Giving and Sending

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Transcript

So well good morning my name is chet i'm one of the pastors here if you will if you have a Bible grab it go to acts chapter 11. we have every year around this time we do a three week give series and so i'm excited that we get to to start our give series today and announce our give project when i first when we first moved here we moved from lynchburg virginia to here to plant a Church felt called to plant a Church in this area i got a job with sears i had been working at sears in lynchburg i got a job with sears here.

Because i want to be a part of a company that was on the rise and really get in get in on the ground floor and i apparently wasn't that good of a salesman because the store i worked at here shut down but um i i got to work in the hardware department and uh right around leading up into into thanksgiving we would put up uh artificial christmas trees and so our whole like half of the hardware department was filled with an artificial christmas tree lot.

And so i got to be a christmas tree salesman and the people who purchased christmas trees from sears some of them were pleasant some of them you know had peace and joy and holly jolliness most of them however did not i did not know that christmas tree shopping was this stressful or frustrating but i learned people would walk in they'd be looking around i'd walk over and say hey my name's chad it's nice to and they'd say hey this is a six foot tree.

But i need it in eight feet it's like oh well okay let me let me see what i have they they'd say things like um uh these are all balsams i need a fur well all of ours are plastic so um okay i'll see what i can do i had a lady one time she said yes do you have any trees that twinkle and i said um how about how about that tree she said no that that tree is flashing.

Then i was like oh well then well then no we don't have any trees that twinkle um maybe squint take your glasses off i don't know i don't have to tell you one time a lady said you have this tree and i said yes i'll go check in the back and see if we have it and she said you better so i just never came back that's that's not true but people who are buying christmas trees are scary and and it makes sense after i thought about it.

Because you know how you're sitting at your house and you think i'm in a terrible mood and i'm very frustrated i want to go buy a christmas tree that's not that's not what happens the the reason they were there was to celebrate something worth celebrating and i actually think it's a really good picture of what happens to us culturally around this time of year we have something worth celebrating we have something glorious and delightful and joy-filled and hope-filled and then we american it we consumer it and we make it this stressful frustrating has to be about perfection and living up to some ideal and earning something christmas is about our lack of perfection our inability.

To live up to the ideal our complete hopelessness it's one of the reasons why we celebrate with lights because we were in darkness and a light has shown joy has dawned we have something worth celebrating and feasting for but we end up turning it into some sort of a consumer nightmare a beautiful picture of that is is black friday we have a day devoted to thankfulness followed by a day devoted to consuming and getting more and having more and earning more and it's.

And so we end up taking something worth celebrating we make it stressful and so one of the things that we do as a Church family is we have our gift series where we intentionally fight that in our souls that we intentionally as the Scriptures say that where your treasure is they were your heartbeat also that we intentionally take our treasure and send it out the door we intentionally take our treasure and put it towards things that God cares about so that in this season we remind ourselves actively and aggressively and intentionally where our hope lies and what the purpose of this season is.

See the reality for us as we enter into this gift series and as we as Christians enter into this holiday season is not the question for us is not do we like christmas because i think we do i think we enjoy it i think there are times where we where we calm ourselves and we delight in the things that are to be delighted in but i think the question for us is do we believe it when you see a nativity scene is it just cute is it just quaint or is it jaw dropping shocking and glorious that the.

God of the universe would become a baby that he would put on flesh that he would suffer and die so that we might have hope does that captivate our hearts you see because if this christmas is true if it's real if Jesus Christ really came to redeem sinners as he really came to rescue us out of darkness if he really came because there is eternity at stake and we are incapable of saving ourselves then yes we have a lot to celebrate we have a lot to be joyous over.

But we're also called to give up our lives for something that matters that's eternally urgent if we really do believe that he's our only hope and that all those who call in his name will be saved which means that all of those who don't won't and so as we enter into this season we don't want to just enjoy christmas we want to believe it we want to have the reality of God redeeming sinners saving wicked people like you hopeless people like us captivate our hearts.

So that we might follow him faithfully genuinely and as if we really believe this so let's pray and then we're going to read in the book of acts some people who are doing that and then we're going to get to join with them as we introduce our gift project for the year so let's pray God we thank you that because of the incarnation because you became a man so that you might save humanity we thank you that we have hope we thank you that we have something worth celebrating that we have joy that cannot be taken from us that cannot be bought by us.

But that was bought by you and say lord i pray that we would be a people who genuinely believes that and celebrates like we believe it help us to respond in generosity and obedience and faithfulness and lord as we study your word today help um may your Holy Spirit uh captivate our hearts and call us into something more in Jesus name amen so we're in the book of acts today and we're going to be looking at the early Church and so this is believers who have been captivated by this idea who have placed their faith in.

Jesus that he died that he rose again that it was God who had come to join us and to rescue us and to redeem us this idea was not uh normal to them they did not grow up with it it was not something that they were used to it was not something that they had celebrated their whole life this idea came to them as news as new information that they might place their faith in it and their hope in it and follow him.

And so that's what they're doing and sometimes i think they have the benefit of that that for those of us who maybe grew up in the u.s or grew up in the south and this becomes normal when it is not normal that God would become a human that he would die that he would rise from the grave that's not mundane that's not ordinary but i think sometimes we we get so used to it we fail to see it with the eyes they.

See it with and so i hope that we would as we read this today so we're reading about the Church in antioch and we're going to start in verse 25. so uh the the Gospel is uh proclaimed people believe and then there's persecution and then they scatter and as they scatter they go telling this message so they're run out of town literally but as they go they start telling this message to anyone who would hear it's not true to to jewish people who would hear.

And then they they eventually start telling gentile people which is good news for for i think pretty much everybody in this room and they also started right now in antioch they told hellenistic jews which were jewish people by blood but that had adopted a whole lot of greek culture and these hellenistic jews believe and the jewish jews are a little surprised so they send barnabas to go check it out they're like go go see and check and he shows up and he's encouraged he's excited they really believe they've placed faith in.

Jesus and so he celebrates with him and then it says we pick up in verse 25 it says so barnabas went to tarsus to look for Saul now if you're familiar with Paul it's the same guy they're calling him Saul here went to tarsus to look for Saul and when he had found him he brought him to antioch for a whole year they met with the Church and taught a great many people and in antioch the disciples were first called Christians.

So barnabas and Saul are teaching the Church in antioch and they're teaching much of what we would probably see in Paul's letters later which is explain to them what it means to follow Jesus that if this is true what does that mean for your life if he has come to redeem if he has come to save if you are rescued by grace alone by faith in Jesus what does that look like how does that affect you what do you do what do you not do and it's all coming out of a response to the Gospel.

So the message of christianity is not here are the things you need to do and then you can have the Gospel these baptisms were not i finally got my life together now i'm a good person you can see me get dunked in water that's not what this was that's not the hope we have if if the video had said that i just wanted to show everyone i'm great we would have all jumped up and said time out no no no no you don't get to be baptized and even.

If your head goes completely underwater don't even count you're just wet because that's not what this is that's not the hope we have the hope we have is that Jesus redeems sinners that we're broken we can't save ourselves and so he's proclaiming this message and he's telling them this is what it looks like for this to lay claim to your life verse 27 now in these days prophets came down from Jerusalem to antioch and one of them named agabus stood up and foretold by the spirit that there would be a great famine over all the world this took place in the days of claudius.

So prophets come in the Church to prophesy uh the word of God and to foretell that there's going to be a famine how the baptist feeling right now you okay with that Bible stressing you out a little bit so there are prophets in the new testament Church that are empowered by the spirit to proclaim to tell what's going to happen in the future and they do and God empowers this and they they tell them that there's a famine coming and so it says that they told that this would take place.

And then i love that it says it took place in the days of claudius luke's writing the book of acts and he's just showing his work he's like they told there was going to be a famine and it was this specific famine that took place like if you want to look it up look under claudius you'll find him that's what he's doing so the disciples determined everyone according to his ability to send relief to the brothers living in judea and they did.

So sending it to the elders by the hand of barnabas and Saul so let's follow this timeline Gospel is proclaimed there's hope in Christ you can be redeemed you can be saved they believe Paul and barnabas come and teach and help explain what that means and what that looks like then they find out through prophecy that there's going to be a famine there's going to be a natural disaster there's going to be something that comes over the land that makes food scarce and prices high.

And so they just decide as a Church hey we're going to send money to Jerusalem where that's going to be hard hit and they give they send relief according to their ability and this is something the Church has done forever that as uh the Gospel changes our hearts it changes our wallets because as Jesus says our wallets are tied to our hearts so one of the best ways to tell what you love is to see what you spend money on one of the best ways to tell what you care about what you're motivated by what you desire what you want to defend is to.

See what happens with your wallet and so one of the best ways for us to push our heart into places is for us to actively choose to send our money there example if you were going to watch a soccer game you would be uh not interested and that offends a handful of you but for most of you you would be not interested for like seven hours there's no time on the soccer game by the way it just goes and goes they don't tell you.

But if you put five dollars on it or if you do what i do and you bet egg roll station on it because that's the only bet i make egg roll station you'll suddenly care you'll have moved your heart just a little bit just a piece of your heart if it's egg roll station a large piece of your heart but that's that's reality and so that's one of the things that we know is that when we send our money it goes towards things we care about as our money goes.

So do we care like uh my wife and i we had ugly carpet we were annoyed with our ugly carpet but we didn't love our ugly carpet and when our children spilled things on our ugly carpet we didn't care we've replaced some of that carpet and i didn't realize that that was going to make me love carpet and care about it and dislike my children we're talking about painting some of our walls and i had to re-explain this to my wife i said.

Okay we can paint them and i think we should because they look bad but as soon as we do we're gonna suddenly care that our children are holding markers and running down the hall like this why would they do that but we're going to care because that's what happens and so because Jesus has changed our hearts it's not just that we send our money so that we'll care but it's because he's changed our hearts suddenly we're free suddenly we respond in a way differently than we used to this is what he tells the Church in corinthians is he's talking about this exact idea of giving up money he says this in.

Second corinthians 8 9. 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 that's the Gospel was infinitely rich rich doesn't cover it it's a placeholder word that hides a whole lot of things but he was infinitely rich infinitely glorious infinitely welcomed infinitely worshipped and he became poor it's a song we just sang that he created the world by speaking.

Now he's mute he's going to have to re-learn language he's going to have to be static and he's going to have to learn how to grow and he's become so small and then he's ultimately gonna be crushed he's gonna die he's gonna give up his life and he's gonna do that so that by his poverty we might become rich so then Paul keeps going because he's trying to to raise some money for some issues that are going on that they need to raise some money to to give it's a very similar situation we.

See in acts 11 he says for i do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened but that as a matter of fairness your abundance at the present time should supply their need so that their abundance may supply your need that there may be fairness so he's calling them to give money and he's specifically saying the same thing we just read in acts 11 which is they gave according to their ability so he's saying to them i'm not saying that you shouldn't pay rent.

So they can pay rent i'm not saying you shouldn't eat so they can eat but i am saying you've been blessed so let's give you're rich right now so let's give because he who was rich became poor so that through him we who are poor might become rich now i love this i think this is a helpful rule this is one of the reasons why we don't in Christian giving we don't do amounts we don't do you have to give x amount of dollars or whatever we we talk more about percentages we talk more about what are you capable of giving that we would give what we're able to give.

But that we would respond with generosity with sacrificial giving that it would affect how we live you see one of the things that we do as americans is we artificially inflate our need we'll say things like yeah i'm just barely paying my bills and my bills are a very large house three different video subscriptions the internet two vehicles a cell phone some magazines two things i forgot i had signed up for but i'm getting billed for right now we've artificially inflated our need and the reality is that we live like kings and queens and there is a call.

For us to intentionally live under our income so that we might be generous we might be ready to share and so he's saying that those of you who have need to to give and that's what they said according to their ability so the disciples determined those who are following Jesus every one according to his ability to send relief to those who are in need this is something the Church has done forever and we're going to get a chance to do today uh chapter 13.

Verse 13 let's keep going in the book of acts so this is we've jumped ahead a little bit a few chapters but that's because uh we're following the story of antioch and so we've read the story of antioch name in the book of acts in chapter 12 it talks about some other things and then it comes back to antioch and it says now Paul no hold on yeah but i lied about what chapter is give me a second this is going to bother me yo fine i won't find it in the Bible oh one through four i just have it typed up wrong here we got it.

Now that we're in the Church at antioch we'll edit that so later when you listen to it online or watch it it'll seem that was like it was great we won't now that we're in the Church at antioch prophets and teachers barnabas simeon who was called niger lucius of cyrene minion a lifelong friend of herod of the tetrarch and Saul while they were worshiping the lord and fasting the Holy Spirit said set apart for me barnabas and Saul for the work to which i have called them.

Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off and so we get to see the generosity of the Church in antioch in two ways one is financially and two is by sending people some of their best people the people who had actually come and taught them for a year straight the people who had helped found this Church and lead it they sent them away and they sent them away because they were obedient to the to the voice of the spirit they listened to the.

Lord and sin and that's one of the things that the Church does that we send financially to help support those in need we we help with the poor we help with believers in other areas and then we send people there are some people called to go and there's some people called to send and i love the way this is written it's not Paul and barnabas saying hey we were supposed to go do this it's the Holy Spirit saying set apart for me barnabas and Saul.

For the work to which i have called them he told the Church set them apart he told the Church these people are supposed to go and the Church is supposed to set them apart the Church is supposed to send them out and we see that as the Church sends them out they care for them financially as they go so before i get to announce our gift project for the year i want to ask these questions i want us to see something in this text really quickly i want you to.

See that God sees and calls specific people for specific tasks that they're praying they're listening and God says these two names not sin two not hey we need some he says sin barnabas and Saul for the work i have uh called them to set them aside for it now are we praying and listening enough to know what he set us aside for some of you are in here and you're like i don't know what he wants me to do when's the last time he fasted prayed and asked him when's the last time you laid it all on the table and you said.

Lord my wallet my time my life my career my relationships the yours what do you want from me can i tell you something i think he'll answer i think it'll be good i think it'll be terrifying i think as soon as he answers you might be like oh no okay i don't i'm gonna go eat a meal and quit praying about this i'm gonna quit fasting and praying it may feel overwhelming at first but these are the kinds of prayers he answers i think sometimes we're just really comfortable with things looking normal.

For us but i think we need to begin to ask lord what do you want from me my job's yours what do you want it to look like my time is yours what do you want it to look like my life is yours what do you want to look like see that's us believing what we say we believe at christmas that Jesus came to rescue us that he owes us nothing because he gave us everything by grace we haven't earned anything.

So that he would owe us anything and so now we are his we've been bought with a price and we owe him everything and so we come to him we ask what do you want what would you have for us so he sets aside specific people for a specific task and the Church is told this and the Church gets to help send and it's a dangerous thing when we listen and obey this begins the missionary journey of the Church that Paul would be sent to plant churches and that the Church would spread through the work of Paul and through the suffering of Paul that.

God had an intentional design for Paul and barnabas that he would see his work done and the reality is he's placed you where he's placed you and he's given you what he's given you and he's equipped you with what he's equipped you and we need to start asking lord what do you want from me and what do you want from our Church okay so it's our gift project and we're gonna spend the next three weeks trying to raise some money for two things one primarily the.

Second one's like a bonus thing you're welcome we have the opportunity to get behind chris and danielle rocky as we prayed about what our giving our gift project would look like this year we began to ask the lord what would he want us to do we felt called to to help them finish out their support so we had the distinct pleasure of God specifically telling members of our Church family to move to to pack up and go and just so you all know that was a labored thing.

For them that chris and daniel came they have two daughters parker and maggie who are six and nine but they came and chris said he was feeling called to Church planning wasn't really sure he wanted to pray and investigate this and he wanted us to pray and investigate it with him and with his family and they came here to try to see what that would look like the more he prayed the more he started saying i don't think it's domestic Church planning i don't think it's in the u.s i think we're supposed to go overseas the more he said that the more his wife was like i'm gonna i'm gonna keep praying.

Because danielle wasn't super excited about that but God knows what he's doing so if you got to know their family danielle is a spanish teacher chris ran a a home renovation and home building company called house healers he mostly showed up to places that were messed up and helped fix things and God specifically began to work in them and told them to go to honduras and to el progresso and to join with this specific team in el progreso hope through him to join them and what they're doing and they felt confirmed in that and terrified and sad and excited and we felt confirmed and sad and excited just as i'm sure this Church felt confirmed.

In the book of acts that antioch they were sad and excited they were like we don't know what the lord's doing but we know he's doing this we don't know what his plan is but we trust him and we're going to miss y'all but they set him aside for the work so i want to show a video one of the uh i'll talk kind of as this video plays here in a second but we'll start it all right this is coming into june 22 another community we working.

So they're in el progresso um it's kind of base of operations forum and in el progreso they do uh kind of a food ministry and some different ministry with with homeless people and then they have a couple of places that they go to and they also minister and this is june 22 that's the name of the town it's named june 22 after the the date when they kind of organized themselves as a town and it's kind of up in the mountains it's a little bit further away from them.

But they go there and they do some vacation Bible school stuff with children and they do um a feeding ministry they take food up there and it's it's a pretty impoverished town but about 40 homes are there they have a president of the town and they they do some ministry there with them we're going to get to see kind of an area where they do some ministry there's a couple other places campo yano they do some work there and um just felt called to this area felt called to join um hope through him and to to help start churches to help serve people and specifically just felt like the.

Lord was calling him to be there and chris wanted to train some people to lead house churches what christianity is there there are some faithful Christians and believers there but there is a good bit of religious legalism some you have to be good enough to earn this and so chris felt burdened to just proclaim grace that God redeems those who cannot redeem themselves and that he's good to us in our sin that he's hoped for us in our darkness and so this is this is june 22.

And so that was kind of their plan going and you could already see the lord at work that uh in his grace he was sending them somewhere that spoke spanish so that uh danielle could speak the language and he was sending one person who taught spanish and three people who don't know spanish and so maybe she could also help teach them and so i asked how that was going and he said it was going okay but the wearing masks makes learning spanish harder.

But this is the area they went to but that the plans got changed a little bit on them uh because of the fact that right after they got there two hurricanes came through so hurricane edda came through and hurricane iota came through and kind of adjusted what they were planning on doing but in just a second you're going to get to see they're coming kind of the end of this and there's going to be a section where they're doing some what they normally do in this area which is getting to spend some time with the children hey mel city um here we are at june 22.

You'll see this is a lot different than campoyano because we don't have our own building to be in we just kind of sit here on this little overhang right next to the kitchen so they're cooking rice and beans over there and they're going to do birthday gifts for all the children and so she says that they were learning that some of the children had moved and they were also trying to catch up on all the birthdays they had missed from covid and that's kind of their plan their plan originally was that.

But then as i said the floods came through and i want to show you this this is uh june 22 as well hey guys so we were finally able to get out to june 22 one of the communities that we work in the road was pretty terrible but we were able to to get through with some uh four wheeling a lot of spots washed out and kind of going back and forth on different sides of the road but we made it through flip the camera around here.

So we've we've muted the rest of it but this is uh that's that neighborhood we just saw him pull down that's the whole area the main road is right over there that and he'll be on it in a second we'll see the kind of the route that they took getting in this is after the first hurricane the second one was worse than and that we don't have any footage from when they went back out but the water was up over completely over that house that you.

See right there they said they were evacuating and putting some of their stuff on this berm up here and that people came and stole some of it but that whole area has just been under water and as they were trying to to get back going they got hit by another hurricane and so our give project this year is to do exactly what we just read in in the book of acts first to send and to send well we want chris and danielle to be able to stay in country to be completely provided.

For they're about a thousand dollars a month short of their financial goals so the first thing we want to do is try to raise that extra thousand dollars in monthly support so that they are uh set for the year and don't have to raise any more support we actually looked and i told chris i said you know you see the lord at work here that he sent them there and chris was thinking he was going to do Church planting work and maybe he will eventually.

But God sent a house healer when there's a lot of houses to heal you could i told him i said if the lord doesn't know what he's doing he really lucked out on this one which is a joke because he knows what he's doing but that we want to help chris be there we want to help danielle be there we want to help make sure that's the where they're living now so they've all across the top of this they just went up and started putting tents um and waiting.

For the water to go back down and waiting to go back and see kind of how they're going to be able to rebuild so the first thing we want to do is for us to intentionally put into our budget to help chris and danielle stay in country we have the opportunity as we mentioned earlier with the lottie moon christmas offering that's for international missions through the southern baptist and that's so that the they don't have to raise support but chris and danielle felt called and they felt called to go and to go quickly and i think we.

See now why and so we want to help make sure that they don't have to keep raising support and so as a Church as the lord has called them to be missionaries from among us we want to help make sure they can stay and the way to do that will be to go to hope through him.org spencer's going to walk us through this in a minute and to put in a gift and to put that you want it to recur monthly and to figure out what that means.

For you some of you that's five dollars and that'll be uh what you can handle some of you it's 50 some of you it can be 250. some of you may look at this next year and you go you know what i'm going to do i'm going to drive a worse vehicle and every time i get frustrated with my vehicle i'm going to pray for some missionaries that are working in another country to proclaim the Gospel that i say i believe in and i'm going to do that.

So that instead of having this payment i can send money some of you are going to have slower internet some of you realize that the person you're dating is expensive and you're going to be single for a year so you don't have to pay for extra meals and gifts for the sake of mission i don't know what it is i don't know what the lord's calling you to do but i do know that we need to pray we need to ask we need to.

Listen the first thing we want to do is we want to raise what will end up being twelve thousand dollars but it'll be monthly we want to raise a thousand dollars a month for them so that they're fully met their needs are met financially so they can just be there and working so they can be full-time doing the work that's going to be full-time work on top of that this is the bonus one if you were like 1000 a month is nothing to me i have tons of money.

Well we're glad you're here and we've got good news for you they also need money to help rebuild june 22. and so for anyone who wants to give to that we would ask that you would prayerfully look at supporting them monthly so that we can keep them there and working but then on top of that we can give to to the work they're doing at june 22 they said that they think they can rebuild a house for about thirty five hundred dollars.

Now thirty 3 500 is not a lot for a house most of us you can't renovate your kitchen for that but these people are living on a berm under a tarp and they think they can go back in and rebuild the houses they want they might say they said it might cost a little more if they're able to figure out how to build them on stilts so that next time it comes through like this it won't be as bad but they're looking to to rebuild about 40 homes that's what they think they're going to end up having to do and they're committed to trying to get that work done.

And so if we have the money to help support that we want to help that as well but first we want to keep the rockies in country and we want to do this not because we have to that's not the good news of the Gospel just pay a certain amount of money per month and the lord will save you the good news of the Gospel is first really bad news you can't save yourself you cannot be good enough you are not good enough you have fallen desperately short.

But unto us a son is given unto us a child is born and all people in darkness has shown a great light and we get to celebrate like other people celebrate when there's joy at a harvest we get to celebrate because we've been redeemed we've been brought out of darkness and we've been set free and that nothing can claim us or take us now we've been purchased with the precious blood of Christ and we are free and we have eternal hope and we get to joining joining him in his eternal mission towards things that matter let's pray.

God we thank you for your grace we thank you for your goodness towards us we pray that we would listen that we wouldn't just think through what we could do but we would ask you what you want from us we would ask you what you have for us that we might join you in things that ultimately matter and that our hearts might look like we truly believe the good news of the Gospel we thank you that we have something to celebrate at christmas and we pray that you would bless this gift project as we try to support your Church on the other side of the globe in.

Jesus name amen