Extravagant Generosity [Open-Handed] — Pastor Jason Burns

The reason this matters is if God shows up and invites you to give extravagantly, faith is not gonna be the first thing that comes to your mind. It's not. Usually there's like a sense of excitement and then there's some joy. Oh God, can't believe you would trust me to do this. And then very quickly the other side pops in and it's like, oh well, you can't afford that. How are you gonna make ends meet? How's this gonna work out? What what about your retirement? What about your future? And fear pops in and that's the moment of decision. It's will I be a person who's led by faith or a person who's driven by fear? [00:21:58] (32 seconds)  #ChooseFaithNotFear

Literally days before this, Jesus showed up to the grave of her brother and he raised him from the dead. I want you to think about this with me for just a moment. Say someone in your life that you love, a mom or dad, son or daughter, brother or sister. They were close to you. You love them and they died so prematurely. And imagine if Jesus raised them from the dead after several days of being dead. Is there any earthly possession you have that you wouldn't be willing to give to show your gratitude? [00:10:40] (36 seconds)  #GratitudeBeyondPossessions

It's because of our sins. According to Paul here in this book of Ephesians, we were deserving of death. The penalty of sin was death. It should have cost us everything. But he doesn't leave it there. He hits it with this conjunction. He says, but. I want you to get this. This is such an important word in the bible. All throughout scripture, there are moments when we were so in need of God, but God shows up for his people. It says this. It says, but because of his great love for us, not your efforts, not your trying, not your giving, not your serving, but because of his love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our transgressions. [00:12:03] (42 seconds)  #SavedByHisLove

Well, the night before his coronation. It was customary in biblical times for a king to make a sacrificial offering to God. It was customary for a king to take a bull, have it sacrificed as a burnt offering to God. Solomon doesn't give a bull, he gives 1,000 bulls. It's like when God knows he can trust you, he becomes the rewarder who gives over and above. [00:24:38] (32 seconds)  #OverflowingSacrifice

Now a study was done some years ago that asked the question, what is rich? Like, what is wealthy? What does it mean to be wealthy and rich? They interview people who made $10,000 a year up to $10,000,000,000 a year. And you know what was funny? The answer for what is rich is really the same as the answer to the question what does extravagant mean? And it's this, it's just more than you have. [00:07:26] (23 seconds)  #RichIsMoreThanYouHave

In scripture, there's a lot of moments like this. I think back to King David. King David's nearing the end of his life and he says to God, God, I want to build a temple that is so magnificent that it screams of your strength and screams of your splendor and screams of your glory. And God says, thank you but no thanks. Like there's too much blood on your hands from all of your battles. [00:19:08] (20 seconds)  #UnfitToBuildHisTemple

But the biblical principle is that when we honor God with our tithes, watch last week's sermon, God blesses the rest. And I have just experienced in my life that I would rather live on 90% that is blessed by God than a 100% in my best efforts. [00:17:47] (16 seconds)  #Blessed90OverUnblessed100

A lot of us think about being extravagant means extravagant means more than I have. But biblically, if you're going to get to that level of like moving past intentionality and tithing and sacrificial with offerings, if you're going to move to extravagant giving, need to understand that extravagance is all that I have. [00:25:14] (17 seconds)  #ExtravaganceMeansAll