Tag: generous

Published February 13, 2023

The Watchman in Corinth

If you were with us last week, you’ll recall that Paul’s missionary team of four had whittled down to just one. Luke had remained in Philippi (presumable to pastor the first church in that city) and Silas & Timothy had stayed behind in Berea while Paul went on to the city of Athens. Of course, Silas & Timothy would rejoin Paul before too long, but for now, Paul was left to minister on his own.

And so, following his typical pattern, Paul preached the Good News to anyone he could find – both in the Jewish synagogues as well as in the public square! But for all of Paul’s preaching, it seems that the city of Athens had little appetite for the Word of God and only a few people accepted the Lord in that city.

And so, always eager to share the Good News with more and more people – Paul didn’t linger long in Athens and soon made his way to Corinth – and that’s where we are going to pick up the story today.

At this point, Timothy and Silas have yet to catch up with Paul, and so he is still ministering alone – but that won’t be the case for long. As we will read today, God graciously provided yet another set of co-workers for Paul – a married couple that would work together with him in Corinth and would later travel with him to Ephesus.

But that’s not the only thing that God provided for Paul in Corinth. As we go through this chapter we will see that God not only provided co-workers for Paul, but He also provided for Paul’s physical needs, He gave him encouragement and a renewed sense of calling, and he also gave him protection from those who wanted to harm him.

It really is a great chapter for us to see how God graciously provided exactly what Paul needed – and exactly when He needed it.

Our passage today is Acts chapter 18 – and we’re going to start at verse 1 as Paul leaves Athens and makes his way to Corinth.

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Published October 17, 2022

Commissioned

As we’ve been going through our study of the Book of Acts, we’ve noted how the story kinda jumps around from person to person – following a variety of different characters as the Holy Spirit works through each of them in unique ways. We’ve seen snapshots of Peter & John, Stephen, Philip, Barnabas, & Saul – all of them each playing key role in the early days of the church.

But so far, Peter has been the most visible character in these stories. We’ve seen him preaching on the day of Pentecost, later healing a lame man at the temple, confronting Ananias & Sapphire about lying to the Holy Spirit, bringing the Gospel to Cornelius and his household, and most recently being miraculously rescued from prison!

If we had to identify a central character to the book of Acts so far (Jesus Christ not withstanding) – I think we would have to choose Peter.

However, we are now just about half-way through the book of Acts and it’s at this point that the spotlight of the story shifts and will now follow a young man named Saul and it will track with him pretty much for the rest of the book.

Of course, Saul is not a new character to the book of Acts. We first met him back in chapter 7. At that time he was a zealous young Pharisee whose misdirected zeal for the Lord lead him to imprison and murder many believers.

But thankfully, in His grace, God saw fit to intervene, and in a very dramatic fashion, brought Saul to the saving knowledge and faith in Jesus Christ. And not only was Saul’s conversion dramatic, so was the change in his life! Almost immediately, Saul began boldly preaching about Jesus Christ – doing the very thing that he had condemned others for only days earlier!

With Saul’s zeal for the Lord now properly directed, He had gone from being the persecutor to being the persecuted! And so for his own safety, the other believers sent him away to his hometown of Tarsus.

But that certainly wasn’t the end of Saul’s story. Sometime later, Barnabas went to Tarsus to find Saul and brought him to Antioch where they both worked together with the church there for quite some time.

And that’s just about the last we’ve heard about Saul up until this point. The only other thing we know is that he and Barnabas have taken a trip to Jerusalem to bring a gift for the church there to help provide for their needs during a famine.

And so that’s where we’re going to pick things up today.

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Published October 30, 2018

Good and Generous God

This morning we are continuing our look at the life of Abram. We last left Abram as he was being deported out of Egypt – escorted out of the country by Pharaoh’s men.

He had gone to Egypt to escape a famine, but while there were there, they ran into a few complications. Because Abram’s wife Sarai was so beautiful – he had asked her to tell people that she was his sister, rather than his wife – out of fear that he would be killed by the Egyptians who would see how beautiful she was and would want to remove her husband out of the equation.

Well, this plan worked so well that Sarai ended up being taken into Pharaoh’s palace to become his wife – something that I don’t imagine Abram & Sarai had counted on. But God intervened and brought plagues on Pharaoh and his whole household because of Sarai, and through that, somehow it was discovered that Sarai was really Abram’s wife. As you might imagine, Pharaoh was none too pleased when he found out that Abram had deceived him and that Sarai was actually his wife. So after some fairly harsh words, he had his men escort Abram & Sarai out of the country.

And so that’s where we’re going to pick it up this morning – in Genesis chapter 13, verse 1.

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Published February 27, 2018

The Generosity of God

The main theme in the story of Nehemiah is of course, rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. We’ve talked about this for several weeks now so I’m not going to rehash all that. But this morning our story takes a short pause and it goes down a little rabbit trail. Now I’ll admit, that quite often we go down these little rabbit trails primarily because my mind has all these random thoughts that don’t always have anything to do with the main point – but our rabbit trail today isn’t even my fault. This one is written right into the pages of Scripture.

For the past several weeks, we’ve been talking about some of the challenges that Nehemiah has had to face as he rallies the people of Israel to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. I mean, it was a challenge for Nehemiah just to get permission from King Artaxerxes to go to Jerusalem to rebuild the city. The job itself was a huge challenge with about 4 km of massive walls to repair and rebuild. It was a challenge to keep the people motivated and excited about the project when – especially when their enemies were making fun of them and mocking their efforts. It was an even greater challenge to keep the people safe as their enemies ramped up their opposition and resorted to physical threats and violence.

But today, we’re going to read about another challenge that Nehemiah faced. And this one came from within the walls – right from the Israelites themselves. And I say it’s a rabbit trail because it’s not directly related to the rebuilding of the wall – it’s almost like a little sidenote – but it certain has the potential to derail the whole project.

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Published August 15, 2016

A Taste of God’s Generosity

Taste and see that the Lord is good.

Oh, the joys of those who take refuge in him! Psalm 34:8

Over the past couple of weeks we have been focusing our Sunday mornings around this verse. We’ve discovered that knowing the truth about God – tasting and seeing for ourselves that God is good – that changes everything about how we live our lives.

Because what we believe determines our decisions. Just like how if we have an incorrect belief about gravity – we’re bound to make some foolish decisions that can lead us to having a real wreck. Likewise, believing false ideas about God can lead us to making foolish decisions that will cause us a lot of pain and hurt in our life.

So we want to know the truth about who God is and what He’s like. We want to taste and see for ourselves that God is good. As we do that, we’re gonna find that our day-by-day decisions change – which in turn, affects the entire course of our life!

And I know that many of us are already well into that process of tasting and seeing that God is good. We’ve experienced it for ourselves – and now it’s our turn to help the people around us taste and see for themselves.

Our friends and our neighbours have been fed a lot of mis-information about God. They’ve been told a lot of stuff about God that simply isn’t true. So our job, as disciples of Jesus – as imitators of Jesus – is to help them taste and see (through our lives) that God is good.

For example, we spent time last week looking at how God is joy. He is the source of all joy. He invented laughter and happiness and even pleasure. That was all his idea. The very character of God is joy. And the more we taste and see and experience God’s joy, the more we will find that our life begins to overflow with joy. And its then that our neighbours and friends and co-workers can taste and see that joy through us.

So that’s what we talked about last week and today I want us to look at another truth about God.

I read a very interesting article this week. It was entitled “The Man Who Couldn’t Stop Giving”. I’d love to read you the whole thing, but for the sake of time, let me just read the first couple of paragraphs of the story…

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Published January 7, 2013

God’s Blessing Strategy

Who here feels like you are extremely blessed? Do we even realize how incredibly blessed we are?

Why has God blessed us so much?

Think about this: The World Health Organization estimates that one-third of the world is well-fed, one-third is under-fed, and one-third is starving. Why has God blessed us so much? All of us had some sort of Christmas dinner, I’m sure. And I’m sure that most of us had left-overs. We can’t even eat all the food we have. Yet, millions starve to death every year. Why has God blessed us so much?

50% – thats half! – of the world population survives on less than $850 per year. That’s just $2.33 a day. Yet, if we accidentally dropped 2.33 worth of change into some deep snow, we might not even bother to try to dig it out. Its just a couple bucks.

Why has God blessed us with such an incredible amount of wealth? I found an interesting website called “globalrichlist.com” and if you go to that website, you can put in the amount of your annual income and it will tell you how you rank in wealth compared to the rest of the world. I don’t know how much all of you make in a year, but if you make just $20,000 per year, you’re in the top 12% of the world’s wealthiest people. (By the way, the poverty line in Alberta right now is $23,000) You could be considered to be “living in poverty in Alberta” and still be in the top 12% of the world’s wealthiest people. Why has God blessed us so much!?

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