14 Notwithstanding ye have well done, that ye did communicate with my affliction.
15 Now ye Philippians know also, that in the beginning of the gospel, when I departed from Macedonia, no church communicated with me as concerning giving and receiving, but ye only.
16 For even in Thessalonica ye sent once and again unto my necessity.
17 Not because I desire a gift: but I desire fruit that may abound to your account.
18 But I have all, and abound: I am full, having received of Epaphroditus the things which were sent from you, an odour of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, well pleasing to God.
19 But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.
Introduction
Some years ago I was preaching on stewardship and there sat in the service two men who had two entirely different responses to the sermon. One of them was angered and incensed and the other one was moved, blessed, and helped by it. The first man, the one who was angered and incensed, went out the front door and he stopped right in front of me. He looked me square in the eye and he said, “I don’t believe a word that you said today.” He didn’t have the courtesy to call me for an appointment or take me out to lunch and tell me that. He just said it in front of God and everybody: “I don’t believe a word of what you had to say.”
The other man, the one who was moved and blessed by the sermon, didn’t say anything. In fact I never would have known that he had been blessed by the sermon except that a couple of years later he was giving his testimony right here behind this pulpit, and as he shared the testimony about how he became a tither he pointed back to that day and to that sermon and said that was when he started.
I got to thinking about the two men sitting in the same church, listening to the same sermon and having such vastly different responses to it. And it taught me several lessons about life and about the ministry that are worth knowing.
The first one is this: the effectiveness of a sermon depends more on the ears of the listener than it does on the eloquence of the speaker. We are always interested in having a good polished sermon by an eloquent speaker, and yet the finest sermon by the finest preacher in the whole world is not worth very much if the people aren’t listening, if they aren’t ready to receive what he has to say. The attitude we bring to the sermon is far more important than the preparation the preacher puts into it. Jesus keeps saying to us, “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear” (Matthew 11:15). Be careful how you listen to the sermon. That’s the first thing I learned.
The second thing I learned that day was that the negative people in life are the most vocal ones. The fellow who didn’t like the sermon couldn’t wait to get to that back door and tell me so. The fellow who did like it didn’t say anything. Isn’t that the way most of life is? Don’t ever be too carried away by vocal negative people in life. In the church or anywhere else. They are usually in a vast minority. And if you aren’t careful you will get the idea that everybody is against whatever these people are yelling about. Really it is only the ones who are talking. So don’t be overly concerned about a few negative comments in any area of life, especially as it relates to stewardship.
The third thing I learned that day was that a man’s attitude toward his money is usually indicative of his attitude toward all of life. The man was rather rude and crude, brass in his approach to me that day. But that was characteristic of his life. In fact I wish that we had the time to follow the lives of those two men who started right here in this sanctuary that day. They went in totally opposite directions and you could see where each one of them has wound up in life. It would teach us something about our attitudes toward material things and how they are a barometer of our attitudes toward all of life.
The best thing that could ever happen to us is that we would develop in our lives the attitude of gratitude. That is to say, we would learn to look upon life with a sense of thanksgiving and gratefulness to God, recognizing that he is the giver of every good and precious gift. The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, and we are but stewards of his. Whatever we have is because of his grace and his goodness. When we leave this world, we’ll leave it all behind and so at best we are just managers for a short period of time. With a sense of gratitude and thanksgiving we would take what he places in our hands, whether it be much or little. We’d be grateful for that which he enables us to do, whether it is to accumulate much or little. And we would use that with a sense of joy and thanksgiving in the service of God.
What a wonderful thing it is to see a person who lives his life with that attitude of gratitude for all that God has given to him. Now the best example in the whole world, in all of history that I know about outside of Jesus himself, of a person who lived by the attitude of gratitude is the apostle Paul. And you have the supreme example of that in chapter 4 of Philippians.
This book of Philippians is in a sense a thank-you note from the apostle Paul to the church at Philippi. He had started this church on one of his missionary journeys and developed a special relationship with the believers in the church. So they kept up with him wherever he went and whatever he did they knew about it. They wrote him, prayed for him, and they often sent him gifts to help finance his missionary endeavors. And he wrote them this letter on one occasion to thank them for a gift they had sent. He was in prison in Rome at the time and not able to carry on his trade of tent-making and so he was dependent on the gifts of others.
Paul never asked for gifts. He never asked for money. People just gave it as God prompted them to give when they found out about his imprisonment and his need. They sent one of their members named Epaphroditus to bring a gift to Paul and he wrote them this book for the purpose of thanking them. He said a lot of other things because Paul could never sit down and write a letter without preaching to people for a little while. He talked to them about some problems they were facing, how they were to live, some things they were to do, and some things they weren’t to do. But by and large it is a thank-you note. If you read this book carefully you will discover that it is a masterpiece of diplomacy. For the apostle Paul had learned in his life to depend wholly upon God for all of his needs, never on others. And yet he was grateful when someone else became the instrument of God in meeting his needs.
And so in this book he is walking a tightrope between his own independence in life and his sense of gratitude. He wants the people in Philippi to understand that he really does not need anything. He has learned in his life to get along with much or to get along with little. He has learned that he can do all things through Christ who strengthens him. He has learned that God is faithful to meet every need that he has.
I want you to notice what he says beginning with verse 14. He has been talking about the care that they have given to him through their gift. And he says, “Notwithstanding ye have well done, that ye did communicate with my affliction.” Underscore that word communicate. We are going to meet it in the next verse and I’m going to tell you what it means.
“Now ye Philippians know also that in the beginning of the gospel, when I departed from Macedonia, no church communicated with me as concerning giving and receiving, but ye only.” You are the only one who communicated with me. Now, what does the word communicate mean? In our day it means to send out a message and to hear and receive that message. But in Paul’s day, it meant to enter into a partnership.
So he says you have done well, you have done beautifully when you entered into a partnership with me in the work of God. And nobody else except the church at Philippi has become my partner in the work of God. And so he is beginning to lay the foundation for Christian stewardship by saying to us that when we give, when we invest money in God’s work and we support God’s servants, that we actually become partners with them in the work of God that they do.
Paul says, “I am a missionary. I am out establishing churches. I’m winning people to Christ and by your giving you have become a partner with me in that great work.”
Then he goes on to say, “Not because I desire a gift: but I desire fruit that may abound to your account. I’m grateful, but not because you have sent me something. I’m grateful because this gift has resulted in fruit that is added to your account.”
Now that word fruit is a commercial term that means “an increase.” It means interest. It has to do with a person making an investment and the dividends from that investment, the interest from that investment that is applied to their account. And Paul says the thing that makes me happy and the reason I want you to give is not so that I can get something from you, but so you can get something from the gift.
The gift is like a spiritual investment and it pays a good dividend that is added back to your spiritual account. Giving is not only a way to be a partner in spreading the word of God around the world; giving is also a way of making a spiritual investment that pays off in eternal dividends. It’s a way of adding to your heavenly bank account.
And then he continues in verse 18 by saying, “But I have all, and abound: I am full, having received of Epaphroditus the things which were sent from you.” And then he describes that gift in this way: “An odour of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, wellpleasing to God.” He compared their gift to an Old Testament sacrifice. In fact he invested their gift with the sacredness of a sacrifice like the priest would lay upon the altar in the Old Testament unto God. He said, “What that priest did, you have done. As he made a sacrifice that was pleasing and acceptable unto God, so you have made a sacrifice pleasing and acceptable unto God.” In short he was saying, “You gave a gift to me but it was the same thing as a sacrifice to God.”
And thus he helps us to see that when a person invests in the work of God, he is having a part in a solemn act of worship. It is comparable to the work of an Old Testament priest who places a sacrifice on the altar unto God.
Then lest anybody in the church be worried that because they have given they will now have to do without, he says, “But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” Paul said, “I want you to know that no man is ever poorer because of his gift. No man ever impoverishes himself when he invests in the kingdom of God, for God always makes the riches of heaven available to him for everything he needs.” Not everything he wants, but everything he needs will be supplied to him.
There are two things I want to point out about this attitude of gratitude by the apostle Paul. He is talking about giving, not for his sake, but for our sake. He is saying, “I want you to think of your stewardship, not in terms of what it does for the church, but in terms of what it does for you.”
I’m so grateful to be a part of the church where I can say kindly and lovingly, but very plainly, that the continuation of this church does not depend upon the gifts of any one of you. This church is going to keep right on going, the work of God is going to prosper, people are going to be won to Christ, whether you give or not. So when I talk to you about giving, I’m not making an appeal so we can survive. I’m not talking about you giving so that we can keep going. It’s not that self-serving kind of appeal that I’m making to you. I want you to think not in terms of what the gift will do for this church, but in terms of what the gift will do for you.
Paul spells out two benefits that come from giving in this passage of scripture.
1. It enables you to become a partner in the work of God.
I’ve shared with you before some reasons why a person ought to go to church. If you haven’t written these down somewhere along the way, you ought to write them down. There are four good reasons why a person ought to go to church and you may need to share these with people along the way.
The first reason is that you need to go to church for education. You need to go to hear and learn the word of God. And you ought to learn the word of God from your own personal Bible study. From your own devotional time. Daily you ought to search the scriptures on your own to learn, to know the word of God. But the Bible also teaches that you need to put yourself under the ministry of a God-called, God-gifted man or God-gifted teachers and leaders. It is not a matter of personal Bible study or going to public worship—it’s both in the Christian life. So that you may grow in your Christian life, you come to church to learn, you go for education.
Second, you go to church for inspiration. Some of us already know more than we are doing. So what we need more than anything else is not more knowledge but greater motivation. When we come to God’s house and we sing hymns, pray prayers, and hear the Bible preached and read, we are motivated and inspired to do what we have learned through the years that we ought to do. So, you go not only for education, you go for inspiration.
Third, you go to church for association, to make friends with the people who have chosen to live the same kind of life you have chosen to live. It’s very difficult to live the Christian life if you are not associating with Christian people most of the time. Now, your association should not be exclusively with Christian people. We need to make contact with the world, we need to love everybody and mix with them, but unless your closest friends are people who have chosen to walk with Jesus Christ, you will find yourself drifting away from him. So the church is a place to make and maintain Christian friends.
But in addition to education, inspiration, and association, a person needs to go to church for cooperation. That means we can do together what no one of us can do by himself. You cannot spread the Gospel to the ends of the earth by yourself. You may go to one place and preach the Gospel there. You may go to a few places in your lifetime. You may help to support a missionary here and there, but if the Gospel is going to be preached to the ends of the earth we are going to have to do it together. It is going to require a partnership among the people of God.
And the apostle Paul tells us in this passage of scripture that the way to enter into that spiritual partnership so that the work of God is carried on in an effective way to the ends of the earth is by the giving of your money. Your money then becomes an extension of yourself. Not a substitute for giving yourself, not a substitute for witnessing and working on your own, but a supplement to that personal and private work that you do for God. It’s an extension of your life so that not only what you do but what you give becomes a means of sharing the good news of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth. If you want to be a partner in the work of God, give. That’s one way to do it.
Paul says of the gift he received that it “will add interest to your account in heaven.” You remember Jesus said one time, “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal” (Matthew 6:19-20).
How do you make that spiritual investment in eternity, in the things of God, in heaven? Paul tells us right here. When you invest in the kingdom of God, interest in that investment is accrued to your account in heaven. By what you give, and the people you support and the work that you help to finance, you are laying up for yourself treasures in heaven.
2. It is an act of worship.
When Paul uses that word sacrifice, that which is acceptable and well pleasing to God, he is saying that your gifts to God’s work are the same as the Old Testament sacrifice that the priest laid upon the altar. You know we believe that as the people of God that we are priests ourselves. One of the strongest beliefs among Baptists is the priesthood of believers. This is the right of every person to go directly to God for himself. And the apostle Peter emphasizes this when he says to us in the book of 1 Peter 2:5 that we are a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices unto God.
If we are priests and we offer up spiritual sacrifices as the Old Testament priests offered up literal sacrifices, how are we to do it? What are the sacrifices that we lay upon the altar? Well, the writer of the book of Hebrews says that we are to offer up to him the sacrifice of praise—the fruit of our lips by singing, by praying, by testimony—those are the kinds of sacrifices that please God.
Paul said in Romans 12:1, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice.” We are not only to give God the fruit of our lips, but we are also to give God our entire selves. We are to put our lives, not just our lips, at his disposal.
Tthe financial contributions that we give to his service, to his work, to his church are also a sacrifice that is pleasing and acceptable unto God. When you come to church and give your gifts, it is a solemn act of worship that is as much offering a sacrifice unto God as what the Old Testament priest did in the book of Leviticus.
Oftentimes when we talk about stewardship, I hear people say in their testimonies, “When I started I didn’t know how we could do it.” And when they say that, I say, “Amen, that’s the way it ought to be.”
You see, when you start to give to the work of God and you see how you can do it, then there is really little sacrifice involved. There is no faith involved. If you’ve got the money in your pocket, then it doesn’t take any faith in God. All you have to do is pull it out and spend it. If you see your way clearly, no faith is involved. But when we don’t see how we can do it, that requires us to trust God for the results. And Paul says, “Lest any of you be wondering, Can I make it? Will this gift impoverish me? Will I be poor because of it? let me just tell you that my God shall supply all your needs according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” If you are willing to trust God, to enter into partnership with him by giving, to make a spiritual investment by giving, to participate in the solemn act of worship by giving, you will discover that God is faithful and according to his riches he will supply all of your needs.
And in case you haven’t heard, God and his Son Jesus Christ are nowhere near bankrupt. They can take care of your needs. But it is going to take an act of faith. And so, knowing what giving can do for you, I want to ask you today to begin to think and to pray about what you ought to be giving to the kingdom of God.