Generosity is Love in Action — Part 2

Hi, I'm Rick Warren, and Merry Christmas. Christmas is gonna be here very soon. And Jesus said in Luke 14:23, Go out into the highways in the countryside and urge everybody you find to come in so that my house will be full. Who are you thinking of to bring to your church? Maybe it's a friend or a neighbor or maybe your accountant or the person who rings up your groceries at the local market. Whoever it is, I wanna challenge you to be a light at Christmas and invite them to services at your ch.

Hey, everyone. This is Pastor Rick's Daily Hope. You know, sharing your faith with the next generation. Well, it's one of the most important things you can do. And we're so glad you're here, because today, Rick is continuing in his Leaving a Lasting Legacy series. Rick gives you some very special tools to help you share the biblical principles of faith, hope, love, and generosity with the next generation. Now let's join Rick as he shares part two of a message called Generosity is Love in Action.

Now, it's interesting that Jesus in the Bible talked more about money than he did about heaven or than he did about hell. Now, why is that? Because it's the number one thing that keeps us from God. Materialism. And my desire to hold on to things. And thinking that life is all about things keeps me from getting to know God. It strikes at the core of my selfishness. It keeps people from knowing God. In fact, I've noticed over 26 years I can talk about almost anything on Sunday morning, and people will be cool with it until I start talking about money. If I say money, people start getting a little upset, a little uptight, like some of you are right now. Go ahead, breathe, okay? Breathe. It's all right, okay? I'm not after your money. Just go ahead and breathe, all right? And they get up. Why do we get up tight? Because the most sensitive nerve in the human body goes from the heart to the wallet. And we spend all of our lives making money, earning money, saving money, wanting money, investing money. And so when we talk about it, like, somebody might take my money, we get so upset and we actually revert back to childhood. Mine, mine. It's acting like a little baby. What is the antidote to materialism? How do we teach the next generation not to fall for the trap that many of us have? The only antidote to materialism is giving. You see, if materialism is getting. The only way you break the grip of materialism is giving. Every time you give, you become more like Christ. You become more generous. Every time you give Your heart grows bigger every time you give. You break the grip of materialism. You defeat it every time you give. You make a counterculture statement. You're actually doing something quite radical. Whenever you're generous. We do not live in a generous society. We live in a society that says, I'm gonna get as much as I can for me. Look out for number one. You know, I gotta do what's best for me when you do. When you're generous, you are a counterculture revolutionary. And you're saying, I refuse to be sucked up into that false myth that life is about the acquisition of things and that you judge your life on how big your pile is at the end of life. It is not that Jesus said, a man's life consists not in the abundance of things that he possesses not. And I've told you many times, the greatest things in life are not things. And your value has nothing to do with your valuables. And your self worth has nothing to do with your net worth. And your possessions have nothing to do with your purpose in life. And so we learn to give. Every time you give, you have a spiritual victory. It's a win over Satan. And by the way, if you're a parent, let your kids see you give. They need to see you being generous, not just tithing at church. I'm talking about loaning stuff to other people, buying dinner for somebody else, giving things to others. Let them see you being generous with your time. Let them see you being generous in every area of life. You'll never regret it. Number three. Generosity draws me closer to God. It draws me closer to God. Now this is why Satan fights it. Now, the Bible says where your treasure is or your heart will be wherever your treasure is. So where's your heart today?

Simple.

It's wherever you put your money. Some of you, your treasure's in your home. Your heart's in your home. That's where you put your money. Some of you, your heart's in your boat. Your heart's in your cabin. Your heart's in that car that you love. Your heart's in wherever you put your money. That's where your heart's gonna go. You wanna get interested in Coca Cola Co. Buy some stock. The moment you buy some stock, you're gonna be very interested in the stock price of Coca Cola. Now, if your treasure's not there, you couldn't care less about Coke stock. You wanna get interested in Microsoft, buy some stock in Microsoft. Wherever you put your money, you put your money in a candidate. All of a sudden you're very interested in that candidate. Wherever your treasure is, your heart will be also. Now, what that means is that where I put my money reveals my priorities and reveals my love. You see, I could say, I love God, I love Jesus. You ever spend any time with them? No. Then you don't really love them as much as you think you do. I really love my kids. You spend enough time with them?

No.

Then you don't really love them the way you think you do. You know, I love being in shape. You work out?

No.

You don't really love being in shape. Was that a nervous laugh just then? The point is that what we say, here's how you know what's important to people. Look at their calendar and look at their checkbook stubs or their bank statement. Because the way we spend our time and the way we spend our money really says what's important to us. I could tell you, oh, this is really important to me. But if I don't spend time on it and I don't spend money on it, my heart isn't really there. And so when I give to God, guess where my heart goes? It goes toward God. It draws to him. It draws me closer. It's an act of worship. Now, not only does it draw me closer to God, it also draws me to others when I give to them. And that's why number four is generosity develops my love. It displays God's character. It defeats materialism. It draws me closer to God, and it develops my love. And here I'm talking about your love for other people. Just like if I give an offering to God, it draws my heart closer to God. If I give you some money, it draws me closer to you. Generosity creates community. Generosity creates community. Randy said it like this. He said I had to learn about the connection between generosity and community from my unchurched neighbor. One day, my neighbor came over and asked me if he could borrow my ladder. I said, sure. I later learned he already had a ladder. He had one of his own. He didn't need to borrow mine. He said he just used it as a way to build our relationship. When he borrowed my stuff, it made me feel I was needed. And I like that feeling. Now I've learned to do the same thing. My other neighbor is Roger, and he's got a Shop vac that I borrow every Friday night to clean out my car with my son. Now every Friday night, Roger even leaves it out for me. I told Roger recently that I could afford to buy my own shop vac, but I just liked the interaction with him coming over and borrowing his, Roger asked me to please not buy one. I can now see how generosity creates community. I give to God, it draws me closer to God. I give to other people, it draws me closer to them. Look at what the Bible says. Your generosity not only provides for the needs of God's people, but it also produces prayers of thanksgiving to God. God says our people must learn to help all who need their assistance, that their lives will be fruitful. If you want your life to be fruitful, productive, effective, successful, you want your life to bear fruit, you have to learn to give to other people. You have to learn generosity. You'll never have a fruitful, effective, productive life without generosity. Now, the first followers of Christ, the early Christians, were famous for their generosity. In fact, look at this verse on the screen. The community of believers shared everything in common. Generosity creates community. You want to get close to somebody, give them a gift. It gets you closer to them. Now, when we're generous with each other, it draws each other together. And yet look at what happens when we don't do that first. John 3:17. If you see some brother or sister in need and you have the means to do something about it, but you turn a cold shoulder and you do nothing, what happens to God's love? It disappears, and you made it disappear. Now Tom is going to come and talk about the next two ways that we have to teach generosity to the next generation.

Fifth way to teach generosity is generosity determines my blessing. That's what people need to hear. That's what I need to be reminded of. It determines my blessing. The Bible says in Proverbs 22:9, Generous people will be blessed. And I have seen that time after time after time hundreds of times. If we started telling stories about how God has blessed you for your generosity, we could be here till next week telling stories. I think Shondell and I, the time in our married life that we saw most how God blesses us through generosity was when we lost it all. I've told you before that years ago, we lost everything in a flood. A levee broke near our house, and nine feet of water was in our house. Everything was lost. Everything was gone. We happened to be across town and not even there at the time. All we had left was the car we were driving, the clothes on our back. We literally drove our Chevy to the levee and the levee was dry. It literally happened to us. It's always good to laugh at other people's pain. I know it is. Now, we had given all of our lives. We had tithed all our lives. More than tithed. I'm a pastor. I wasn't going to challenge other people to follow Jesus in a way, I wasn't willing to follow Jesus. So why would God let that happen to us? How could he let that happen to us? I got to tell you, over the next several months after that happened, we saw God bless our lives in ways that we would have never seen otherwise. Even through difficulties, we saw from all over the country, people come in and rebuild our house, resupply all the things that we'd lost, and all of a sudden, they were all back. And because of that, things had just a little less of a hold on us than they had before. We saw people that built relationships with us out of that time that we wouldn't have had otherwise. This church, Saddleback Church, five years before I came here to be a pastor, took up an offering for me to rebuy the books in my pastor's library. So now that I've been a pastor here for about 15 years, I can still look at my library and see many of the books in my library bought by this church because they loved me before I came. That's a blessing I wouldn't have had otherwise. God blesses us in the ups and downs in life through our generosity. Look at what Jesus said about this. Luke 6:38. If you give, you will receive, and your gift will return to you in full measure and running over with. Whatever measure you use in giving will be used to measure what is given back to you. Do you see what God's saying there? God's saying you get to choose. I'm allowing you to choose how I will bless your life. As you give, then you will receive. That's the measure of how it's going to happen. You've heard that God says that refusing to tithe is like robbing God. Have you ever wondered how that works? How is it robbing God to not not tithe? I mean, God doesn't need my money. What am I robbing God of? I'm robbing of him. Robbing him of his opportunity to bless me, his opportunity to do things in my life that he wants to do. Stingy people miss out on so many of God's blessings. If you ever look at a stingy person and think, wow, I sort of envy them because they're holding on to their things and they're building up a bigger stockpile than I have, don't envy them. Pity them, because they're missing out on so many of God's blessings. Blessings. This next verse in your outline. The Bible says in Deuteronomy 15:10, give generously and do so without a grudging heart. And then because of this, God will bless you in all your work and in everything. In everything that you put your hand to. So I just say, don't let Satan rob you of one more minute of blessing. This verse up on your screen. Second Corinthians 9:11. You will be enriched in every way for all your generosity. I just told you a couple of promises from the Bible about generosity. The truth of the matter is, there are more promises in the Bible about giving than about anything else. Generosity brings God's blessings. There's a sixth thing that generosity brings into our lives that we want to pass on. Generosity deepens my joy. It deepens my joy. You make a living by what you get. You make a life by what you give. You leave a legacy by what you give. Jesus said in Acts 20, verse 35, there is more happiness in giving than in receiving. I've always loved that verse because it's so honest. There's more happiness in giving than receiving. Now, does Jesus say that there's no happiness in receiving? No. How many of you would agree that there is happiness in receiving? Absolutely, there is happiness in receiving. No doubt about it. Jesus says there's more happiness in giving. And that's the exact opposite to the way much of the world thinks. Most of the world thinks there's more happiness in what you get. Jesus said it's not true. It's not true. There is more happiness in what you give. And you know that's true many of you, because of what you've given. When we're generous, it results in joy. It feels good to give. You want your family to be more joyful? Then be more generous as a family. You want to be more joyful in your life, then be more generous as a person.

Number seven. Generosity demonstrates my faith. It demonstrates my faith. In fact, in 2nd Corinthians 9:13, it says, Your giving proves it's the proof of the reality of your faith. In other words, you don't just talk the talk. You put your money where your mouth is. Your giving proves the reality of your faith. I saw a bumper sticker once that said, if you love Jesus, tithe, any fool can honk. Now, did you know that in the Bible there's only one way God says that you can prove that God exists. When I was in school, working on my master's degree and then my doctorate, we had to learn and memorize all the different philosophical proofs for the existence of God. And so we learned the ontological proof and we learned the teleological proof for the existence of God, and we learned the cosmological proof for the existence of God and Kant's moral imperative and all of these different reasons that say, come on, rationally, there's got to be a creator when you've got a creation. I couldn't just take this watch off and shake it up and all of a sudden a watch comes out and, you know, we learned all of these rational proofs for the existence of God, but in the Bible, it doesn't say that. In the Bible, there's only one way you can prove God. And God says it's through generosity, it's through giving. Specifically, it's through tithing. There's a verse in the Bible where God says, I dare you to test me and prove that I'm alive. Dare, prove and test that I'm really the loving, generous God that I claim to be. I call it the Pepsi Challenge verse in the Bible. It's this verse in Malachi 3, and it says this. The whole nation is under a curse because you're robbing me. Bring your whole tithe into the storehouse. That means where you worship, so that there will be plenty in my house. Test me in this, says the Lord Almighty, and just see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you won't have room enough for it. Now, you don't even know if that verse is true or not until you've tried it. And if you, you know, if you don't believe it, just take a pair of scissors and cut it out. But if you don't believe that one, how can you believe any of them?

I don't know about you, but I am encouraged after that message.

And I.

And let's keep the encouragement going with a letter from one of our listeners. Here's Rick.

Friends, I love it when you write me. And today I wanna take a moment and share an encouraging letter from a woman named Tara. She's a listener from Georgia who says putting God first every morning has changed her life. Here's what she wrote. Dear Pastor Rick, I'd like to thank you for your Daily Hope messages. I was going through a lot of depression and I was actually hating myself. I had no motivation to do anything but go to work and take care of my husband. And then one day, I decided to start my mornings with a Daily Hope devotional, Putting God first before my day began. Your teachings about putting God first at the first part of every day are so true. My thought processes are better now. I'm changing to habits that are healthier for me. But I know that if it wasn't for the Daily Hope teaching me about God's word, I'd still be lost. So I wanna thank God for you. I know my gift I sent wasn't much, but it came from my heart. And I'll continue to pray for you and the broadcast and your family. Tara, I'm so sorry that you've had to struggle with depression. I've struggled with depression myself. So I'm encouraged to hear that you're starting each day with God's Word because that's the only place that we can find lasting hope. And by the way, thanks for your gift. Doesn't matter what size it is. It's generosity just like yours that helps us reach more people with the jo and the promise and the grace of God. Somebody's donation allowed us to bless you with the teachings from Daily Hope. And now your donation is gonna bless others who need to know more about the love and grace and mercy of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for writing, Tara.

Be sure to join us next time as we look into God's word for our Daily Hope. This program is sponsored by Pastor Rick's Daily Hope and your generous financial support.