Hi, church. It’s great to be with you again today. Last week, we started a series called First Things First and it’s based out of Matthew chapter six verse thirty-three which says, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you. And we talked about how the Hebrew word for righteous is actually sadak.
But the Hebrew word for generosity is sadaka. And so what that means is generosity should flow from a righteous life. All of Matthew chapter six the it talks about generosity. In fact, the primary teaching for that chapter is actually generosity and through that chapter, there’s a number of facets around generosity that Jesus actually talks about. So, he’s basically telling his disciples that generosity is a part of the Christian life and the kingdom life he’s calling him to lead and so, we’re doing series of two parts with this one started last week talking about from Matthew chapter six the eight facets of generosity described in Matthew chapter six.
We did four of them last week and I’ll do four today. But before I begin on today’s let’s look at the four that were mentioned last week. The first facet of generosity as we articulated last week is that generosity is expected. It’s an expected part of the Christian life. Jesus says When you do a charitable deed.
He doesn’t say if you do one, if you feel like doing one, if you’re called to do one. He’s talking to everyone that’s following him at that time and he is basically assuming that at some point in their Christian life, they’re going to be generous. It’s an expected part of the Christian life. The second facet of generosity is that generosity is a key to breakthrough. Jesus says that when you give, your father will see what you do in secret and he’ll reward openly.
The private discipline of generosity and giving will actually produce public results. And we have seen across our church over the years people receive breakthroughs and miracles as a result of their generosity. That is why on June the 11th we are launching our annual annual breakthrough offering. Where we will honour and service all our missions, commitments from it. But even more than that we’re believing for breakthrough and miracles to come to pass in the lives of people in our church as they give according to how God leads them to give.
Third facet that we talked about last week is that generosity is a key to getting treasure in heaven. It creates treasure in heaven. Jesus actually says that when we give, we will receive treasure in heaven. And the fourth thing that we talked about last week is that generosity plants your heart in the kingdom of God. Jesus says where your treasure is there your heart will be also.
He says our heart follows our treasure. And more Important than our finances. God actually wants our heart. And he knows that our heart follows our treasure. So they were the first four points from last week.
Today I want to give you the next four that are found in Matthew chapter six. The next one is found in Matthew 622 to 23. And it says the lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is add, your whole body will be full of darkness.
If therefore, the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness? So, he says, if your eye is good, it’ll be full of light. If your eye is bad, it’ll be full of darkness. There’s a Hebrew concept which talks about an eye of light and an eye of evil. The eye of light, the word for eye of light is actually Y E T Z E R. And that’s actually a metaphor for generous.
But at I evil, the word is yet so hurrah, that’s a metaphor for stingy. So, notice what Jesus says here. He’s saying, if your eye is good, well, the Hebrew concept of a good eye is a generous eye and then he says, if your high eye is evil, that’s actually talking about a stingy eye. So, what he’s saying here is this, that he wants us to be people with a generous eye. So, what that means is this, that actually, the next principle about generosity is that generosity is proactive, is proactive.
God us to have a generous eye. He doesn’t want to us to close our eyes to opportunities to be generous. I’ll give you a couple of scriptures which reference this. Proverbs chapters twenty-two verse nine says this, he who has a generous eye will be blessed. For he gives of his bread to the poor.
Isaiah thirty-two verse eight says this. A generous man devises generous things. And by generosity, he shall stand. So a generous person is a proactive person. They look for opportunities to be generous or they don’t turn their eyes off to opportunities to be generous.
You know my old pastor in Mackay a man by the name of Pastor Rob Booth Jones is an incredibly generous man. And I remember the story of one time and he never said this publicly. This was one of the other staff that told me that he saw this need overseas. There was this massive missions need disease. And it so touched him and so convicted him.
That he decided to actually sell a property and actually garner the finances from that. To go and support that need. Now he didn’t tell anybody about it. But he saw that need that was there that was present. And he devised the way to be generous in order to satisfy that need.
According to the definition of Christ he actually has a eye that is good. He actually has a generous eye. Why? Because he looks for opportunities to be generous. Even right now is great generosity flowing through the body of Christ. There was a businessman who actually sold his business and actually received over a billion dollars for that business here in Australia.
But he didn’t want to keep it all for himself. He wanted to use it for kingdom purposes. And so what he has done he has is he has set up a trust whereby he will fund evangelism throughout Australia. So right now there’s all this funding that is going towards evangelistic efforts. Going things that will actually evangelize and see people come to know Christ.
So here is a person who has had an incredible windfall that has got an incredible amount of money, can easily retire and can set up money for his family for generations to come. But his users got a kingdom mindset around that money. And he wants to use it to see the expansion of the gospel. And right now in our nation there is more finances for evangelism than has ever been in our history. Why? Because someone has a generous eye.
Generosity is proactive. That when opportunities come to be generous, we don’t close our eyes towards it. We actually open up our eyes and step into it. Not only that, we can use our generous eye to look for opportunities to be generous. And my encouragement to every single person in our church is this.
To take advantage of the opportunity to support these these missions ministries that we are putting towards you. Let your eyes be open and let our eyes be full of light as we take advantage of the opportunity to be generous towards these ministries. The next facet of generosity is found in Matthew chapter six verse twenty-four. And it says this, noone can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one and love the other.
Or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. Or another translation says you cannot serve God and money. Now remember this is in Matthew chapter six and the whole context is talking about the way we handle our finances. And it’s talking about being generous.
And he says you can’t serve God and money. He doesn’t say you can’t have God and money. He doesn’t say you can’t be wealthy and be a Christian. The actually tells us that there was a man who supplied a tomb the tomb for the body of Christ. His name was Joseph of Aramathea.
And the scripture says that he was a disciple of Christ and he was a rich man. So it is possible to have money and serve the Lord. But what it does mean is that we have to put the Lord first. That we actually have to serve God not our money. So what that means is that when we actually are generous we’re actually forcing Christ’s Lordship over our life.
The Bible tells us that we actually honour God when we’re generous. Proverbs three nine and ten says this. Honour the Lord with your wealth. With the first fruits of all your crops. Then your bars will be filled to overflowing and your vats will brim over with new wine.
We actually honour God by the way that we use our finances. We actually honour God when we’re generous. You know when you come into the presence of a king it’s important to bring a gift. I love how like when Jesus was born in a manger that there was these wise men from the east that came looking for him. And when they came to him the Bible says, even though he was in a manger, not in a palace.
The Bible says that when he they came to him, they made sure that they brought gifts. Gold, frankincense and myrrh. Why did they do that? They did that because they were coming into the presence of a king. And they were honouring him with their finance In the same way, the way we use our finance actually honours God. The Bible also tells us in second Corinthians chapter nine, that God loves a cheerful giver.
Our giving is actually an act of worship towards him. We honour him by the way that we use our finances. And so our generosity actually honours God. The seventh thing, the third thing for today about generosity. is that generosity exposes your faith.
So in Matthew chapter six verses 25 to 32, Jesus says a phrase over and over again. I’ll read them out to you. In verse twenty-five, he says, therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life. What you will eat or drink. Notice in verse twenty-seven, he says, which of you by worrying can add as one cubit to his stature? And then he says why do you worry about clothing? And then he says in verse thirty he says, now if God so closed the grass of the field, which today is, which today is and tomorrow is thrown into the oven.
will he not much more clothe you of little fate? Therefore, do not worry, saying what you will eat, or what you will drink. So notice this, the whole chapter is talking to them about finances. Just after this, he says, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. And all these things will be added unto you. And he talks to them about worry.
Why is he saying that he’s because saying that because generosity exposes our faith. He’s saying we should be generous and we shouldn’t give in to worry. We should trust God because he we know he will take care of us. I know myself that some of the greatest growth experiences I’ve had in my life has been around the issue of finance. And sometimes it’s been around the issue of actually sowing or being generous even in times when I couldn’t when I didn’t want to or didn’t think could afford to.
I remember one time I was at a conference and in the conference they were taking up an offering and right at that time I was an itinerant minister and so income would come in sporadically. And right at that time I was really short on cash. And I’d only had enough just to attend the conference. And in the meeting they were receiving an offering. And I felt convicted to given that offering.
Now what I did is not what I’m recommending you to do. I’m just giving testimony of what I did. And I remember at the time I thought well I’ll I’ll give 100 in this offering and I thought I don’t even know that I’ve really got it and so I had a credit card and I was going to put it on there and and and then I and I thought oh you know it should be okay and and as I was about to and as the offering buckets were coming past I felt the Lord say to me put a zero on it. And when he said that I thought before or after the decimal point. And I really felt the Lord put a zero on and put a $1000 in.
I did not have a $1000 to give. And I was going to put on my credit card. I’m not recommending that you do that. I’m just saying this is a testimony of what I did. But I felt so strongly that I should do it.
It was really pushing me out on the edge of my faith. And so I turned to my wife Trish and I just made sure that she was okay with it. She usually has more faith than me in these situations. So she was totally fine. I remember writing out that writing out on a slip and putting in the offering bucket $1 000.
I thought I don’t even have the thousand dollars. This is going to go on my credit card. The moment that I did that, I received a message on my phone and the message on my phone told me that some money had dropped into my bank account. And the amount was and and so it was an amount of finance that I was believing for. I I was waiting on coming.
It had been really delayed. And I looked and I noticed that the amount that was put in my account was actually more than what I’d just given that offering. So before they even had opportunity to process it. I actually had the money in my account. Can I tell you that at that moment my faith went to another level? I realised that I shouldn’t let finance continually constrain me from doing what God has called me to do.
There was another time when I was at a conference and I had ah and I found out the story later and I’ve told you before a couple of years ago this story about how there was this couple that they were wanting to give an offering that night at the conference. And actually that’s not true. It was more the husband wanted to give. The wife did not want to give. Cuz their finances were really really tight.
But he felt really challenged to give him the offering that night. And so he went home and he’s in the afternoon before the offering was received that night. And he spoke to his wife and he said babe I want to give him the offering tonight. And she said why? And he said well I just felt God told me that I want to give in. We need to give in tonight’s offering.
And she said how much do you want to give? He said I want to give fifty bucks. She said 50 bucks that’s a third of our grocery bill. We don’t have the money to do that and he said, honey, I just really felt that we’re supposed to give that tonight. So, she was so upset at him that she was that she actually went for a prayer book and on the walk, she was complaining to the Lord. She was saying, Lord, my husband is being irresponsible.
He wants to give this amount of money to the conference and as she was doing that, she felt the Lord say to her, just do what he says. So, she comes home and she says to him, I prayed about it. The Lord told me you can do it but I don’t like it. And he said no worries honey. And so he gave $50, which they felt they could ill afford to give in the offering that night.
At the end of the service another couple came up to them with an envelope. And they said, we’ve seen you they’d never met before. They said we’d saw you across the conference this morning and we felt to come and give you this amount tonight. They open up the envelope and inside was 500 dollars. So they had $50 and they receive $500 right there.
Wow. The lady was overjoyed. She came up to me at the conference. She said, Pastor Ben, you wouldn’t believe it. My husband wanted to give $50 and I didn’t want to give it.
God said we should and then we gave $50 and someone walked up to us and gave $500 and I said, that’s great. Would you like to give a testimony at church tomorrow? And she said, no worries. So, at during the offering, I said, listen, we got a testimony from church about someone the breakthrough last night. She gets up and she says the story that I just said to you. He wanted to give fifty.
I didn’t want to give fifty. We gave it. We received $500. Everyone’s clapping and yahooing. I went to grab the microphone off it.
She reefed it back off me. And then she sent into the microphone and now I know I can do anything that God wants me to do. What happened? Not only did she receive a breakthrough but her faith went to a whole new level. You know when it comes to finances we can actually the Lord in it. The Bible tells us in the book of Malachi.
Jesus the Lord says when it comes to giving and tithes and offerings, he says, test me in this and see if I don’t open the windows of heaven and pour out such a blessing that there won’t be enough room to receive it. When we give, Jen, it actually exposes our faith. And not only that, it can actually take our faith to a whole new level. That’s why Jesus is telling them. He says, the lifestyle I want you to live.
He goes, if you’re right you gotta be generous and he says but don’t worry. Don’t worry. Don’t worry. Have faith. Because God’s going to take care of us.
And then the last thing about generosity is that generosity releases provision. We go to the verse that we were actually talking about from the very beginning. It says seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. And look at the second part. And all these things will be added on you.
What’s the things he’s talking about? Well, we just talked about it in the last point. He’s talking about clothing. He’s talking about housing. He’s talking about food. He’s actually talking about provision.
He’s saying as we seek first the kingdom of God and our finances, God will make, you don’t have to worry because God will provide for us. Proverbs three nine and ten says this, honour the Lord with your wealth with the first fruits of all your crops, then your barns will be filled to overflowing and your vats will brim over with new wine. Notice this, he doesn’t say honour the Lord with your wealth when your barns are overflowing. He says honour the Lord with your wealth for the first fruits of all your crops then your barns will be overflowing. The generosity actually releases the provision of God.
That’s why the Bible tells us later in the New Testament in second Corinthians chapter nine and likens giving to the kingdom of God like sowing seed. We sow seed and then we reap a harvest. And the Bible says so generously and then we’re going to reap generously. So the promise this, that eventually over time, God will return to us more than what we first sowed. Because giving releases the provision of God.
Now, the Bible tells us in second Corinthians chapter nine, that God still the context is giving, he says, God supplies seed to the sower and bread for food. So what that means is this, of everything God gives to us, part of it is seed for sowing, to be given away, and part of it is bread for food. Part to be consumed. We talked about that last week. That the lifestyle of a Christian, there’s an expectation that we won’t keep every little sin that we earn That actually part of what we earn is supposed to be sown.
Part of what we earn is supposed to be given away. But if you have a heart of a sower, you’ll be amazed at how it releases that provision. A classic example of this is something that happened to me 25 years ago. When I was a Bible College. I was your typical Paul Bible College student.
I had no excess money. And when I say I had no excess money I mean I had no excess money. And I remember at the time I made a commitment to the Lord that I was going to continue in spite of my circumstances. I was going to continue tithing to my local church. Now it wasn’t a big amount of money.
I wasn’t earning a lot. But for me it was actually a major sacrifice. And my only Commitment to the law was this. I had made a deal with it. And basically I said to him as long as you keep providing for me I’ll keep doing it.
And time and time again God would release miraculous provision to me. One of the funniest examples of this was the fact that I would ah I I did not want to wash my underwear ah by hand. Now in order to use the laundry it was coin operated. So the washing machine was coin operated and the dryer was coin operated. And so only criteria was that I would not have to wash my underwear by hand.
The amount of times I was down on my last pair of underwear and somehow I was able to pay for the laundry. I kept all this private. I never talked to anyone about this. It was just between me and the Lord. I was growing my faith and I was trying to prove the Lord’s provision in my life.
He promises that if we give if we seek first the kingdom, these things will be added to us. And so time and time again God’s provision would come through. But I remember one particular moment where it was really coming close. I was actually supposed to fly to Melbourne ah ah from Sydney. I was a bubble coach in Sydney and I was from Melbourne.
I had my parents had purchased me purchased me a ticket to fly back to Melbourne some months before. And I was down to my last pair of underwear. And I was praying. I remember praying that morning. And I was the last pair of clean underwear.
And I said Lord if I have to rewear this pair of underwear that’s it. I’m not coming back to Bible College. I’m I’m going to stay in Melbourne. After praying that I received a phone call and it was from a friend of mine from Melbourne who was visiting in Sydney. And I was and he rang me up.
He says Ben I’m in Sydney. and I said, oh great. I said, look, I’m only around for a few hours and he said, look, would you like to catch up? I said, sure. So, he came and got me and he said, I really need to go shopping. I said, okay and so we went shopping and and you know, he didn’t know I had no money.
Uh but he was shopping and I’m sitting there going, well, great. He’s going shopping even have enough money to wash my underwear. And so I was a little bit grumpy. Ah and then he went off and he said where’s the bank? And I showed him where the bank was. So he went to the ATM.
Goes to the ATM. Gets some cash out. He walks over to me and he shakes my hand. Said I just wanted to bless you brother. And I felt something ah you know crinkly in my hand and ah you know have you heard of the phrase cold hard cash? Well in that moment it wasn’t cold hard cash.
It was warm and soft and lovely. I gotta tell you. And so I looked in my hand and he had given me $100. I hadn’t asked. I hadn’t given any hints.
And I thought that’s awesome I didn’t have enough time to actually wash any underwear. So I went straight over to Kmart and I bought my packet, I bought myself a pack of seven and the packet said, 7 days in Rio. They were Rio underwear. So, I bought that. That afternoon, I hopped on the plane.
I got, I got picked up from the airport by my mom and she as we sit in the car, she reaches over the backseat. She said, I thought you might need these and she threw on my lap a pack of three underwear. So, right there and then, I went from having no clean underwear to now 10 pairs pressed down and shaken together and running over. Now, it doesn’t sound like much but it was to me. I have learnt over the journey over a 30 plus years that when I seek God first with my finances, all these other things will be added unto us and that’s the promise for every single one of us.
Jesus speaks in Matthew chapter six about the importance of finances and about the importance of generosity and he finishes it by saying that if we seek first the kingdom of God and his righteous righteous, Generosity. Righteousness leads to generosity. Then all these things will be added unto you. And generosity releases the provision of God. And I’m so excited.
And I believe that as we obey God all you have to do is pray and ask God what he would have you to give. Whatever God leads you to give over the course. Opening on June 11th. I believe that promise is for every single one of us. As we seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness.
All these things will be added unto you. As we put first things first God will take care of the rest. Matthew chapter six verse thirty-three. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness. And all these things will be given to you as well.
This year we are supporting Kings Community Care. 100% hope. Manna Ministries Surf Life Saving Chaplaincy, Shiloh Church Ministries, Scripture Union, Let’s pray. Father, I thank you for this promise in scripture that as we seek first the kingdom of God and your righteousness, all these things will be added unto us and I thank you Lord that for people in our church, some are going to get immediate breakthroughs. Some their faith is going to go to a whole new level.
Some Lord God that there’s going to be a paradigm shift in their life and their life’s going to go to a new dimension and amongst all of this, Lord, I know that you are going to be glorified and lifted up as we worship you in this way and I know it’s going to supply the needs of the sain it’s going to go towards supporting other ministries that it’s going to be incredible blessing to them. I know all these things are going to happen over the course of the next few weeks. I thank you for that and I praise you for it Lord. In Jesus name, amen. God bless.
