Be the Church: Radically Generous
Pastor Tyler Speck from CoaH Brookline preaches about the generosity of the early church from Acts 2:42-47. Discussion points: We are called to be a generous people because we have a generous God, in Christ we always have a spiritual abundance, shifting our hearts from ownership to stewardship helps us reflect God’s generosity.
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Scripture reader: [Acts 2:42-47] And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of the bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number, day by day, those who were being saved.
This is the word of the Lord.
Preacher: I'm, I'm a little jealous of your, your volunteer gift that, that little, art piece is awesome. At, at our church we often, we do the kind of the same thing every year, but the, the kind of conclusion we come to is everyone just needs another mug. So, so our people have like 7 Koa mugs, one for every year they volunteered here, and so I think the painting's awesome. That's super awesome.
Good to be back with you all. Like Fletcher said, my name's Tyler, and, can I, can I just say, just between you and I, I think you all, I know you all are my second favorite CoaH congregation. it's a joy to be with you all. Really glad to see you all every time I'm here. thank you for having me. I looked forward probably to this, sermon more than the last and more than the other three, particularly because what we're gonna talk about today is something that's a little more difficult. I think if you read the Acts 2 passage, every other kind of theme or topic or idea that we hit is much more palpable, but every kind of thing we talk about the church, we want the church to be is super desirable.
Right, the first part awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles like, yeah, like I want that, like I, I want that for my life. I want that for your church. I want that for our church, and all who believe were together and had all things in common, like I want that togetherness. I want that unit. Right, they were, attending church, living life together, breaking bread, sharing meals, yes, praising God, having favor with all the people. I want all of that for my life. You probably want that for your life, right? The Lord added to their number day by day. We want these things for our church. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need. Good for them. Right?
All of a sudden our kind of like hermeneutic or interpretation of scripture changes, right? All of a sudden that was a kind of cultural thing that applied to kind of back then or the way they owned things or had possessions or navigated their belongings was extremely different to how we kind of navigate them today, right? This is kind of the one part of Acts 2, the, the passage that we're in that we immediately in some way, shape or form usually kind of take a step back.
Right, we're we're on board with like everything else, but when it comes to generosity, when it comes to our finances, our resources, our belongings, selling and giving freely to other people that that have need within the church, that's immediately something that just makes us at least pause and so that's why I'm excited about it. I think it's probably the more difficult thing for us to kind of absorb as a people that's following Jesus that he calls us to do this.
And as Fletcher said, we're in, in, in week 3 of a 4 week series called Be the Church, and then one of the main things behind the sermon series is that the church is not somewhere you go, it's something God calls us to be, right? The church isn't a place, it's a people, and. while each local grouping of people, each local church has its kind of distinct features and kind of flavors or cultures, at the same time, the scriptures speak to every church that has existed and, and shows us some things that God wants every church to be, to have to do. And so the hope behind this sermon series is to look at the scriptures and ask God the question, what kind of people. What kind of church do you want us to be? Right, what qualities, what defining features, what, what kind of culture, what activities do you kind of want to be happening in the life of the church?
The first week we talked about how we ought to be a people that is, is joyfully expectant. Right, that that our disposition towards God and towards each other ought to be one of joyful expectation for what he will do in and through our own hearts, the hearts of the other people in the room, the hearts of this church. Last week if you were here we talked about being absolutely committed and the main idea was a committed God creates a committed people and that the foundation of our commitment to each other is our commitment to God and the foundation to our commitment to God is ultimately God's commitment to us.
And we continue this idea into this part of the passage where we see the Christians, the church is marked by a radical generosity. Particularly honing in on verse 45, and they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need generosity in the sense that they viewed their goods, their belongings, their possessions, their finances to be used not for their own purposes and goals but to be used for the good and benefit of others. And we said this last week, and Fletcher said it the week before, that this work of the church, these defining features, these characteristics, they, they find their identity and viability, not in our ability to carry them out. But ultimately who God is.
In other words, we talked about last week we're supposed to be a people committed to each other because we have a God committed to us. Well, in the same way we're supposed to be a generous people because we have a generous God. And so our main point this week, just like last week, no, no need to kind of reinvent the wheel. Our main point this week is a generous God creates a generous people. A generous God creates a generous people and to look at three things. First, we'll look at God's generosity to us, the foundation of our generosity, the reason we can be generous in the first place, we'll look at the heart of our generosity. What does what should generosity kind of feel like in our heart and our being, and then we'll look at practically our generosity to each other. In other words, what are just some things that that we ought to be doing for and with one another when it comes to generosity? Some practical encouragements, if you will.
So first, to to dive in, God's generosity to us. I think it's easy for us to kind of miss the mark from the jump, right? When we hear a passage like this, we hear a particular verse like this, verse 45, many of us immediately feel pressure. Right, like, am I actually supposed to sell everything or some things? Am I generous enough? Is this sermon about money? Is God disappointed in me in the way I'm stewarding my life and my belongings? We immediately feel pressure. And here's the thing, if we start there, we've already started in the wrong place because that immediately makes generosity about us. Where scripture says generosity starts with God.
Right, Acts 2, generosity, it does not begin with a pressure and a command to give. It actually begins with grace. Right, the first step in Christian generosity is not give or give more. The first step is actually look at what God has given you. Right, the generosity we see here and the, the generosity that, that God wants in your life and in my life and, and in the life of every church that exists that preaches the gospel and follows Jesus is not a way to make God pleased. It is actually a response to what you've already received.
2 Corinthians talks about this, it says, for you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor so that through his poverty you might become rich. Right, this is the foundation of Christian generosity before God asks you to give, he gives to you in Christ. So when he calls us to give, I just wanna be super clear from the jump, he's not calling us to prove ourselves to God or to himself. And he's calling us to respond to the grace that we've already received in Christ. And to be clear, what does scripture say we receive, just a few verses, Romans 8, He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? First Peter, knowing that you were ransomed from futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with imperishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ that was given for you. 1 John 3, by this we know love that he laid down his life for us. And gave for us that we ought to lay our lives down for our brothers.
And so the logic of of Christian generosity is not the person beside me has a need and I have extra, no, it is Christ laid his life down for me, so how can I not at the very least lay down my things for my brother or sister in Christ. And here's where this gets, it's kind of, there's actually a great comfort in this. Because at this point it's just right now kind of look what he's done. Be encouraged by that and go and do likewise and that's a very biblical formula it's a very good and true thing but there's something deeper. A, a deeper truth for us actually that's available to us here.
And it's this: God's generosity towards us means we can give from a place of material shortage because in Christ we always have a spiritual abundance. God's generosity towards us means we can give from a place of material shortage because in Christ we always have a spiritual abundance. What does this mean? Well, it ensures that our giving is a spiritual exercise, not a material one. Right, that means generosity is not only for people with a lot of money. It is not only for people with extra margin, only for people with extra space, extra time, extra emotional capacity or extra resources.
Right, if generosity were only for people who had extra, quite frankly. At least for myself, to project on everyone else, I would always find an excuse. I'll be generous when life slows down a little bit. When the kids are older Yeah, that's, that's when I can step in more, right? I'll be generous when I get that promotion and make more money. I'll be generous when I feel less stretched and when my program slows down, right?
But, but Christian generosity is not rooted in material abundance. It's rooted in spiritual abundance. What you're in, if you're in Christ, even if you don't feel spiritual abundance in your life, if you are in Christ, you have spiritual abundance. Right, our view of generosity, it needs to change from a place of purely material or habitual things or giving to an actual spiritual practice. Or we think about spiritual discipline, spiritual practice, or kind of whatever term you wanna use there, we don't actually typically loop in giving or generosity into that, right? We think of kind of simpler things that are extremely important praying, reading the Bible, serving, and things of that nature, but generosity, we tend to like subconsciously disconnect that. Right, I actually think that maybe that subconsciously happens when we, for example, set up our giving to just reoccur monthly and then forget about it for 10 years. We tend to turn generosity and giving into a material habitual practice and disconnect it from the spiritual practice. Which that's the core of what it is.
And this leads us to our second point, the heart of our generosity, right? Something in our heart needs to change. If the foundation of our generosity is God's generosity towards us, that alone doesn't actually just empower us to give generously towards others. What we see in Acts 2 is a change of heart. Martin Luther the Great Reformer once quipped that there are 3 conversions. This isn't actually theologically accurate, it's kind of a joke, so don't take this too seriously. There are 3 conversions, the conversion of the heart, the conversion of the mind, and the conversion of the purse. In other words, the way we view our things needs to be converted. Because the answer to our generosity, the answer to our giving problems is not simply give more. Like that's actually the last thing I want you to walk out of this room thinking, so the whole point is just to give more, no.
What we see in Acts 2, what we see throughout the rest of the New Testament. When it comes to generosity is we actually see a really deep internal shift in the lives and hearts of believers and it's this follow me here this is a big one it's an internal shift from ownership. To stewardship Ownership To stewardship. Let me tell you, the way you steward your life, the way you steward your generosity, your things, your possessions, is a reflection of your heart.
An example of this like 10 years ago now when I first moved to Boston, I was about 8 months in, had a job for 6 months, quit that job, and I was broke I was in debt, I was using a credit card. Ashton was laughing. No one thinks it's funny except for her. We're not broke now, so it's fine. I was broke. I was in debt. I was using a credit card to, to buy things I didn't have money for. I had a, I had a balance that was racking up. I, I couldn't pay it off. at various points in times I had to ask my friends for help with rent or car payments. on top of this, I was, I was, I was still serving the church, but I was largely stewarding my time, my generosity with only myself in mind. Right, they usually translated into only hanging out with certain people that I wanted to hang out with, not necessarily the people God was calling me to minister to. Spending my time and the money that I didn't have in ways that only I wanted to spend it.
I was just overall living a selfish life, right, in, in, in other words I was not generous with my life and with my belongings and I kinda hit a point in time where I just kind of came to the end of myself and I, I saw the trajectory of my, my finances, the trajectory of my generosity or lack of generosity, the trajectory of my life, and, and it wasn't great. I remember being in a meeting actually with Fletcher, and he was, he was my boss for a year when he was on staff at CoaH Brookline before being sent out here, and I just sort of like broke down about all of this and then I remember with, with crystal clarity he he pulled me aside and brought me into a different room and sat me down, which is a fantastic counseling move by the way. It kind of communicates, hey, I wanna care for you right now.
And he opens up the scriptures to Luke 15 and reads The Prodigal Son. Right, a story I've heard plenty of times and you've heard plenty of times and if if you don't know what that is, it's essentially this this son asks for this inheritance from his father his father's still alive and his father grants it to him and he runs off and he's foolish with it and does kind of the exact thing that I did in in a different in a different way. And he kinda comes to himself and realizes like I don't want to be living like this. This is not the way my father wants me to be living. I will go back. I will simply be a servant for my father, so he goes back and he has a whole speech prepared about how he's sorry and how he just wants to be on his father's staff and serve and before he can even finish the the speech, the father embraces him with a hug and prepares a feast and welcomes him back home and says, this my son was lost and is now found, right? That's, that's the prodigal son if you didn't know.
And, and what became clear to me as he read this story and talked about that in that moment was that my issue at the end of the day was not how I spent my money. It was deeper. But my issue at the end of the day with how generous I was or wasn't. Was not just surface level, right? The, the prodigal son's issue at the end of the day was not how he spent his money, it's that he wandered away from his father. And so if you're here and you're struggling to be generous, struggling to steward your resources, your schedule, your home, your finances, your time. Maybe the first question is not do I need a better, better budget. Maybe the first question is, have I wandered away from my father? Right, the best budgeting tool in the world is not gonna bring, bring you back into the presence of God.
Are the prodigal son's real problem, my real problem, maybe your real problem too? Wasn't that he was bad with the budget though I'm sure he was and I definitely was. Like, bro, I was, I didn't have a job, so I was Ubering, which does count as a job except I would Uber for two hours in the morning and be like I'm done with this, and I go to the bar and buy a burger and a beer and spend all that I just made. You didn't need that detail, but um. Just where I was at in life, all right, come on. Right, the problem. Was that we wanted our father's stuff without the presence of the father. Right, that's really actually kind of the core of ownership when you think about it back to this idea of ownership or stewardship. But ownership says give me my share so I can do what I want. Stewardship in the sense of the story of the prodigal son in the sense of our lives as Christian or generosity, right, is I am staying in my father's house so that everything I have is his and everything he has is mine.
So the heart of generosity, the heart of a generous life is not a change in spending. It's a change in heart it's a change in belonging, it's a change from ownership to stewardship. Right before I knew Jesus I could look at my things, my time, my home, my money or lack of money, my food, my schedule, my comfort, my future and say this is all mine. And the way I lived my life and stewarded my life reflected that. But when Jesus enters our lives. The questions begin to change. And if we're not careful, the first and only question we'll get to is how much of my stuff do I have to give away? But it's deeper, it's Lord, everything I have is from you and for you, so how do you want me to use it? That's the question we ought to be asking that's the question that God answers, by the way.
To be clear, this doesn't mean that every Christian in Acts 2 or the New Testament stopped owning anything personally, right? I joked last week this wasn't the beginning of communism. Only some of you appreciate that joke, it's OK. Right later in Acts we we see that people owned houses and still use their spaces and still invited people in, right? They, they still made decisions about their belongings, right? This isn't to sway us from tangibly speaking, owning something, but rather realizing there's a deeper connection and that actually God owns it all and we're just called to steward it all.
AW Tozer in in his book The Pursuit of God said this mind spirit is the root of all our misery. I and me and mine are the 3 great enemies of the human soul. This idea of that's mine. Whether it's between you and another person or in your heart between you and God like this is mine can become poison. I'm sure you've sensed this in your own life. I sense this in my life when I look at my 4 year old and my 2 year old. There's a joke. Yeah, see, I heard the parent laugh there, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, I see this every day. One of them picks up a toy and and the other one runs in and says that's mine. Ten out of ten times conflict ensues.
But take the other approach. Which rarely happens. With the 4 year old and the 2 year old. One of them says you can use that. Everyone's happy. It's lovely and. In a way that actually maybe reflects how God feels when we say things like that, it brings my fatherly heart that wants them to see them grow up and be godly, caring, generous people. It, it warms my heart. When I see our 4 year old, tell our 2 year old, Remy, you can play with this, it's mine, but you can play with this. Like that makes me happy. Right, the point of all this is, is to, to again to drill this down is not to say that no one possessed anything, but the point is that nothing possessed them.
That's the true point. That's what God has for his people. Is that they don't, it's not that they don't possess anything it's that nothing possesses them except for God himself. And to be clear, radical generosity does not always mean dramatic generosity. Right, it just simply means that the gospel shapes our generosity. It means I see your need not as an interruption to my life, or an inconvenience for my life, but I see in the gospel, it is part of my life together with you in Christ.
Which brings us to our last part, our generosity to each other. And I wanna expand a little bit here when it comes to generosity within the church, it's easy to just think about money. Which is a component, and we will talk about that, but for some of you being generous with money is, is actually not a difficult thing. You've done well in your job or you have a good amount this is not a difficult thing for you. But actually maybe it's being generous with your time. Or the things you're good at. So 3 areas of 3 areas of life God wants us to be generous with each other.
First, our time. I think it's easy to disconnect when we waste our time. We spend hours numbing out and we use our time just for ourselves we think it only impacts us, but it actually comes at a cost to other people. Not just because we could have been more productive. But because our lives are not meant to be curved inward forever. Right, our presence is one of the gifts God intends to give other people through us. And so you're here and you think immediately I don't have the money I don't have material provisions, I don't have this I don't have that actually the most powerful thing you probably have is your presence. And this is something God wants us to be generous with and of of course there are seasons, right? Your family needs more attention, illness, grief, young kids, exhaustion. Vacation. Right, this is not a call to pretend you have like infinite capacity, that's not what God is calling you to do. But it is a call to ask this, has, has your life, has my life become so closed off that I have no room for anyone else? Again, when we don't steward our time or when we're not generous with our time, it comes at the expense of other people.
A good example of this is Jesus himself. He just like you and I had a finite time on Earth, just like the rest of us. He had the same hours in a day as you and I did. Yet you see him making time for people. Often people that didn't like him too. Right, for the Pharisee, for children, for the outcast, for the well respected official, for Judas. He makes time. Fun fact, did you know, well over half of Jesus' miracles as recorded in scripture, are the result of an interruption. Right, a crippled man being lowered through a roof, a woman grabbing his garment and him turning around, even the feeding of the 5000 starts with an interruption, by the way. Right, so many of his miracles were performed when he was on the way to something and can I tell you when I'm on the way to something I don't have time. That's how I feel.
And so time isn't just a managed commodity to be generous with, it's also a disposition of the heart. Right, interruptions where we are having to be generous with our time in a way that is different than what we envisioned is often where God works. The life of Jesus and my own life, you probably see it too some of God's best works and best moments have been totally unplanned. Totally an interruption, something that wasn't expected that came out of nowhere. And also tangibly speaking, by the way, when I think about the people that have impacted my faith the most in my life the most, it's not actually those that have given me the most money. It's those that have spent the most time with me. We ought to be generous with our time.
The second thing we ought to be generous with is our talents. Our talents, our gifts, the things we're good at ought to be stewarded well for not just myself, my promotions, the things I wanna do, my goals, but for the good of others and for the advancement of the kingdom of God. Right, if you know you're talented or gifted in something, you should be finding ways to use it for the good of other people. You should be finding ways to, to steward or as Paul says in 2 Timothy, to fan into flame the gift of God for the good of others. What you're good at is not just for yourself I promise you God did not wire you to do certain things really well just so you could do it for yourself. He did it so that you can come on a Sunday and get this little trophy. I just clap for that. That's so great.
Whether it's you're great with kids and you know how to teach and. You're teaching coed kids. You're great at listening and caring and shepherding. You could be a CG leader. You have or you do have financial resources and, and that could really make a big impact in this church and in the advancement of God's kingdom. Be generous with your talents, with the things you're good at. I'm not saying we should brag about it, but if, if, if you're insanely good at something. Find out how that can be helpful for the body of Christ, cause I promise you it can.
And lastly our material possessions. Our money, our homes, things of that nature. This is kind of the thrust of acts 2, right, when it comes to generosity. And there's no getting around the fact that the Bible is crystal clear that we should be a people marked by generosity with our material things. And so let me ask, while acknowledging that there are people at different phases in life, different income levels, different things going on, do you have generosity built into your life when it comes to material things? Assuming you have a budget together, which by the way, if you don't, the church can help with that. Assuming you have a budget put together, you should anticipate God giving you the opportunity. The privilege to be generous. To people who need it. Yes, in the way you give to this church's budget, but also in the way that people that are sitting across from the aisle from you, they have a need you can meet it.
Some of those beautiful things I've seen in our churches, someone in our CG once couldn't come up with rent. Before he even went to the benevolence ministry, he came to our CG, and this takes humility, this takes honesty, and this is extremely difficult for almost all of us to do. He says, he says, I, I'm not gonna make rent this month, and his brothers and sisters of Christ came around him and provided for that month. Or another brother who was. Just constantly walking to work and spending a lot of time walking to work and it was draining a lot of his energy, draining a lot of his time. At that point he had lost enough weight that it wasn't that kind of discipline for him. His CG came together and got him an e-bike. And again don't hear me as saying just get each other a bunch of stuff, no, right, it, it is the way that people responded to a need when they saw it that's what the scripture talks about. Is how do we respond to each other's needs when they come up.
And there's two sides to that. It means that we have to be open and honest with each other when we do have a need. Don't be afraid to do that. Right, we're called to give how much and how often? I, I can't give you a hard guideline about that, but without taking that deep dive into kind of the scriptures, that 10% number we see across scripture, I think that's a great healthy thing to aim for. Right, to give that to the church and to the advancement of God's kingdom, that's a good and healthy thing that's not just habitual remember this is a spiritual practice it will transform you. I looked this stat up just the other day. People that give and are generous above a certain level, they're 20% happier, 20% more joyful than those that don't.
Right, to be ready to give away like we see in our passage to give away money and other things that are yours to sell things so that you can give more to other people for the other good of people, that is what the scripture calls us to.
And so as we close I just want to remind us that all of this. All that we're talking about in this sermon series and, and, and all that we're talking about when it, when, when talking about this idea of a generous people leads to people seeing the beauty of Christ. Through his people But the church is not just a place where we gather in the same room, sing the same song and listen to the same sermon. No, the church is a people who have received the generosity of God and Jesus, and because of that we get to be generous with each other. We open our schedules, we open our homes, we open our tables, our wallets, our lives to each other. Because a generous God creates a generous people. And that is one of the main things that marked the early church.
To close with with an interesting quote, there's a 2nd century man named Aristides who he was writing a letter to someone trying to explain what Christians were like. And the one thing he pointed actually was. At their care and generosity towards each other even when they had nothing. He said this in his letter, he said, and if there is nothing among them, and if there's among them a man that is needy and poor, and they have not an abundance of necessaries, they fast 2 or 3 days that they may supply the needy with their necessary food. Material shortage, spiritual abundance. Jesus shows us that because of the gospel we can give out of a place of abundance no matter what our bank account is at, no matter what our schedule looks like, because we ultimately have a generous God who have been who has been infinitely generous to us. A generous God creates a generous people. Right.
God, we are thankful for you. That first and foremost you call us to give and be generous from a place of having received greatly from you. From your son we receive forgiveness of sins and entrance into a good loving relationship with you God. God, remind us that everything we have in this life is ultimately yours. God, transform our hearts from ownership to stewardship. May we be a people that doesn't just give habitually but gives in a way that reflects the way you give to us. In your name, Amen.