Stirring Generosity

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Benjamin Kreps:

Hey everyone, and welcome to the Mark Prater podcast where our aim is to connect our global family of Sovereign Grace Churches with our executive director. Mark, one of the wonderful things that I enjoy in Sovereign Grace is not only that we are a family of churches that has distinct defined theological convictions and our shared values, but that we also have our shaping virtues, ethical entailments of the gospel that inform the way we hold those theological convictions, the way we live them out. One of those which has been a hallmark throughout our history in Sovereign Grace is the shaping virtue of generosity. And you wanted to talk about that shaping virtue, generosity in our churches, and you have a story for us. But first, talk to us about this wonderful shaping virtue.

Mark Prater:

Yeah, it's a wonderful virtue I think, and for a number of different reasons, but it's language you just used, It is the fruit of the gospel. It's ethical entailments of the gospel that seem lived out practically in our lives. And it's one of those virtues of seven that we have that we hope and pray by the grace of God, mark our lives in Sovereign Grace churches. And we're not exclusive in that. Other denominations are generous as well because they apply the gospel to their lives. So these are not exclusive to our family of churches, but it's something that we want to continue to hold out as something we want; to be known as generous people in this case. And the connection to the gospel, there's several connections to the gospel, but one of them very clearly is in 2 Corinthians 8, where Paul is talking about generosity in chapter 8 and chapter 9, but he makes this connection, clear connection to the gospel in 2 Corinthians 8:9, but let me read it to you: For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake, he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.

And it's one verse that succinctly and accurately captures what God did in the gospel. That God the Father, gave his only son a rich, generous gift to us who came and gave his life for the poor, for us who needed salvation so that we might be rescued from the wrath of God because of our sins and receive forgiveness and have eternal life through faith in his finished work alone. And it's that understanding of the gospel and ongoing appreciation for what Christ has done that does stir the virtues that we've talked about in the past, the shaping virtues in our lives and that of generosity in this case in particular.

And we as pastors, since I'm going to speak to pastors for a moment, we as pastors are called to faithfully preach God's word. And where the text allows, if you're preaching through 2 Corinthians 8 and 9 for example, you want to call people to generosity, not just out of duty. It's what Christians do. It's not just the moral thing to do. It is the fruit of the gospel in your life, meaning that once you see how generous the father has been in the giving of his son, you want to be generous back to God because you're overwhelmed by his generosity. In that sense, we will never out give God, we will never give one of our children like He did in the giving of the Son.

So it's an important virtue not only in our churches, but I think for each individual believer because there for a couple of reasons, it allows you to participate in what God is doing in the advancement of the gospel in your community locally, through your local church and in your area by joining other churches and in Sovereign Grace in terms of what God is doing throughout the world.

But another reason I think it's important for us, there is quite a unique joy that you experience when you are generous and God wants us to experience that joy by being a generous people. So I wouldn't want folks to miss that. And I am a proponent of generosity for that reason, those reasons and many, many more.

Benjamin Kreps:

Excellent and amen. Yes, wherever there is stinginess lingering in the heart of a believer, I mean that is an issue of actually understanding the immensity of the generosity of God. It's a gospel issue. It's going back to the cross and observing the lavish, undeserved grace poured out on our lives and understanding that, I mean, how can we not then and with our money of all things give to the Lord and to his purposes. And you have a testimony that you want to share with us about a church that we partner with globally where God is doing that now. There are many churches in Sovereign Grace. So there's much generosity and much to talk about. But you wanted to highlight a specific story of what God's doing in a church in Costa Rica, I believe.

Mark Prater:

Yeah, I do. And let me just give you the context of this story. I actually was going to talk about a different topic in this podcast today. But last night Jill and I had dinner with a couple who are very generous to Sovereign Grace and there are a number of reasons why I wanted to get dinner with them. I wanted to obviously thank them for their generosity to our family of churches. I wanted to talk to them about a new initiative of stirring generosity that I hope to introduce, I plan to introduce at the Council of Elders meeting in just about a month. I'm very excited about that. I wanted their input and they may potentially be involved in that. And I just wanted to talk about another new initiative that may not get launched quite this year, but maybe the following year because I think we need to trial run it first, just another way to stir generosity in our churches.

And so I just wanted to talk to 'em about all those things. But when I was thanking them for their generosity, I was trying to connect it to the effect it's having. And just that afternoon I had a Zoom meeting with a pastor, Rodrigo, Fournier who leads Casa 2:42, a candidate church in San Jose, Costa Rica, a wonderful church. And I was just asking him how he was doing and he said how the church was doing and he said, I don't know what's going on. I don't know Mark whether this is revival or not, but we have more and more and more people coming. He said, we've got to a place, we have two services and we've got to a place that people come and they have to leave because there's nowhere to sit. So now they're adding, they're talking about adding, a third service because the Lord is just drawing people and they're seeing new converts, people being born again, placing their trust in Christ and people being discipled in the gospel and they're actually having an effect there in San Jose.

They're also just beginning to church plant just south of San Jose. And it's all for the advancement of the gospel. So I was telling this couple that story because in their giving to Sovereign Grace, have given to that nation and helped the advancement of the gospel there. And I just wanted to connect through a specific story, their generosity with how the gospel's advancing. And I wanted to do that because when people give, think about this, when people give, we give in faith not by sight. In other words, we give sacrificially not knowing how God's going to provide for us, will he replenish what we're giving away. For example, when we give, we don't know exactly how God is going to use that money, we're giving in faith that it will lead to the advancement of the gospel. But when we hear stories and when we see how the gospel is advancing, then our faith, we realize in giving in faith, has been honored by God when we are now hearing about the advancement of the gospel.

And they said something to me last night that really stuck with me, which is why I'm devoting the topic of generosity for this episode of the podcast. They said, we love giving. Our motive in giving is really 2 Corinthians 8:9. We give because God's been generous to us in the giving of his son. But what's really helpful for us is after we give, to either hear those stories or to actually meet some of those people, and they've been to different contexts with me and they get to meet some of the people I've talked about and that makes a real difference in people's giving. They know them and they can see and they can hear how God's at work.

And so I just wanted to mention that because we as pastors, again, are called to faithfully preach God's word and call folks to give because that's the right thing to do. It's the biblical thing to do. We want them to have the joy of generosity. But what we also have to do is to strengthen their faith because they, again, they're given faith by telling them stories of how the gospel is advancing. And so look to do that in your local church, wherever you're seeing the gospel advance in your local church, tell the story maybe someone that was recently saved or how people are coming to some sort of course like the Bridge course or Christianity Explored, whatever you might be doing in your church because without their giving you couldn't have those events where the gospel is being preached. It's also why we try to get stories out and we do these quarterly Sovereign Grace mission videos. We're trying to tell stories of how the gospel is advancing so that people who do give to our family of churches actually see and hear stories of how the gospel is advancing.

And it's just something that you see in scripture as I read through Acts. It strikes me that Peter, he goes, directed by the Spirit, he goes to Cornelius, and his household is saved and it causes a little bit of a stir because Peter goes to Jerusalem and reports what's happened; that the Gentiles are being saved. And he got pushback from the circumcision group and he just told a story about what God had done in saving the Gentiles. And it became very clear after the hearing of those stories, what happened at Cornelius's house that they realized, oh, the gospel is not just for Jew but for Gentile. It's for every tribe, tongue, and nation. And so the telling of stories like that I think is just a biblical pattern that you see that we have an obligation as pastors to tell our people. And when you do that, it stirs even more generosity because people find a lot of joy in knowing that their generous giving is being used in the advancement of the gospel.

Benjamin Kreps:

Yeah, excellent. One of the privileges we have as pastors is to exhort and encourage our people to be generous givers. I mean, giving generously unlocks a constellation of blessing and promises according to God's word. One of those being those testimonies of seeing how our faithful giving, perhaps we don't even think about it as much as we might, but just faithfully sowing, sowing into God's kingdom. And then to hear the stories about what God's doing. And certainly on those mission videos, I mean for all of the churches in Sovereign Grace, we hope everyone will be able to participate if they're not, in giving out of our budgets as we've agreed to in our partnership agreement, the 10% to Sovereign Grace, those videos we can show to our churches and say, you participated in this. You played a role in what God's doing and through Sovereign Grace and globally as well. So I just love hearing that partnership piece where there was giving that came that we participated in with Costa Rica, along with their giving and how God's used that kind of partnership in giving. I mean, the reality is in light of the lavish and generous grace of God compelling us to give, and then in light of on the other side of our giving, promises and blessing and glory to God, I mean, there is no downside. So win-win, all joy, all glory to God. And I'm grateful to hear that story and many other stories about generous giving throughout Sovereign Grace.

So thanks for sharing that testimony with us. Thanks for your encouragement, Mark. Thank you all for checking out the podcast. We'll see you here next week. Lord willing. Bye for now.