When you think of generosity it's just the natural giving you are missing what God wants you to see in this important character trait today on turning point Dr David Jeremiah shares what Jesus taught about the real meaning of living generously it's not what flows from your bank account but your spirit reintroduces message a life of generosity Here's David Well thank you for joining us today I remember an old quip that went like this when the Baptists come to town they bring 2 things with them the 10 commandments and a $10.00 bill and they don't break either one of them and that was a joke back in those days about the lack of generosity on the part of some who fly under the banner of Baptists I'd be one of those Hopefully that doesn't represent me but it does say that a lot of times Christians can be people who talk a lot about being gracious and generous but don't reflect generosity in their lives and the Bible tells us that when the Holy Spirit is in control of our life we will become generous people for all of you who model generosity this will be an affirmation in for those of you who struggle with it maybe try to squeeze your money a little bit tighter than you should this will help you move off of that place and see the joy that awaits those who live a life of generosity will get started in just a moment a couple of things before that I've been telling you about our year in cruise and I want to remind you again that as we move toward the end of October and get into November the opportunities for this are going to begin to go away we've already had a huge response and we get a certain allotment of rooms from these cruise ships for our events and when those rooms are gone there are no more so don't wait until it's too late make a reservation you're going to have a great time with all of us. Our friends who are going with us the Martens Charles Billingsley David Pendleton your real Vegas Michael Sanchez Don And I'll be there along with many others from our turning point teen we will have a delicious time in the Caribbean and once again the dates are December 30th through January the 6th and this is something I hope you will take advantage of we haven't done the year and cruise the last couple of years and we've missed it there's something about that to look forward to after you've been through some of the challenges of the holiday season and especially those of you who live on the East Coast where it's really cold to think about the fact that you're going to gets it the cold for a week in the middle of the winter sounds pretty appealing to me all that does to you as well well let's make the transition from compassion to generosity today we're going to talk about what it means to be generous got some great stories for you great scriptures great examples and great strategies that's coming up right now on this edition of turning. I have been talking to you about some of the. Character Traits that the Bible tells us we are to be developing in our own lives and we know this is a divine cooperative the Spirit of God gives us these gifts as the result of his filling us with His Spirit and then we're told to cultivate them there's not one of these characteristics that is not commanded most of the time many times in the New Testament and we've talked about many of them today I want to talk with you about generosity. I've grown up in the Christian faith and grown up in a Christian family as you know my father was a pastor and then a president of a Christian college and so I've been around Christianity a long time and while there are many generous people among Christians if you had asked the people out there in the culture. Are Christian people generous or are they stingy. You probably get about a 50 percent either way I'm known some really great generous Christians I've also known some pretty stingy ones and sometimes their stinginess is I'm not shifts. Here's an illustration there was a period of time earlier my life when it was very common to hear that Christians carried around with them a little tract and the track said this is a tip and they would take that to the restaurant with them when they would go to eat and instead of leaving money for the waiter or the waitress they would leave a track that says this is the tip and on the inside was the gospel What do you think the chances are that the gospel even got read after that. They work hard to serve you then they come and there's no you want to use the money inside that you might get that track red but if you leave it with no money that's not use and that gives Christians a terrible name and we're having more sense than to do something like that kind of reminds me of the old adage that when the Southern Baptists come to town they bring 2 things with them they bring the 10 Commandments in the bring a $10.00 bill and they don't break either one of them and it has kind of the way it is for a lot of Christians you know. So you know early on in my life I reacted to that and I've always prayed that God would help me be and become more and more a generous person so I want to talk about generosity today and it's not primarily stewardship message but whatever the Lord says to you it's all right. I want my last check to bounce. These are the words of billionaire philanthropist Charles Feeney who made his fortune in the duty free shopping industry and began secretly to give his money away in 1984 Finis goal was to make a difference in the world while he was alive and give all of his money away so that the last check he wrote about Sed by 2016 he'd given more than $8000000000.00 to charitable organizations around the world but his giving while your living philosophy did more than impact the recipients of his own personal gifts he was one of the influences behind Bill and Melinda Gates and their charitable foundation the other inspiration behind the gates Charitable Foundation according to Bill Gates was his mother Mary. Gates often credits his journey toward generosity to a letter that his mother wrote to his then fiance Belinda the day before they were married in biblical terms Mary reminded her son's bride that from those to whom much is given much is expected 6 months after writing that letter Mary Gates died of breast cancer and after her death Bill Gates with his father's help dedicated $100000000.00 to what would become the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and from its inception that foundation has given away more than $36000000000.00. These are remarkable examples of generosity of course but not everyone has that kind of money and not everyone can do that. Take Albert Lexie for example in 1981 Albert Lexie started working at the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh. Cleaning and polishing shoes for $5.00 a pair. Often satisfied customers tipped him usually a $1.00 to $1.00 Christmas a customer actually gave him $50.00 for shining shoes but tips like that were rare and of course over the years as styles have changed. Albert has seen his business dwindle but in 2013 he retired he retired after 32 years on the job there was a farewell party the hospital staff and the administration spoke of how much he'd be missed but when he walked out the door on the last day his influence at that hospital continued You see during all those years of shining shoes Albert Lexie donated more than 30 percent of his earnings to the hospital's Free Care Fund which helps cash strapped parents pay for their children's medical care and those tips every single $1.00 to the hospital during his career he gave more than $200000.00 to that hospital that's the kind of money rock stars give That's the kind of money Bill Gates gives That's not the kind of money a shoeshine man gives to charity. What you see what that illustrates more than anything else is that generosity is not about what's in your pocket generosity is about what's in your heart. The word generosity is not found on our list of 9 decisions that we have used as our outline but the concept is there it's hiding in the word goodness and it's really an appropriate response to goodness because oftentimes people think the goodness of the Bible is simply the absence badness but the Bible's goodness is not the absence of badness the Bible's goodness is an overt outward determination to do good and could there ever be a better illustration than that of generosity. The generous person. Gives others the benefit of the doubt and treats others with respect she isn't worried about what the act of giving may cost in terms of time or effort she doesn't wait to be asking doesn't expect anything in return that's the real issue of generosity generosity is giving something to someone and not have any expectation of getting anything back the same kind of generosity that we receive when we become Christians. Most of us equate generosity with financial giving and certainly that's at the core of it but that's not all respect and courtesy and forbearance and patients all of these are expressions of a generous spirit each day we are given opportunities to exercise generosity of spirit to respond to impatience with patience to reply to a hurried or thoughtless comment with an expression of understanding to overlook what you don't like in someone so that you can find what you do like. For most of us it doesn't come naturally to be generous We weren't born generous can I get a witness any of you have little ones at home we just had our grandchildren God bless them they're all wonderful beautiful delightful kids but they're not generous . And as teenagers we seem to be more interested in fairness then generosity when we become adults were so weighed down with financial worry we can't find time to be generous we're just trying to make it. But like every virtue that we have talked about in this series and will talk about going forward we can decide to cultivate generosity and we can depend on God to help us to do it. How many of you know that we have a generous God. I think James said it best when he said every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and it comes down from the Father of Lights with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning our God is a generous God and since we are made in His image we can take comfort as his children in knowing that generosity is within our reach and if ours is a world stamped from the beginning to the end by divine generosity then it stands to reason we ought to risk a generosity ourselves. And cultivate that godliness in our heart. The picture of a generous life is much easier to explain than the term how many of you know there are some things in life that are better caught than they're taught you don't learn it by the teaching of it you're learning by the watching of it one of the best examples of generosity in action is found in the New Testament. The stories told in market begins with Jesus sitting near the temple treasury observing the people as they're giving their offerings you know the story smart Chapter 12 versus 41 to 44 . We know from studying this in the writings of Josephus that in the temple were 13 receptacles where the Jews brought their taxes and their ties you see Israel was a theocracy so their taxes in their ties commingled they ran Israel with taxes and tides and they would bring them all to the temple and they would put them in one of these receptacles were later they would be collected now the receptacles were interesting if you go back and look in some of the old Bible dictionaries you see pictures of them and what they remind me of they remind me of the old r.c.a. Victrolas that had this big horn that came out of it which was kind of like the speaker horn but for the receptacle boxes this horn was like a funnel and you would throw your money into the big part of it it would funnel down in to the box so people would come to the temple with their offerings and according to Josephus there were some who were rich and Austin Texas and before they came to the temple they would take their offering and reduce it to the most Koinange they could they would take like $100.00 instead of bringing a $100.00 bill as we would today they would get pennies. And they would bring this hoard of money in bags and walk up to the Treasury Box and throw it in against the brass receptacle so that it resound it throughout the whole temple and everybody would stop and say whoa somebody just gave a lot of money. There were some Ferris fees who were so famous in doing this they actually got a nickname it's true they called them zingers those singers are in the temple today there's in the temple with their offerings. On this particular day when Jesus was watching many casting large amounts of money but then a poor widow woman came in and quietly made her meager offering. Now in the Greek the language of the New Testament the word we translate as pour. Is the word used to describe someone who is destitute a pop or a beggar in our day the widow might be someone depending on public assistance for survival or even someone who's homeless she was dirt poor. In our story Jesus tells us specifically what this poor widow gave the Bible says she put into meit's the word might is a Greek word which means lepton and what it is it's the smallest the nomination of a coin minted in the Greek world in the economy of that day it was worth 1128th of a day's work not enough to buy a loaf of bread and she put in 2 of them so she put in 164th of a day's work and never one to waste a teaching moment Jesus. Pontificates on what happened listen to him and see if you don't see how counterintuitive it is to the way we think today. Verse 43 this poor widow has put in more than all those who have given to the Treasury. For they all put in out of their abundance but she out of her poverty put in all that she had her whole livelihood. You see. God does math different than we do. God's math is totally unique fact you Campbell Morgan said it's an interesting thing he did not say this poor woman has done splendidly he did not say this poor woman is cast in very much he did not say she's cast in as much as anyone he did not say she's cast in as much as the whole of them he said more than all. Presiding over the Temple coffers that day the Lord of the Temple took to give sensitive to them on the one hand he put the gifts of wealth and the gifts of ostentatious and on the other hand 2 mites and he declared those 2 mites were more than all of the other gifts that were given that day. Jesus indicates in teaching us about generosity that the thing of most importance is not how much is given but the extent to which the gift is sacrificial a major element of Jesus' teaching is that attitude is more important than action because when the attitude is really right the action will be really right. Down through the ages those 2 mites that that woman put in the Treasury that day have raised billions and billions of dollars for God's work as humbled people have been liberated to give out of their little. The Lord converted those 2 coins in a perennial wealth of contentment and instruction for his church she gave more than all of them so let's go back to our major central point generosity is not about how much you have in your pocket it's about what's in your heart. Now the potential to be generous is available to all of us we see the picture of it let's explore the potential of it by itself this radical spontaneous generosity challenges our hearts I mean it does and then we see it against the backdrop of the culture in which it took place and it is even more amazing. In the Roman world. Where this woman gave her all generosity was regarded as a virtue that was restricted for the rich and famous and powerful in fact the Latin word general says referred to a person's birth and it comes from our word Genesis which means beginning so in the Roman world to be generous was to be born right in the Roman world generosity was for the elite and the aristocrats in fact their culture depended on it if you read history you'll see it the quid pro quo of generosity in the days of Jesus is just amazing the wealthy acted as patrons they funded the work of artists in artisans as well as commissioning public works and however unlike our definition of generosity which expects nothing in return wealthy Roman citizens were compensated for the strain on their bank account this could take the form of preferential business it could promote a patron for political office a good advocate for favorable laws championing a benefactor civil status Come to think of it is pretty much like what happens in our world here in America today is it not Washington could be painted all over this in case you don't get it just think of this the Lincoln Bedroom that'll help you. Because the Lincoln Bedroom was barred for favors during the whole administration. The one who gave all that she had that day would not have been expected to be generous at all she was swimming upstream against the very culture of her day she was not born Well she was not wealthy she was not elite she was not famous and she was not powerful but Jesus said her gift was more than all that was given by the aristocrats of that day. Now as Americans we like to pat ourselves on the back and repeat the mantra that we are the most generous nation in the world. Now this fact is our government gives a lot of money away and I get a witness but that does not make us a generous nation a generous nation is made up of generous people and it may shock you to learn that more than 85 percent of Americans give away less than 2 percent of their income each year 85 percent of all the people who live in America give less than 2 percent not just to their church but to any church. Now if you put that on paper and say Is America a generous nation. And you may take great comfort that you're in the church let me put a pick in that balloon. According to a recent study reported in Relevant magazine only 10 to 25 percent of typical American congregations tie that is they give biblical starting point of 10 percent to the church the poor and the kingdom the same report concluded that if the remaining 75 to 90 percent of American Christians began to tie the regularly listen carefully global hunger starvation and death from preventable diseases would be relieved in 5 years the world's water and sanitation issues would be solved all overseas missions work would be fully funded and more than $100000000000.00 per year would be left over for additional ministry if just the rest of the people who call themselves Christians would begin to tie. Pretty amazing story isn't it. So we are a generous nation because we give a lot of our government's money away to other nations and we seem to do it I don't know how we do it because all I hear about is how much we're in debt and then I read the papers we just gave another some $1000000000.00 to somebody on a work comes from I guess we just go print it and then send it out. But we are not by the real standard a nation of generous people and it's not getting better. It's getting worse. So how do we become generous people and this is what we all want to know what is the true path to becoming generous. How do we cultivate this in our lives 1st of all you've got to change the way you think about money to be a generous person you've got to get over this idea that your money is yours that you are the owner. The most vital step we take toward developing a generous spirit is thinking about money in the right way remember what the Scripture says every good gift and every perfect gift comes down from God and we realize that nothing is ours to start with we came into this world with nothing will go out of this world with nothing but in between the beginning and the end Almighty God gives us the opportunity to manage some of his stuff. And he gives us resources and he wants us to mention those of us who are Christians he wants us to manage them in his behalf