makes a profound difference in the way we live right now… As James says in chapter 2, verse 18:
Now someone may argue, “Some people have faith; others have good deeds.” But I say, “How can you show me your faith if you don’t have good deeds? I will show you my faith by my good deeds.”[3]
Paul makes this point in today’s scripture… He wants the Corinthians to do what James says—to show people their faith, to demonstrate their faith, through good deeds—and in the case of what he’s writing about in today’s scripture, he wants them to show their faith through one particular “good deed”: which is, giving a large financial gift for the sake of Christ and his Church.
You see, Paul is asking mostly Gentile churches around the Mediterranean—including the church at Corinth—to collect a financial offering for their fellow Christians who live in Jerusalem… These Christians are Jewish believers, and they are struggling. Because of their Christian faith, they’ve been victims of persecution and imprisonment; many have lost their livelihoods. To make matters worse, they’ve been victims of a recent famine. So they’re going hungry. They desperately need help.
And these Corinthians promised to help about a year or so earlier, before Paul wrote 1 Corinthians,[4] but a year later, there are indications in 2 Corinthians that their initial enthusiasm for helping has waned…
So now Paul is attempting, once again, to fire these people up about giving this financial offering. And listen to what he says in verse 13, which, for clarity, I’ll read in the New Living Translation: “As a result of your ministry, they [meaning the Christians in Jerusalem] will give glory to God. For your generosity to them and to all believers will prove that you are obedient to the Good News of Christ.”
Notice those words: “will prove…” In other words, getting back to James, these Gentile Corinthians, by giving this extravagant gift, will demonstrate to these Jewish Christians that the Gentiles’ faith is genuine.
Why is that important to Paul? Remember: he’s spent his missionary career as the “apostle to the Gentiles.” Paul and his fellow missionaries have worked hard, even fought hard at times, to prove to Paul’s fellow Jewish Christians that even uncircumcised Gentiles—who don’t follow Old Testament dietary laws, who don’t observe other ceremonial laws—can be authentically Christian through faith in Christ alone!
And Paul knows that this extravagant financial gift from Gentile believers to Jewish believers will serve as proof that these Gentiles are now brothers and sisters in Christ!
Don’t misunderstand: Paul isn’t saying that by giving this gift, they’re earning salvation; rather, by giving this gift they’re demonstrating that the faith in Christ that they profess is genuine. Again, as James says, “I will show you my faith by my good deeds.” That’s what the Corinthians will do through this extravagant gift.
Getting back that epitaph on the missionary’s tombstone: “Apart from their faith in Christ, there is no explanation for why these Corinthians are being so generous with their money… for people they don’t even know.”
But…
In order for them to give generously and extravagantly, you know what these Corinthians need? Faith!
It’s going to take faith, for instance, for these Corinthians to believe an astonishing and lavish promise from God in today’s scripture… in verse 8: “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”—including the good work of giving generously for God’s kingdom. Do you hear how comprehensive this promise is? “All grace… all sufficiency… in all things… at all times.” What does it mean? I like the way the New Living Translation puts it… The NLT sacrifices eloquence for the sake of clarity when it reads, “And God will generously provide all you need. Then you will always have everything you need and plenty left over to share with others.”
Then verse 11: “You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way…”
So, putting these verses together, what is God’s astonishing promise to us believers?
Nothing less than this: When we give generously, God will always provide for our needs… He’ll give us enough to live on… and then some… God will actually give us more than we need to live on.
Why will he give us more? Is it so we can enjoy our wealth for ourselves, so we can upgrade our lifestyles, so we can build a bigger nest egg, so we can build bigger houses and buy more expensive cars, so we can retire earlier and more comfortably, so we can leave our children and grandchildren a larger inheritance?
Not at all… According to today’s scripture, God gives us more than we need so that we can take that excess amount and give it away for the sake of Christ and our love for others!
In other words, when we give generously… God will always give us more than enough to live on… Why? So that we can continue to give generously. It’s a never ending cycle: God giving so we can give…
Again… that’s a bold and astonishing promise!
And I’ll be the first to admit, this promise can be easily misunderstood or misinterpreted or, let’s face it, deliberately twisted around and abused—especially in the case of “prosperity gospel” preachers like Benny Hinn and Creflo Dollar and others. And their deliberate distortion of this promise sounds something like this:
If you sow a big financial seed into this ministry today, God has promised to multiply it back to you a hundredfold! Paul says in 2 Corinthians 9 that whoever sows generously will reap generously, so your giving guarantees a supernatural financial harvest in your bank account!
Shame on anyone who preaches something like that! Surely they know better! Whether they do or not, they will stand before God one day and answer for it!
To say the least, “prosperity” for ourselves is hardly what God promises. God’s promise is, we give generously and God will supply all our needs. As more than a few preachers have said, God promises to supply our needs, not our greeds. Prosperity preachers somehow miss that part.
And they also miss the part where Paul says that whatever abundance God gives us beyond our needs is intended by God to be given away… to supply the needs of others… to the praise and glory of God… Period.
One pastor asks us to imagine wanting to give an expensive gift to someone. We carefully put it in a box with packing peanuts to keep it safe, tape it up, and leave it with UPS to deliver to the intended recipient.
How would we feel if the UPS driver—who was supposed to deliver the gift—decided to keep it for himself?
If Paul’s words about God’s gracious gifts to us are true—and they are—that’s what it’s like for us, God’s children, to take these abundant gifts from God—which he intends for others—and keep it for ourselves!
Also… let’s notice the words at the beginning of verse 8: “God is able…” This “multiplying effect” of generous giving—in which we always have enough for ourselves and enough left over to give away—is nothing other than a miracle of God. It isn’t something we can calculate on a spreadsheet. God’s math is not our math.
Again, this is where faith comes in… Remember the Rich Young Ruler. Jesus tells him to sell all of his abundant possessions and give the proceeds to the poor. And what does this man do? He walks away sad! Why?
Because the Rich Young Ruler knows how to do math. And he knows that what Jesus asks him to do simply doesn’t add up! If he sells it all and gives it all away, he thinks… he will die. That’s what common sense and reason tell him. Because apart from faith in Christ, there is no explanation for giving it all away.
Unlike Paul, he doesn’t believe—that if he gives it all away—that any kind of supernatural “enrichment” from God will be forthcoming!
Is he right?
Would our Lord Jesus Christ let this man starve… especially when our Lord himself asked the man to give it all away in the first place?
Of course not!
The Rich Young Ruler would have survived… In fact, he would have thrived even if he never lived as comfortably as he did before! Because he would now be living by faith in Jesus Christ, the Bread of Life.[5] And he would be drinking from Christ’s living water, which would “become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”[6] He would be living according to Christ’s word in Matthew 6:33—“seeking first God’s kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things—all these daily necessities—would be added to him.”
He would be living off of the supernatural provision of God… so that this formerly rich man would be just fine!
If only that young man had the faith to live that way!
If only he had the faith to live like someone else we meet in the gospels… someone who gave everything away!
I’m talking here about that widow from Luke chapter 21, who puts in the offering box at the temple literally all the money she has. “And [Jesus] said, ‘Truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all that she had to live on.’”[7]
Notice: She put in all that she had to live on. Keep in mind, Jesus watched her do it. And he didn’t even try to stop her! He didn’t rush up to her and say, “Ma’am, our Father wants you to be generous with your offering, by all means… But you’ve got to be practical. You can’t put in all that you have to live on! That’s crazy! How will you eat?”
No… Instead, he commends her! And he’s telling us disciples, “Be like her! Don’t be like these far wealthier people who give only out of their abundance—such that they’ll hardly miss whatever amount of money they give!” People who give offerings only out of their abundance aren’t being faithful; they’re being fearful. Because, unlike Jesus, and unlike Paul, and unlike this poor widow they don’t believe that God will do anything supernatural through their generous giving!
But good news… There are plenty of Christians in our world today who do believe it… who put God’s astonishing promise of verses 8 through 11 into practice every day. One of them is John Piper, the now retired pastor at Bethlehem Baptist in Minneapolis. Piper has written many bestselling Christian books and has been a popular conference speaker for decades. (In fact, I saw him at a conference a few years ago.)
Piper took steps early on to avoid the temptations with which prosperity would otherwise confront him.
After he published his first bestselling book, Desiring God, he resolved to put an automatic limit on all the earnings that he personally received:
He said,
With the successful sales of [my first book] Desiring God starting in 1987, I saw that there could be substantial income from writing and speaking. I resolved that I should not keep this money for myself but channel it to ministry. I never doubted that the Lord would provide us with a salary that would be sufficient for our family. So I saw no reason to keep the money that came in from the books and speaking.[8]
Later, Piper created a church-affiliated charitable foundation, with an independent board of directors, to oversee the spending of these royalties, as well as all of his many speaking honorariums.
He also practiced what he called a “graduated tithe” so that, regardless of the salary his church paid him—and they continued to give him raises over the years—he never let himself keep—by the end of his 33-year pastoral career in 2013—a penny more than more than $100,000 a year. The rest he gave away. And we’re talking millions of dollars every year!
Listen… John Piper loves John and Charles Wesley. But he isn’t a Methodist… Yet he exemplifies John Wesley’s three rules about money:
- Make all you can. (We contemporary American Methodists love this first rule!)
- Save all you can. (By this Wesley didn’t mean “save it for a rainy day” or invest it so you can enjoy a comfortable retirement. He actually meant to “save it by not wasting it”—to be thrifty.)
- So that you can give all you can.
What would our lives look like if we had the courage to implement Wesley’s three rules for ourselves? Deciding that we only need to live on this much money and no more… And everything else we give away?
Okay… There’s one more astonishing promise in today’s scripture I want to focus on. See verse 10: “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.”
We’ve already talked about the meaning of the first part of this verse… It’s that last bit I want to focus on: through generous, even extravagant giving, Paul says, God will “increase the harvest of [our] righteousness.”
In other words, God promises to change us from within as we give generously to God’s mission in this world. Through generous giving, God will make us want to be more generous! Through generous giving, we will fall more deeply in love with Jesus, such that we will want all the more to please him and do his will. Remember verse 7: “God loves a cheerful giver.” It brings our Father pleasure when his children give generously. So of course our hearts will be set on doing pleasing God in this way! Because… through generous giving, God is changing our hearts!
Through generous giving, God is growing within us more of the fruit of the Spirit… more “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control.” Do you want more of those virtues in your life? Do you want more joyin your life… more of the kind of lasting happiness found only in a relationship with Christ? That’s better than any amount of money, you’ve got to admit!
But here’s God’s guaranteed way to experience more joy in life… Give generously to support God’s mission in this world… and the Holy Spirit will work within you to produce more joy! Joy is one fruit of this “harvest of righteousness” in verse 10.
So let’s say you’re feeling far away from God right now—which can happen to any of us Christians from time to time… But let’s say you’re going through a dry spell in your relationship with Christ… As a pastor I would diagnose the problem by asking questions like, “Are you worshiping regularly? Are you praying regularly… reading scripture regularly… receiving the Lord’s Supper regularly… enjoying Christian fellowship regularly?”
But also—I’ve never asked this question of someone before, but I should—“Are you giving generously?”
Jesus said, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Matthew 6:21. Your heart, Jesus says, follows your money. Give your money away for the sake of Christ and guess what happens? Your heart will move closer and closer to Jesus!
I like the way Randy Alcorn puts it in his book, The Treasure Principle:
As surely as the compass needle follows north, your heart will follow your treasure. This is a remarkable truth. If I want my heart somewhere, all l need to do is put my money there.
I’ve heard people say, “I want more of a heart for missions.” I always respond, “Jesus tells you exactly how to get it. Put your money in missions, and your heart will follow.”
Do you wish you cared more about eternal things? Then reallocate some of your money, maybe most of it, from temporal to eternal things. Watch what happens. You’ll be amazed… and happy.[9]
Remember the movie Schindler’s List? Remember the end of the movie. Just as the war was ending and the concentration camp was being liberated, Jewish workers from the camp express gratitude to Oskar Schindler for all the lives that he saved. They present him with a list of the hundreds of people he saved from destruction under the Nazis.
Yet, is Schindler happy or satisfied about it? No! He breaks down in tears… He sobs uncontrollably… as he thinks of the hundreds or thousands of more lives he could have saved, if he had only done this… or that… or given this… or given that…
Brothers and sisters, are we going to feel something like that on Judgment Day? Will we feel sorry that we invested so much in earthly treasure for ourselves—which is passing away anyway—and that we failed to invest adequately in heavenly treasure that lasts for eternity?
Randy Alcorn urges us not to be asking “how your investment will be paying off in thirty years. Ask how it will be paying off in thirty million years.”[10]
That’s what we’re doing in this “Bold Faith” campaign… investing in something that will be paying off for us in thirty million years!
You know, I hope, that this campaign is not mostly about a building. It’s mostly about our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren… but not only or mostly ours… It’s mostly about people in the future we may never meet… at least on this side of eternity.
But consider this: they are people we may yet meet on the other side! There will be future generations of people who will be in heaven in the first place because, back in 2025, these Christians at Five Forks Methodist gave all they could to build a church… that makes disciples who nurture disciples to share Christ’s light…
Generation after generation… Shining the light of Christ to make disciples who nurture disciples to share Christ’s light.
And it all begins with the commitment we are making today… and on our follow-through on that commitment in these weeks ahead!
Let us give in such a way that we can say with Paul, in verse 15, “Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!”
[Invitation to altar and to hand in commitment card…]
[1] Randy Alcorn, The Treasure Principle (Colorado Springs: Multnomah, 2017), 39-40.
[2] Paraphrase of James 2:17 and 26
[3] James 2:18 NLT
[4] See 1 Corinthians 16:1-3
[5] John 6:35
[6] John 4:14
[7] Luke 21:3-4 ESV
[8] Collin Hansen, “Piper on Pastors’ Pay,” desiringgod.org, 6 November 2013. Accessed 16 October 2025.
[9] Alcorn, 46-7.
[10] Ibid., 12.