Gratitude and Generosity in the Midst of Persecution and Poverty...

As I have had the opportunity to have conversations with those who have either failed to connect or have disconnected with the church, one of the reasons that I hear for rejecting the church has to do with the subject of money. Some people refuse to connect with the church because they believe that all that the church wants is their money. For this group of people, God seemed to be portrayed as simply someone you believed in so that you could use Him for your financial benefit by a “name it and claim it” pastor on TV who was wearing a gold suit and sitting on a gold chair.

For others, their refusal to connect with the church is based on Christians who they encountered who repeatedly stated that money is the root of evil in the world. Therefore, if you are rich you must love the world too much, but if you are poor, then you really are spiritual. And giving to God was communicated as being driven by a desire to fulfill a command and a duty that must be done. Maybe I have just described encounters that you have had with Christians. Maybe you keep Christianity and the church at arm’s length because you believe that the church is all about the money. Or maybe you are a Christian but you still have many questions about the church and the subject of money and giving.

So, is the church all about the money? And even if you do not believe that the church just wants your money, then why is it we can tend to get so uncomfortable when the issue of money is brought up in church? And why do churches pass the plate and take an offering? Do they take the offering because God needs the money? Or is it just because the pastor needs the money? Why does the church ask Christians to give every week?

For the next two weeks, we are going to ask and answer these and many other questions. And to do that, we are going to be looking at a section of a letter in our Bible that was written to a church that was located in a city and a culture that was remarkably similar to American culture today. And it is in this section of this letter that we will discover that the issue of money and giving is not a new question. The issue of money and how Christians are to interact with money have been around since the church was born. So let’s begin by looking at a section of a letter that a man named Paul wrote to a church that was located in Corinth Greece called 2nd Corinthians. The section that we are going to spend our time in begins in 2 Corinthians 8:1. Let’s look at it together:

Now, brethren, we wish to make known to you the grace of God which has been given in the churches of Macedonia, that in a great ordeal of affliction their abundance of joy and their deep poverty overflowed in the wealth of their liberality.

Paul begins this section of his letter to the church in Corinth by sharing with them the evidence of God’s activity in and through several churches that were located in Macedonia. These were churches that Paul had previously planted in the cities of Philippi and Thessalonica, which were located in the northern region of Greece. And in our Bibles today, we have several letters that were written to these churches. The book of Philippians and the books of 1st and 2nd Thessalonians were written to these very churches at around the same time that this letter was written to the church at Corinth.

Paul explains to the church at Corinth, which was located in southern Greece, that in spite of the trouble and distress that these churches were experiencing as a result of persecution and exploitation by the Roman government, these churches were marked by an unexpected joy. In spite of their outward circumstances, these churches demonstrated an attitude and mindset of gratitude and gladness.

But not only did this church demonstrate unexpected joy in the midst of their persecution. Paul also reveals for us the reality that these churches experienced deep poverty. What is so interesting is that this phrase, in the language that this letter was written in, literally means that their poverty was so significant and extreme that is was difficult to measure. The apostle Paul had a hard time wrapping his mind around how poor these followers of Jesus were. Yet, in spite of their extreme poverty and the intense persecution they were facing, these churches were extremely rich when it came to their generosity. The phrase the wealth of their liberality, if communicated in the language of our culture today, would sound something like this: “these churches had a ‘no strings attached’ approach when it came to their goodness and generosity.

You see, Paul was surprised, and even taken aback, by their attitude of gratitude and the actions of generosity that he experienced at these churches that were immersed in a culture of poverty and persecution. And as this letter continues, we see Paul unpack how these churches demonstrated their gratitude and generosity, beginning in verse 3:

For I testify that according to their ability, and beyond their ability, they gave of their own accord, begging us with much urging for the favor of participation in the support of the saints, and this, not as we had expected, but they first gave themselves to the Lord and to us by the will of God.

Here we see Paul sharing with the church at Corinth how he experienced the unexpected joyous gratitude and generosity of the churches. Now to fully understand how Paul experienced the gratitude and generosity of these churches, we first need to understand what Paul is referring to with the phrase “participation in the support of the saints”. When Paul talks about the support of the saints, he is referring to churches involvement in a special offering that was being taken for the church of Jerusalem, whose members were suffering as a result of a famine in the region. In a previous letter to this church that is recorded for us in the Bible, called the book of 1 Corinthians, we discover that while other churches were following Paul’s instructions to invest their treasure to meet the needs of the church in Jerusalem, the church at Corinth was failing to follow through on their commitment.

In verse three, Paul explains that, unlike the church at Corinth, these poor and persecuted churches were willingly investing their treasure to meet the needs of the church at Jerusalem. Paul did not have to make a sales pitch or a guilt trip to these churches. Instead, these churches heard of the need and were motivated to respond. As a matter a fact, they were so motivated to respond that they gave beyond their ability. In other words, they gave sacrificially. They responded to the need that they saw by pleading and appealing to Paul to be a part of God’s activity by meeting the pressing and practical needs of the church in Jerusalem. What makes this act by these poor churches so significant as compared to the inaction of the church at Corinth was the difference in the socio-economic condition of these churches. You see, Corinth was a wealthy port city and commercial center and was a key player in the world economy. Unlike the churches of Philippi and Thessalonica, the members of the church at Corinth had the resources that they could easily invest to be a part of what God was doing to help the church at Jerusalem.

So, while the wealthy church at Corinth was dragging their feet when it came to following through on their commitment, the persecuted and poor churches of northern Greece dove in head first in order to be a part of God’s activity in the world. That is why, in verse 5, Paul makes the statement that he did not expect such gratitude and generosity. When Paul uses the phrase “gave themselves to the Lord and to us by the will of God”, he is revealing for us the reality that these churches were first and foremost dedicated to God’s desires for their life and their investment and involvement in what He was doing in the world. And as a result of his experience with these churches in Northern Greece, Paul was provoked to respond. Tomorrow, we will see how Paul responded to what was happening in Corinth.