Sunday, November 27, 2016 - Give As Christ Gave!
Pastor Roger C. Marcos
Nov. 27, 2016
Why Join A Church? When you get involve in the church, You are blessed WHY? Because You can BOTH Give and Receive. So if you become a member of a local congregation you can make a COMMITMENT both to CHRIST and HIS CHURCH.
The Swimmer Bargaining with God
Burt Reynolds starred in an old film entitled "The End". In the film he decides to commit suicide by swimming out as far as he can until he is exhausted and then just go under. But after going under he is looking at the surface from the underside and decides not to go through with it. As he breaks the surface of the water he screams, "I want to live! I want to live!" He then begins to try to swim to shore, but it is a very long way off. As he begins to swim he talks to God. He promises to obey all of the Ten Commandments, and then realizes he doesn't know what all of them are so he promises to learn them. Then, in his panic, he says, "Lord, if you get me out of this, I will give you 80% of everything I have." But time passes and he is still going strong, and besides he can just begin to see the shoreline. But as he continues to swim he feels his strength holding out and says, "Lord, if you help me to get to shore alive I will give you 10% of all my earnings." And, finally, he struggles to the place where he sees that he is just going to be able to make it to land and says, "Well, Lord, let's just forget about what I said before. I think I can make it from here on my own.
"Reynolds' attitude is reflective of the attitude of many people today.
Giving to God or living for God are sometimes thought of as "paying our dues," or fulfilling an obligation.
What should our attitude toward giving be? What is the proper way to give and think about giving? Giving Is An Act of Worship. It is an expression of gratitude to a faithful God for all His goodness.
Giving is not just a response to a need in the church, it is a response of gratitude.
God doesn’t love you because of what you do, He love you because of who He is.
BIRTHDAY FOR JESUS, celebration is on December 18, 2016- NO SUNDAY SCHOOL worship start at 10am-11:30am. To give you a high light Jesus birthday, was initiated by sister Daisy T Montero, on 2002 after the purchased of the 885 Wilson Ave. a building own by the church.
GOAL: 1, 500.00 on 2008, of December the church COLLECTION on birthday for Jesus amounted of 2, 000.00 the whole amount donated at school because of the big damage on the area because of fire.-DO YOU REMEMBER?
Last year goal in my journal is 6, 000.00- Collection= ______ 2016 goal 6, 500, 00. When December 18, 2016. One of the target to buy a wireless mike.
In 2 Cor. 8:9, Paul is encouraging the Corinthian church to take part in this giving. We want to look at only one verse, and one of the reasons he encourages them to give liberally.
2 Cor. 8:9 For you know of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He become poor, so that you through His Poverty might Become Rich. NIV
This verse is intended to explain why they should abound in this grace. What is the reason he gives?
Someone might interpret this verse to mean, “Oh, Jesus died so that I might become rich with money!
See it says so right there: “So that you might become rich!” But that person is misunderstanding Paul’s point - We know this because that interpretation wouldn’t support Paul’s point that the Corinthians should be like the Macedonians and abound in this grace. The Macedonians were poor monetarily, and yet gave out of their poverty.
The apostle Paul was concerned about benevolence ministry for the Jerusalem church. In the book of Acts chapter 2, 4 and 6 there were poor members who badly needed help in the church in Jerusalem and had the resources to take good care of its own without any outside help.
About ten years later, as recorded in Acts 11:27-30, an entirely different situation arose. The church in Antioch sent relief to help the poor saints in Judea.
The third case happened about fifteen years later, or about twenty-five years after the events in Acts 2.The Jerusalem church did not have the resources to take care of its own and, thus, other churches aided it. Rom. 15:25-27; 1 Cor. 16:1-3
I. HOW RICH JESUS IS? In what sense is Jesus rich? “Though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor.” What is the currency of these riches? Of course, there is a sense in which Jesus is materially rich:
Psalms 50:10-12 GNT all the animals in the forest are mine and the cattle on thousands of hills. 11 All the wild birds are mine and all living things in the fields. 12 “If I were hungry, I would not ask you for food, for the World and everything in it is mine.
Consider: John 17:24-26:
24 “Father! You have given them to me, and I want them to be with me where I am, so that they may see my glory, the glory you gave me; for you loved me before the world was made. 25 Righteous Father! The world does not know you, but I know you, and these know that you sent me. 26 I made you known to them, and I will continue to do so, in order that the love you have for me may be in them, and so that I also may be in them.”
What are Jesus’ riches? What means more to Him than anything else? Just as our riches are bound up in the relationship we have with God in Christ, Jesus’ riches are bound up with the relationship He has with God the Father. He owns everything, but fundamentally what makes Jesus rich is the love of God the Father.
He shares His rich relationship with us; the love that was between Father and Son before the foundation of the world. So our riches and Jesus’ riches are fundamentally the same: A relationship with God
He Is Rich In Grace: Eph. 1:7, "By whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace."
"Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ!" Ephesians 3:8
Definition of God's Grace: means God’s love in action towards men who merited the opposite of love.
Grace means God sending His only Son to descend into hell on the cross so that we guilty ones might be reconciled to God and received into heaven.
"Grace may be defined as the unmerited or undeserving favor of God to those who are under condemnation.
II. HOW POOR DID HE BECOME? “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.” (2 Cor. 8:9, NIV).
When Did Christ Become Poor?- He left the radiant splendors of Heaven to come to earth, this humble planet infected by sin. In Heaven He shared the glory of His Father - but on earth He disguised His glary and appeared as an ordinary baby boy. In Heaven He ruled from the Throne of the Universe--here He was born in a barn. In Heaven He was worshipped by Millions of Angels - here He was honored only by a handful of humble sheep-herders, and a few foreign star-gazers, and a small number of elderly saints in Jerusalem.
Well then, when did Christ become poor? Was it during His childhood, youth, and young manhood?
He was just a carpenter’s son, who later became a carpenter him-self. He earned his living and supported his family by the sweat of his brow. He probably seemed poor to those who knew Him
Well then, when did Jesus become poor?
Was it during his Public Ministry, when He became a traveling Rabbi with a band of poor disciples tagging along with Him?
After all, during that time He himself said, “Foxes have dens and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” [Luke 9:58.] He didn’t own a home.
Then did Jesus “become poor” at the end of His ministry, when He was deserted by even His closest followers and friends?
They forsook Him, ran away, abandoned Him! When your friends leave you high and dry in your neediest hour, how lonely it feels. If Judas was the only disciple who actually betrayed Him, nonetheless the others deserted Him. We are poor indeed when our loved ones leave us stranded to face our fears and foes alone.
And yet even then He was not poor. For earlier that very evening, before they all fled, He had told them, “A time is coming, and has [now] come, when you. will leave me all alone. Yet I am NOT alone, for my Father is with me.” (John 16:32.) .
But WHY did Christ Become Poor? -- WHY would the Father desert Him like that? Because of the fact which Paul wrote 3 chapters earlier (2 Cor. 5:21): “God made him who had no sin to BE SIN for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. “
And Isaiah had prophesied this too, 700 years before:
We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on HIM the Iniquity of US ALL. Isa. 53
Jesus’ Riches and His Becoming Poor? 2 Cor. 8:9 For you know of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He become poor, so that you through His Poverty might Become Rich. NIV
Jesus’ riches and poverty: “Though he was loved by His father, he became a slave and died on the cross”
This doesn’t make sense as an example of giving - it doesn’t fulfill the purpose of the sentence: to explain why we should give as the Macedonians gave. The sentence is true, and would make sense as a statement of the Father’s love; indeed, we could restate John 3:16 this way: “Though God loved His one and only Son, he gave him up, so that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
Proven Of His Poorest life on Earth. Luke2:7- He was wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger.
POOR: No bed, no fellow,
Without doubt, the greatest example of poverty is seen in His death on the cross.
III. JESUS POVERTY MADE US RICH.
2 Cor. 8:9 For you know of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He become poor, so that you through His Poverty might become rich. NIV.
A Christian couple once adopted a small boy, who, when they took him in, owned only the old rugged clothes that he was wearing. Once in a great while, when the boy was very bad, the parents would pull out those old rugged clothes and remind him of what he once had as compared to now. He now had parents who loved him, plenty clothes to wear, plenty of good food, his own room, a multitude of possessions, etc. This was very effective in causing the boy to try to do better.
A. Jesus went from riches to poverty so we could go from poverty to riches.
2 In the past you were spiritually dead because of your disobedience and sins. Eph. 2:1
Eph. 2:12 At that time you were apart from Christ. You were foreigners and did not belong to God's chosen people. You had no part in the covenants, which were based on God's promises to his people, and you lived in this world without hope and without God.
How Rich Have We Become? 1 John 3:1 See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.
No one in this world is richer than the child of God. He has been freed from sin, he has peace with God, a peace that surpasses understanding.
We lack the ability to describe how rich we are, as redeemed members of the family of God, as Christians.
Conclusion:
What Is the implications of my sermon today? How do we give? We are to abound in this grace because we know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ: For our sakes, because He knew the depth of the riches of the knowledge of God, He became man and died on the cross, so that we through that death might enter into the riches of fellowship with God.
To those who are not members, consider how rich you can become when you accept Jesus today!