You may be seated. Please turn in your Bible this morning to Galatians chapter 6. Galatians chapter 6. goodness sake it's a phrase that has come to express annoyance or surprise like annoyance for goodness sake will you please hurry up or surprise Titus lost his first tooth this week for goodness sake And the phrase is in the song that says that the big man in the red suit is coming to town. He sees you when you're sleeping. He knows when you're awake. He knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake. In the section of Galatians before us this morning, it is as though Paul is the one who first came up with the familiar saying, at least the truth behind it. He urges believers to do good for the sake of goodness because God is watching and is not mocked. Only those who do good will reap what is good. So do good for goodness sake. Let's read the text. Galatians 6, 6 through 10. Would you please stand for the reading of the word of God? Let the one who is taught the word share all good things with the one who teaches. Do not be deceived. God is not mocked for whatever one sows that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his flesh will from the flesh reap corruption. But the one who sows to the spirit will from the spirit reap eternal life. And let us not grow weary of doing good. For in due season we will reap if we do not give up. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone and especially to those who are of the household of faith. Join me please in prayer. We ask God to Do what only He can do, even as we preach His Word. And Father, that is what we're doing. We bow before You, Almighty God, Maker and Ruler of the heavens and every single, even the tiniest aspects of the earth, Your creation. It is all under Your purview. It is all under Your sovereignty and Your providence. And so, we recognize that we are here this morning. by your doing and for your glory. And it is our desire to then draw near, not so much to have something to say to you as to hear what you have to say to us. And so we open your word. And as we read these words that you have breathed out through the Apostle Paul, we pray for hearts that are sponge-like, that receive and soak up the riches of instruction that you have for us, and that you would take those words and those understandings deeper than the surface of comprehension into the heart where they would be embraced, welcomed, and they would allow to have their full result, that we would be transformed. and to walk in your likeness. And Lord, for those who might be in this place today, whose desperate need is forgiveness and cleansing, is a relationship that is set right, a justified relationship where they are declared righteous and promise glorification and given the privilege of being sons and daughters of God. We pray for them that you would awaken them from the darkness to the light. And guide and lead us as we proclaim your word that no errors are spoken, that what is true is brought to our attention, and that we are looking to you the entire time, seeing that this comes, this word comes ultimately from God. So it is in the name of our Savior Jesus that we pray. Amen. You may be seated. The work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of God's people is, as we've been seeing for a number of weeks here, it is multifaceted. We see God's Holy Spirit as we walk by Him. He produces fruit through our lives individually. But He also removes from us, as we looked at last week, He removes from us a need to be competitive. He brings us together as one, and so we're removing from us a competitive spirit. And so we do not jockey against one another, but pull together and bear one another's burdens. So we focused on these aspects of the work of the Spirit now for a number of weeks. And this morning, in this text, we see yet another manifestation of the work of the Holy Spirit in the household of God. He produces a spirit of generosity. which seeks to do good both inside and outside the body of believers. Paul expresses this truth by means of a series of exhortations here and they are intermingled with some significant matters of instruction about sowing. But Paul's main point is this, if we wanted to put it in a nutshell, God's instruction for his people this morning is this, do good. He wants us by the power of the Holy Spirit to do good. And so I aim this morning to explain to you the essence and character of what it is to do good. the doing good about which Paul speaks, but also to direct you to those who are to be the recipients of that goodness, as well as setting before you how important it is, how significant it is that we do good in this way. So let's start off with the essence of doing good. Notice with me that doing good weaves this section of Paul's letter together from the beginning to the end. beginning in verse six he says paul says that those who are taught must share all good things with the one who teaches and then he discusses the principle of reaping and sowing it is there to encourage the sharing of good and the doing of good and then after that in the closing couple of verses paul comes back to urge perseverance in doing good and to express the extent to which we ought to do good. So this section holds together by its emphasis from the beginning to the end on doing good, whether it's sharing all good things or just the simple words doing good. Therefore, we need to consider what is the essence of this thing that Paul refers to as doing good. In verse 6 Paul doesn't say doing good. We've noticed that. What does he say? He says certain ones must share good things. But the word good is there and the principle that is later expounded a little further in the text is there. The wording though different has the same intention. Paul is stressing that here that those who receive instruction, that is in the church, Those who receive the instruction must share all good things with the one who teaches. Share all good things speaks of the support financially and otherwise that the church should supply to its ministers who spend their time preparing and studying and praying in order to be instructors when the church comes together. Now I'm going to come back to this point again and flesh it out a little more fully, but for now I just want us to grasp that sharing good things here has to do with making financial provision. The expression connects with those references to do good that follow. So together these two ideas express In this context, the idea of goodness is narrowed from what we saw when we looked as goodness as the fruit of the Spirit, which is very broad. Here, it's very specific, and its context helps us understand that. Paul put these two ideas of sharing good things and doing good. He put these things together in 1 Timothy 6 also, where he was giving Timothy direction as to how the church should operate And in this case, too, he directly addressed the rich, and he was addressing how the rich should... live in this world. And he wrote concerning the rich these words. He says, Timothy, now charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. And then he said, they are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share. So doing good and sharing these good things. They were to share all good things and do good with their resources. This is word specifically directed at the rich. So those resources belong to God after all. He is the one who provides them and part of the reason that He provides them to us is so that we can be His channels of provision to others. Part of why you have the funds and the resources you have. is so that you can share all good things, so that you can do good. So in Galatians this is where the stress is, it's on how the Spirit of God is at work through Christ's people to use their finances and their resources to do good, to meet needs and provide for the well-being of specific persons. It's largely through giving and collecting donations that others are assisted materially. In the case of teachers, giving provides for their livelihood. It enables them to subsist, to provide for their needs and make ends meet. And in the case of others, it provides for those whose circumstances are such that they can't make it without help. Now, I'm not talking about those who won't, but those who can't. But that's what the majority of the collections and contributions in the New Testament were all about. When Paul met with the Jerusalem Council, remember that Paul went to, and we've seen that as we've studied through Galatians, they had this big summit, so to speak, there in Jerusalem. And they started with the doctrinal matters to get things cleared up, to make sure that everybody was on the same page about the gospel. and they cleared up those gospel doctrinal matters, and when the dust settled on them, there remained one thing that the apostles were concerned about. They asked Paul and company to remember the poor. And Paul said that was the very thing that he was eager to do, and he did. In fact, he already had remembered the poor, because when he came to Jerusalem, he came with food or he came with a collection for food for those who were going to be going through this famine. Now in the earliest days of Paul's ministry as an apostle he was then at Antioch remember Barnabas was at Antioch and Barnabas went and got Paul and brought him there and they were teaching the church together that's the church that sent them out on their mission. But while they were there some prophets came down from Jerusalem and one of them was named Agabus And Agabus, while they were there in Antioch, began to foretell that a great famine was coming to Judea especially. And so the Christians in Antioch determined to send relief to the brothers in Judea. And they sent it by the hands of Barnabas and Saul. And the conditions in Jerusalem did indeed become bad. And it occasioned another collection for many churches to do good to those who were still living there in Jerusalem. So these were collections that were taken. This was doing good and collections that were taken in order to dispel some of the hunger that was going on there. That collection was the centerpiece of several chapters about which Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians where Paul exhorted the Corinthians to give generously for this collection that was being taken in Jerusalem. It was there that Paul pointed to the example of another group of people called the Macedonians about whom Paul said they were impoverished And yet, they wanted to be able to share in this collection, and out of their poverty, there was an abundance that was given to alleviate the suffering of their fellow brothers and sisters. Paul called the collection an act of grace, and he reminded the Corinthians that God loves a cheerful giver. And in that very context, Paul mentioned the same principle that he mentions here in Galatians 6, the principle of reaping and sowing. He said, the point is this, whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Then get this, he pointed out that it is God who makes all grace to abound so that they have the sufficiency and the ability to abound in every good work. So again, what's Paul saying? You have what you have by God's abundant grace and mercy. You possess these things. They're not yours, they're his. But he has allocated them to you. And he has done this to enable you, me, to do good works with those funds, with those resources. So, Paul was saying here that the collection to be taken for the starving saints in Jerusalem was a good work. So, it is clear that Paul has in mind what he has in mind here back in Galatians 6, 6 through 10. I got to adjust something here. I was only turning my neck so far and getting a whiplash. Oh, that's all straightened out. So Paul, what he has in mind in Galatians 6 through 10 as a good work and sharing every good thing is the generous use of resources and finances to supply the requirements of subsistence to those in need. It is doing good that by the power and working of the Spirit of God that believers, the church, that we render material support to those who need it. And this is the nature of what Paul is speaking of here when he urges the Galatians to be about doing good and sharing all good things. So, as we ponder that, I want to ask whether you, whether we spend time thinking about doing good. whether we ponder it in our hearts, in our lives. Do you consciously treat your resources as what actually belongs to God? And do you consciously pray and seek the will of God about what He wants you to do with what He's entrusted to your care, what He's made you a steward of? You know, we can talk about the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, etc. And we can talk about rejecting a spirit of competition and bearing one another's burdens. We see the church rightly as the pillar and support of the truth. But doing good through giving generously is just as real a priority as those. We have to be intentional about it. If we're not, it probably won't happen. It's just like you have to be intentional. about spending time in the Word of God every day or how many days could go by where other things just got in the way or you didn't think. It became a priority for you, then you established a pattern and a place and a time. And so you give yourself to the Word day by day. And giving in this financial sense is a like that in a way because it must be intentional to be accomplished. We don't often talk about giving in this church. We are mindful that God loves a cheerful giver. And we don't want people to give because of threats and intimidation. Although that joke is thrown around from time to time. But it is not godly. It's not godly to threaten and intimidate. And it's not godly when you give because you've been threatened and intimidated. Then you are not a cheerful giver. God is pleased with cheerful givers when that is when we give out of gladness to do so. But truly that is godly and that is the attitude and behavior after which we should strive in the power of the Holy Spirit. And so thinking about that, perhaps some of us need to repent of reluctance and begrudging giving, not by stopping giving, but by changing our attitude. And we can change our attitude even as we think through the things that Paul is teaching us here in Galatians 6. Perhaps some of us need to repent of giving, but very little to do good works and share all good things that we've so wonderfully been given by the Lord. Perhaps we give, but we don't really give very much. Perhaps we need to resolve to be more constant in mindfully managing the resources that the Lord has placed in our care in order to share more and enter into the joy of giving even more. But that is the essence of doing good here as Paul is talking about it. Sharing from our resources and giving to the well-being of others. So let's move from the essence to the character of doing good because there are a number of descriptive phrases and words that Paul uses to help us see that not only ought we to give but there are some ways that should describe how we do it. These modifiers talk about how we should do good. This is the character of the good that we should do or the manner in which we should do the good. And I see four characteristics that we need to underscore that Paul brings to our attention. We should do good generously or bountifully. It's not something that Paul actually says, but it's very much implied. It's implied in his reference to sowing and reaping, which as I mentioned, when you go back to 2 Corinthians 9, he used that same picture in relation to giving. In chapter 9 of 2 Corinthians verse 6 Paul says, "...whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly." And this was in the context of taking up this offering. He says, "...whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully." So the issue is the same in both letters here. Being benevolent or rendering material assistance or support and the principle of quantity applies in both as well. If you are planting flowers and you throw out a pittance of seed, that means just a few, then do not expect your garden to be filled with flowers. What does your giving look like? What does your giving look like? What does my giving look like? We should consider that. Would you say, would you honestly say that your giving is generous? Or would you have to say it is stingy? Is it bountiful or sparing? In what way does the Lord want us to do good according to what we see here? He wants us, does He not, to be bountiful and generous? If your doing of good was measured in flower seeds, then what would your garden look like? Let us do good bountifully and let us share all good things generously. And may I encourage each of us to evaluate our giving and to resolve before the Lord to be generous and bountiful. So we should do good generously, but we should also do good persistently. Take note of what Paul says here in Galatians 6, 9. He says, let us not grow weary of doing good. It's not enough to do good once or twice or now and then or on again, off again. One of our purposes for being alive is to do good. So we should do good at all times with regularity and consistency and perseverance. Sometimes it might become tiring in a sense. It could seem like maybe there's little progress or fruit from our giving. Anything though that is consistently demanding carries with it the temptation to grow old or tired in that regard. But Paul urges us here to keep on and not give up. We shall reap if we do not grow weary. So be consistent and be persistent. So our giving should be what? Bountiful and persistent. But it should also be hopeful. It should be grounded in confidence. We should give confidently. Note what Paul says next. Let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap. When you're planting a garden, you may think, oh, this is an arduous process. And you might work all through the planting and preparation season and just sometimes wonder if that day of harvest is ever going to come. And Paul is using that figure to tell us that we can be sure that in God's economy As God is working, we will indeed reap in due season, so we should be persistent. But our persistence should be undergirded by a confidence that this is a promise of God. What we do in the way of doing good, there will be blessing that comes back to us for it. Now, I'm not preaching the health and wealth gospel because I'm not saying God is going to give you money in return for your money. The truth is, God's got a whole lot better than money. He's got Himself. He has glory. He's making you like Jesus. And if you think of the parable that Jesus told about the faithful stewards, it's like, enter into the joy of your master. And additional opportunities for serving the Lord in glory that are ours when we are faithful in managing what He has entrusted to us. The Lord holds forth for us the hope of reaping in due season. When the time is right, in God's good time, the blessing of our giving will return to us. I think this is what Jesus was getting at in the Sermon on the Mount when He said, Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and dust corrupt and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth or rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. Your money and mine are not eternal treasure. They are a means to an end. We have the opportunity of investing for heaven with our money, and what we will reap is treasure beyond the worth of money. So, we should sow our seed in expectation. It is an expectation of good being done now, but it's an investment for the future in which God Himself will bring the return on the investment. So, lay up treasure in heaven by giving away earthly treasure to do good. We should give in these ways, We should give persistently. We should give confidently. And lastly, our giving should be generous, not only generous, persistent, and confident, but also opportunistic. We need to take advantage of our opportunities whenever we have them. Look at verse 10. Paul tells us when we should do good. When should we do good? When you have the opportunity. So, we can't solve all the world's problems. And we can't, none of us can meet every need. But we have the opportunity to meet some. And God has put his people all over the world to help meet some of the needs and address some of the situations. We don't have to obsess over what we can't do. or focus on what we can't do. But as we have opportunity, our focus should be on what we have been called to do and provided to do by the Lord. This very week on Facebook, ironically, I don't look at Facebook that much, but occasionally, and it's just amazing what's there when I look. And it happened upon this week a post from an old friend of mine from high school days. And it was a picture that he took of his parents' front porch. Now incidentally, his parents' house is across the street from my mother's house. And so not only did I see the front yard of what he was taking there at his house, I also saw my mom's house in the foreground. I could only think, wonder where my mom was when he was taking the picture. But that's all beside the point. The main point is this. He took this picture from the front porch of his parents' house. And it looked out on the front yard of the house. And Brian commented on his memory as a youth of gathering plug after plug after plug after plug after plug of centipede grass that his dad wanted to plant in the front yard. And so they brought it from wherever they found it and they would plug it. They would dig, and then they plugged it in what in Carolina is red soil, looks like rust. You know, there's black, dark soil up here, dark, dark, dark brown. There it's just like red rust. And I remember moving in in that whole neighborhood when all these houses had been built and the front yards were not green, they were red. Well, that was the case in his yard too. But he recalled coming and planting all this plug after plug and how arduously they had worked on planting those seeds, those plugs in the front yard. You could sense even in what he was saying how tired he had grown as a youth placing those grass plugs. And I know what that's like because we did the same thing in our front yard. Anyway, and now he was remarking, after all these years, You could sense his satisfaction in the post because the photo revealed a yard that was lush and green and had not a spot of red. It was beautiful. And yeah, his dad and their family took care of their yard and it looked good. But it was because they plugged and they plugged and they plugged and they plugged and they plugged persistently, bountifully. And it really helps me make my point this morning that I think Paul is making for us here, when he talks about the ways in which we should give. Sow sparsely and you'll reap sparsely. If you don't sow persistently, you will not reap bountifully. And if you don't sow as you have opportunity, times will come when you wish you could, but you'll not be able to. But if you sow bountifully, persistently, and as you have opportunity, then you can be confident God will bring an increase. And you will reap bountifully and joyfully with great satisfaction. You can here and now, but even far more in glory. Let's turn next to the beneficiaries of doing good. So, we've seen the essence of it, the character of doing good. Let's look at the beneficiaries that Paul focuses in on that are to be the recipients of our doing good. Who benefits from the good that we do? Well, Paul provides three specific categories. And at the top of the list, the first mentioned are those who teach. Now the context is the local church, and so those who devote their time to preparation and teaching are the pastor teachers. And the indication is that it is doing good to give materially and financially in order to support them. Now it is thought by some that Paul was mindful of having just said in verse 5 that each of us must bear our own load. And he didn't want that to be interpreted to mean that pastors and teachers in the church should fend for themselves. So he states it strongly. One who is taught the word must share all good things with the one who teaches. And a corroboration of a text is found in 1 Timothy 5, 17 to 18. There Paul tells how affairs in the church are to be handled and he writes, Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching. For the scripture says, you shall not muzzle the ox when he treads out the grain. And the laborer deserves his wages. So perhaps you've never thought of it this way. But it is a mark of the Holy Spirit's work in a body if the people are attentive to providing well for their pastors and teachers. Here at Grace Community Church, our ability to provide appropriately for our staff and pastors depends on those in our body giving generously. It may seem mundane, but adequate provision is a spiritual matter. And I hope you are mindful of that when you give. But of course, pastors are not the only ones in view here. Down in verse 10, Paul exhorts us all, let us do good to everyone, especially those who are of the household of the faith. So one point to underscore here is that we in the church should do good even to those who are not in the church. We should not restrict our giving to Christians. are taking care of basic needs and helps. Like God we should show kindness to the just and the unjust. And at the same time though our priority in doing good should be to those who are of the family. Especially Paul says. And I want to make you aware that you should know this. Did you know that part of every dollar that's collected in our weekly offerings goes to a need fund? And out of that need fund needs are met, and I can testify to this, needs are met with people who do not belong in this body, who are not here, not a part of us, but they're also especially met to those who are part of Grace Community Church. So be aware that when you give You're offering to Grace Community Church. You are doing good. You are helping to supply salaries to our pastors and staff. You are funding mission work around the globe. You are supplying funds for people in need. And you are helping to keep the lights on in the building in repair so that we have a place to gather together to teach the Bible to worship and to fellowship. And that is spiritual. And it is doing good for us to come together to fund it. And we should fund it well. As I said earlier, we purposefully don't talk a lot in this place about giving. I am this morning because here we are. We've been going through Galatians and here we are in this passage and this is the message of the passage. We don't talk about it a lot, but that's not because it's not important. We don't talk about it a lot in part because we don't want to be seen as those people who are just always clamoring for you to give more money or like you be poor so we can be rich. But we should want to underscore to you, though, that giving is a very important spiritual matter between you and God. And by the way, when you look at your bulletin, And you see the giving dip down below where it was a year ago. And when you see that happen a few weeks in a row, please know that we operate on a tight budget. And we strive to be careful about all the dollars we spend, but our ability to be generous as a church depends upon its people being generous and bountiful. I want to thank you for your generosity and faithfulness. But let me also encourage you all for all the more to not grow weary and to keep on sowing. Then let's come fourthly this morning to the significance of doing good. Here's Paul's incentive to encourage generous giving. Paul did this in Corinthians and he's doing it here in Galatians. Not just saying you ought to give, but he's saying here's why you ought to give or here's some big incentive for you to be generous and to have these other characteristics in your giving. It's the center of this text. He says, do not be deceived. God is not mocked. For whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption. But the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life." Now doing good is significant for a number of reasons. Obviously, it blesses those who receive. I am blessed because of your generosity. My family is provided for because of God working through you. But there are others who are blessed as well, so many of them. And maybe you don't see it or think about it much, but you need to know that your bountiful giving blesses people. And that should be something you're conscious of as you're doing it, seeing the significance of this. It is God at work through you, but it should also bless you. Not only does it bless the receiver, giving blesses the giver. In fact, the Bible says, Jesus said, it is more blessed to give than to receive. The Scripture says that. So the truth that we've seen in this text should bring encouragement and joy to our souls if we give bountifully. Doing good through giving blesses others, blesses yourself, but it also blesses God. Because when people receive those who give as from the Lord, people who know where it's coming from have one person to thank. And it's not me or you. It's God. And he receives blessing and praise when his people give in his name. And he is pleased when his people reflect him and giving does just that. When we faithfully give, God is blessed when the recipients flow forth with praise and thanks to him for the gracious provision of his bounty through his people. But there is another matter of significance to which Paul points here. Doing good in the form of sharing material goods is a mark of evidence that a person is truly born of God and possesses the Spirit. As we walk by the Spirit, we abound in doing good. And so when Paul talks about sowing to the flesh or sowing to the Spirit here, he's basically saying that sowing to the flesh is what people do when they hoard their goods and behave with a stingy heart. They close their hearts to the needs that they have the opportunity and provision to be able to meet. But loving this world and the things of the world, they do not. love God, and they refuse heavenly treasure in favor of what will rust and decay and pass away. They, from the flesh, reap corruption. Meanwhile, sowing to the Spirit in this context is when people, this is what people do when they generously give up earthly treasure in order to do heavenly good. They open their hearts to those in need and they sow bountifully. They do not love the world or the things in the world, but they do love God. And from the Spirit, they reap eternal life. Now, the contrast of what is reaped is quite stark, isn't it? Those who sow to the flesh reap Corruption, those who sowed of the Spirit, eternal life. If you put those things in opposition to each other and think, what is he saying here? It's not just temporal things. This is an eternal reality. Eternal life versus eternal corruption. Paul has his mind on heaven and hell. Corruption versus eternal life points us to the difference between hell and heaven. The stingy go to hell, while the generous go to heaven. And so what is Paul's point? Well, one thing is clear. Let's make this point. He's made it all through this letter. Paul is certainly not saying that those who go to heaven go because they are generous. That would be a complete contradiction of all he has said. That would be a complete contradiction of the entire Bible. Rather, those who are generous are generous because they're headed to heaven. Not to get there because that's where they're already going. Those who live by the Spirit walk by the Spirit. They sow to the Spirit because they've been brought to life by the Spirit. They have believed on the Lord Jesus Christ and they have denied themselves to take up their cross and follow Christ. So they walk by the Spirit and then it is the Spirit of God at work in them who are going to heaven both to will and to work for God's good pleasure. So the generosity of these is evidence that their love for Christ is genuine. And they love not the world, but they do the will of God, and from the Spirit they will inherit eternal life. Not because, but that's just the fact. This is who they are. They give because of who they are and whose they are. Of those who sow to the flesh, meanwhile, have not the life of the Spirit or the power of the Spirit. They are dominated by the flesh. Like the world, they are passing away. And they will reap corruption. They are dominated by the flesh and those who live in this way will not inherit the kingdom of God. They are laying up treasures here on earth where moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal. So the ultimate significance here is that generosity, like the other fruit of the Spirit, is evidence that one is a child of God, bound for glory. And the lack thereof is evidence that one is of the world, of the flesh, and bound for hell. So, if you are a follower of Christ, then do good, for goodness sake. Do good because that is what you've been made to do. We are created in Christ Jesus for good works. That we should walk in them. So walk by the Spirit. Trust and obey. And if you are not a follower of Christ, then heed the warning that comes from this text and turn to Jesus today. You want to reap corruption? No one wants to reap corruption. Why would you ever invest in something you knew would fail? And that's what every sinner is doing by nature who walks this earth. Invest in what is passing away. Turn from that today and come to Christ. Deny yourself and these desires that proceed from your flesh. Take up your cross and follow Him who denied Himself for you. We conclude this morning with a look at the supreme example of one who truly did good. You want to know what it is to do good? No one ever did good to the measure that Jesus did. That's who I'm talking about, of course. I'm talking about Jesus. Of Him, Paul wrote the Corinthians. What did he say? For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor. so that you, through His poverty, might become rich. Whenever we give for the benefit of others, it costs us something. Wants, comforts, prestige, whatever you didn't get for yourself by giving it to another. But it is a sacrifice of our excess. Whenever it's that way, it's always a sacrifice of our excess. What we have that's more than what we need, so that others can at least have the basics. But Christ Jesus gave up the riches of glory to become an impoverished servant to bear the burden of our sin on the cross. The God-man suffering God's wrath so as to justify the one who believes. And by this poverty, by this impoverishment, we receive not merely the basics, but we receive an eternal measure of infinite value. You know what I'm saying? When we give, I mean, we see people who are having a hard time, or we want to keep people from perishing for hunger, so we give out of what extra we have, and they have a little. But Jesus gave out of who He is all that could be given, so that we would not just have a little bit, not just the basics. but that we have glory eternal in the presence of God our Father. We who believe in Jesus become joint heirs with Him. and have an eternal weight of glory beyond all comprehension. Christ Jesus is the height of what it means to do good. And we who follow Him have the privilege of being like Him as by the Spirit we sow to the Spirit by doing good to all men, especially those who are of the household of faith. Let's pray. Lord God, we come to you today with gratitude and thanks for supplying our need and so much more. We are blessed beyond measure materially, and we thank you for that. We thank you for the material blessings, the subsistence, the ability to go home today and have plenty of food to eat, to have a roof over our heads. And Lord, we have so many comforts, and we just want to say thank you. We thank you for all that you've poured out so richly into our lives. We also, though, want to pray that you would help us see this outpouring not as something, some quantity to be hoarded and kept for ourselves. Help us intentionally to give thought to our doing good and sharing good. so that we would desire and endeavor by the Spirit of God to be richly generous in blessing others, meeting needs, and providing goods here in the church. as well as with people throughout the world. May you be glorified and may testimony be born to Christ Jesus every time that our giving is in a micro, mini, tiniest sort of way, but very importantly still, points to the giver who gave better and more good than anybody else. We thank You, Jesus, for giving Yourself to become an impoverished servant and slave here on earth, for becoming poor that not just financially but through poverty was leaving heaven and leaving glory to be here. Thank You that You cared enough for us, that You came for us to become poor. so that we might become rich. And we realize, Lord, or help us realize even more that those riches that we reap, the riches of eternal life that are reaped by your followers and your people, those whose faith is in you, they are riches beyond our comprehension. And sustain us, Lord, as we walk this earth from day to day with the assurance and hope that we will reap We should not grow weary that we will reap in due time. Pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.