Generosity is Love in Action — Part 1

Hi, I'm Rick Warren, and Merry Christmas. Christmas is going to 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 want to challenge you to be a light at Christmas and invite them to services at your church. Hey, everyone.

Welcome back to Pastor Rick's Daily Hope. You know, sharing your faith with the next generation is one of the most important things you can do. So please stay with us today because Rick will begin his Leaving a Lasting Legacy series. In the series, Rick gives you some great tools to help you pass down your faith to the next generation. And now here's Rick with part one of a message called Generosity is Love in Action.

Now, this series that we're beginning today is what I call Leaving a Lasting Legacy. The reason you're here is because somebody told you the previous generation passed the faith on to us. If they hadn't, none of us would be here. It is our duty to pass it on to the next generation and their duty to pass it on to the next and on to the next and on to the next. And as it has been done for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. So what are we supposed to pass on? What is the legacy that we want to leave behind? Psalm 78 on your message notes, verse four says this. We will not hide these truths from our children, but we will teach the next generation. If you are a parent or a grandparent or an aunt or an uncle or a friend of somebody of the next generation, I highly urge you to take notes on what we're going to talk about today and pass it on. Now, what are we supposed to pass on? Well, we are to pass on our faith, and we are to pass on our values, our faith and our values. And what values are we supposed to pass on to to the next generation? We're supposed to pass on the values that last. Now, the Bible is filled with the values that last. But the three most important or the three most famous ones are found in First Corinthians 13:13. It says, these things continue forever. In other words, these three values are eternal values. They're going to last forever. Faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these is love. Now, it's interesting that this week as I began the study for this series, faith, Hope and Love. I went out and I did a little study on these words in the Bible. Here's an interesting fact. You don't have to write this down, but the word Faith is used 246 times in the Bible. The word hope is used 185 times in the Bible. The word love is used 733 times in the Bible. But the word Give is used 2,285 times. The Bible says more about generosity than faith and hope and love put together. Now, I found that quite odd. And to be honest with you, I was kind of perplexed by it. Why is it that the Bible would talk more about generosity than faith and hope and love put together? I mean, it just didn't seem to make sense to me. So I began to go and study all of these verses. And what I discovered is that generosity is simply the practical expression of. Of those three values. It is the way you express faith, hope and love. When I am generous, I'm expressing my faith that God will take care of my needs. So I don't mind giving something away. That's faith. When I give out in generosity, I express hope because I'm saying, God, my hope is in heaven. I'm storing up treasure in heaven. And I know that my purpose in life is not just to get a bunch of things here on earth. My hope isn't here. My. My hope is there. And when I express generosity, I'm demonstrating love. You've heard me say many times, you can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving. Generosity is the heartbeat of love. Love says, I want to give to you, I want to meet your need. Love says, I care about you, I want to serve you. If you. It's the exact opposite of lust. A lot of love songs aren't love songs that are. Oh, they're lust songs. They're about, I need you, I want you, you make me feel this way. That's not love. That's lust. Love is about giving. Lust is about what you do for me, about getting. And generosity is the heart of love. You cannot love someone without being generous because it's all about giving. Giving someone what they need, not what they deserve. That's love. That's the way God loves you. He gives you what you need, not what you deserve. So we're going to look at faith, hope and love the next three weeks. But today we're going to start by looking at the practical expression of all three of them, which is generosity. And we're going to look at the reasons that we Must teach the value of generosity to the next generation. As I said, if you're a parent or a grandparent or an aunt or an uncle, or you're a friend of somebody in the next generation, I would urge you to take notes. As a parent, myself, and actually now as a grandparent, more than anything else, I want my children and my grandchildren to learn generosity. I don't want them to be stingy in life. There are two kinds of people in life, givers and takers. I want my kids to be givers. To be gave generously of their time, generously of their talent, to be generous with their opportunities, generous with their money, generous with their resources, generous with praise, generous with affirmation. I want them to live the generous life, which is the expansive life. Not a self centered, self stingy, internal, it's all about me kind of life. I want him to live an unselfish life, Not a self centered, egotistical clod kind of life. What do we want to leave the next generation? Well, we certainly want to leave this value of generosity. Carl Meninger, who was the famous psychiatrist who founded the world renowned Meninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas, said this generosity is one of the essential components of mental health. We have found that generous people are rarely mentally ill. He said, generous people, it's the stingy people who are mentally ill. So today, in the interest of your mental health and of those sitting next to you, we're gonna look at eight values that we have to pass on to the next generation in this area of generosity. Number one. Generosity displays God's character. It's the first reason God says you need to pass this on to the next generation. Generosity displays God's character. Cause it shows what God is really like. God is a giver. The most generous being in the entire universe is God. He is a giver. He is always giving. The next breath of air you take, that's a gift of God. The next heartbeat you have, that's a gift of God. Everything in your life is a total gift of God. You would have zip, nothing, nada, zero if it weren't for God's generosity. Well, what about all the stuff I've worked for? Where do you think you got your ability to work? Where do you think you got your mind, your hands, your freedom, your life, the fact that you live in America? It's all a gift of God. Everything in your life is because God is generous. And God says, I want you to be like me. So every time you're generous, you're doing what God does. When you're generous with other people. When you're generous with God, when you're generous with the poor, when you're generous with anybody. Time, money, resources. You are being godly. Cause nobody's more generous than God. And God says, I want you to learn to be like me. Like father, like son. Like father, like daughter. Whenever you give, you're doing what God does. Now, the Bible says this on your outline. We all live off God's generous bounty. Gift after gift after, after gift. Now how does God give? Look at this verse up here on the screen. Read it with me, would you? God gives to all generously and ungrudgingly. And he says, that's the way I want you to live your life. I want you to live generously and I want you to live ungrudgingly, giving ungrudgingly to people in need. Giving your time, your talent, your energy, your reputation, your help, whatever you can give them. It's not about you. It's about serving God by serving others. And God says, I'm watching you. Now, the Bible says that God is love. And as I said, you can give without loving, but you can't love without giving. And that's why God is so generous. God so loved the world that he gave. You can't love without giving. When I first fell in love with Kay, I could not keep money in my pocket. I mean, I was spending it all the time. It's like I was burning a hole here. So it's like I had to get rid of it. And I'd buy her stuff she didn't even need or even want for that matter. You know, I'd see something on TV and I'd go, oh, that's cool, I'll buy that. Honey, look at this kitchen magician I bought you. But wait, I got the oriental wok steamer with it and the Ginzu knives and you know, and it was just like I could not stop giving because I was in love. Bob took his young son over to McDonald's and he's got a four year old son. And he bought his son some French fries. And as they were driving out of McDonald's, he said they smelled so good. And he said, I just reached over to take one and he said, these are my fries. You can't have one, dad. He said, as I sat there, I had three thoughts. He said, number one, my son had forgotten that I am the source of all fries. Okay, I bought him, I brought him here, I ordered him, I paid for him. The only reason he had fries was because of me. He had forgotten the source of his fries, he said. The second thing I realized is that my child didn't know I could take away from him if he wanted to. He said, I'm bigger than him. And I could just say, here, give me those things. Or for that matter, if I wanted to, I could go back and buy him a truckload of fries because he wasn't really in control. He thought he might be, but he wasn't. And I could either take them all away or I could give him 10 times the amount he said. The third thing I realized is that I didn't really need his fries. I could go back and get my own if I wanted to. It would be very easy for me to just drive around and get another one, he said. All of a sudden, I realized that's what God thinks about us. God doesn't need your money. God doesn't need your money. He wants what it represents, your heart. He gave it all to you in the first place. He doesn't want your time. He gave it to you. He wants you to give him your heart, what it represents and recognize that he is the source of it all. Look at the next verse. Everything we have has come from you, Lord. We can only give you what's yours already. It's really God's. It's all God's. We need to remember it's God's. You see, you don't really own anything. Hate to tell you this, but it wasn't yours before you were born. It's not gonna be yours after you die. God just loans it to you for about 70 years, and then he's gonna loan it to somebody else, and then he'll loan it to somebody else. You don't really own anything. You didn't bring anything onto this planet, and you're not taking anything out of this planet. So it's all just on loan. Someday I'm gonna write a book and the first sentence is gonna be, what you think you own is really on loan. Now, when you get that attitude, you're just a little bit more. Here. God want a fry. You know, it's like they all came from you. So how about if I gave you one back? It's God. Just saying, I want you to learn to be like me. Unselfish, generous. Not stingy, not selfish. The Bible says this. 2nd Corinthians 9. You will be glorifying God through your generous gifts. Why? Because it displays God's character. Number two, we need to teach that generosity defeats materialism. Generosity is the antidote. It Defeats materialism. Now, to be honest with you folks, as I look at our generation and our culture, whether baby boomer or baby buster, and I think, what are we going to teach these kids who are generation. Yes, There are some things I would rather not pass on to them. Would you agree with that? There's some things in our generations, baby boomers, baby busters, Gen X, that I just assume not pass on. One of them is materialism. I don't know if you agree with this or not, but it seems like our culture is getting more and more materialistic. There's more stuff advertised. There's more stuff. You gotta get it, get it, get it, have it, you know, take it all in. I got my first Christmas catalog in August this year. Come on. How is it that the birth of our savior is now the most materialistic time of year? When everybody's killing themselves shopping, we're all worried about what we're going to get. The Bible tells us generosity defeats materialism. Now, there's no doubt that this is pretty difficult where we're bombarded all the time. Spend it all, have it all, get it all. It's tough to keep your priorities, your values, right? Because here the goal is get more and more and more and more and more. And people even flaunt it. And they run around with bumper stickers that says, he who dies with the most toys wins. That's called materialism. I want to put one that says, he who dies with the most toys still dies. Okay? Okay. It doesn't change. You know, somebody said the other day, man, that guy was a billionaire and he died. I wonder how much he left. I know he said, how much? All he left, all of it. Okay. You're never going to see a hearse driving with a U Haul behind it. Okay, okay. You can't take it with you. All right? So materialism is all through our culture now. That's one thing I'd just soon not pass on. Here's a kind of a sad commentary. Here's an article in the paper. Orange county residents make more but give away less. And it was from the George Gallup poll. George Gallup poll found that the average Orange county resident gave 410 of 1% of income last year to charity. 4/10 of 1%, which was the least generous rate in the entire nation. It was four times more stingy than the least next generous county. We're not real good at that. In other words, when it comes to giving, some Orange county residents stop at nothing. 70% of Orange county residents gave less than $500 away last year to a charity. Now, you can sum up materialism in one word. It is the word get. Get, get, get, get, get, get, get. That's materialism. Get all you can. Can all you get. Sit on the can and spoil the rest. Buy things you don't need. Buy with money you don't have to impress people you don't even like. That's materialism. Keeping up with the Joneses. And it's all about getting well. The Bible says this in Matthew 6:24. You cannot serve both God and money. Now circle the word cannot. Notice it didn't say you should not. He says you cannot. It's an impossibility. You have to choose. You can't have two number one things in your life. My number one goal is to make a lot of money and my number one goal is to serve God. No one's gonna be number one. One's gonna be number two. You can't have two number ones. Anything you put before God in your life, no matter how good it is, becomes your God. And there's a word for anything that's not God that becomes your God. It's called an idol. And idols will severely disappoint you because an idol cannot forgive your past and an idol cannot give you a purpose in the present. And an idol cannot give you a home in heaven. I've talked with women who've put a man first in their life before God. They are severely disappointed because no man is God and no man can meet your needs the way God does. I've met men who put a career first place in their life and they are severely disappointed because no career can meet your life needs like God can. No woman can meet your life needs like God can. You will always be disappointed by anything that takes the place of God at number one in your life. He said you have to choose.

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