I Rejoice in Giving

Pastor Robarge’s Sermon
Sunday, August 14, 2011

Grace, mercy and peace be unto you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

I want you to identify a time, whether in joy or whether in struggle, that people came around you and responded in some way. Maybe it was after a funeral. Maybe it was after a graduation. Maybe it was after a birth of a child. Maybe it was after a promotion at work. I want you to think about those times when people responded in some way, shape or form. Can you identify a time?

What are the things that stand out most in those periods of time? A lot of people respond in a lot of different ways. Maybe it’s a card with a signature in it, but I believe the ones that we remember the most, the ones that stick out in our minds the most are the ones who went beyond the regular, normal reaction, the people who took the extra time, the extra steps, the extra resource in order to provide something for you.

Those are the ones that stick out in my mind. It is the people who take the extra steps, beyond the normal, in order to get a personal connection. It’s not that the other things are unimportant. It’s not that I don’t remember the other pieces, but it’s somebody coming along side and being able to show this concern.

Let me give you an example of some pieces. It’s the teacher in the classroom who identifies a student as needing extra help beyond what everybody else might need. It’s the coworker who struggles at work with a project and it’s the other one who comes along and says, “Let me help you.” It’s a nursing home visitor who goes every week to see somebody there and always identifies somebody who’s sitting alone and they go up to them and they say, “I’m here to visit you.”

Those are the extra things, the steps beyond; it’s the time we invest. This is what Paul is talking about with these Philippian Christians. He’s saying they’ve gone the step beyond. They’ve gone beyond the normal reaction to things and they’ve seen a need in Paul and they fulfilled it. Let me just take you briefly back to it. He says, “I rejoice in the Lord greatly now at length. You revived your concern for me. You were indeed concerned for me, but you had no opportunity.” Then in Verse 14, it says, “Yet it was kind of you to share in my troubles. And you Philippians yourselves know that in the beginning of the gospel, when I left Macedonia, no church entered into partnership with me except for you. Even in Thessalonica, you sent me help for my needs once and again. Not that I sought the gifts, but I seek the fruit that increases to your credit. I have received full payment and more; I am well supplied, having received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent, a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God.”

You see, these Philippian Christians went beyond the normal reaction. Paul didn’t request anything. He didn’t say, “You need to send me help. You need to send me a gift. You need to send me this because I’m in need.” There was no request at all. They identified a need and they met it. It went beyond the normal reaction. There were these other churches where the same need was going on, but they didn’t identify it. They didn’t fill it.

Now Paul’s not saying, “These guys are worse and you’re so much better,” but he’s saying, “Thank you for identifying there was a need and you started to fill that.” I think the question becomes then, are we like the Philippian Church? Have we started to identify needs around us? Have we started to say, “There’s a need right here and I’m going to fill it?” Or have we been like the other churches? Have we seen needs and only turned our backs? Have we entered into a relationship with Jesus Christ only to ignore His teachings?

Paul’s talking about real joy here, a rejoicing that only comes out of the celebration of the gospel, out of celebration of seeing gifts at work. Sometimes I think what happens, when people truly are looking at this as giving in multiple different ways and not just finances but in all of their selves. They sent finances to Paul but they also gave of themselves. They sent one of their own. There was true joy and I believe the people who are giving in this manner, giving in this respect are experiencing true joy. But sometimes I believe we’ve turned our backs to the needs that are around us.

I in no way want you to walk away believing that your salvation has anything connected with this giving. Paul in no way does that either. He doesn’t tell these Philippian Christians that, all of a sudden, they’re higher on the standard of God’s ladder because they’ve given beyond what was necessary. He doesn’t say that. But what he identifies in them is he says, “You’ve gone beyond.” This shows a faith that is mature.

As we come into a relationship with Jesus Christ, as we continue to grow and learn and study and know what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ, we want to take more seriously what He is telling us to do. This is what it means to be in the Christian walk. This is what it means to become more mature. Our very precedence is the nature of God. The nature of God Himself is one of giving. He Himself, when He looked at humankind, when He looked at mankind, He said, “You know what, there’s a problem. My creation is there and yet they’re far from me.” He said, “Sin has torn us apart. There’s a gap between us and they can’t fill it.” God in His nature was giving and He said, “What can I do to fill the gap, to bring these people closer back to me?”

In the very beginning, God set in motion a plan. When He saw the brokenness of the world, He said, “I’m going to send my Son, Jesus Christ, into the world.” One of my favorite passages when Jesus was walking along, when He was going into the villages and into the towns and He was speaking to people and He was doing miracles, people were somehow just strangely attached. They were attracted to this man. They didn’t know why, but they were hungry and thirsty for something.

And as He continued to go along, it was day and night that He was serving these people, but there was a moment that He wanted to get away and so He got in a boat in the Sea of Galilee and He started to travel across. But when He got to the other side, even before He got to the shore, He started to see the people in the distance already starting to gather. And then the scriptures give us a little glimpse into Jesus’ heart when it says, “All of a sudden, He looked at the people and He said, ‘I felt compassion for them because they’re like sheep without a shepherd.’” They’re wandering around. They don’t know where they’re going. They don’t know what they’re doing. They’re broken and they’re looking for wholeness. And Jesus was offering a glimpse of wholeness in a broken world. He said, “There’s a need. These people need a shepherd.” And He came and fulfilled that.

He identified the need and He acted. The very nature of that word, compassion, means there’s action involved. Jesus Himself went all the way to the cross. He went all the way to a beating, crucifixion but then resurrection. That act was what was necessary to fulfill that gap, to come in the midst of our brokenness, of our sin that separated us from God and that one act brought us together again to give us something that we could not get ourselves. In the very nature of God is giving, giving of Himself to fulfill something in us that we couldn’t achieve on our own.

This is what I believe Paul is celebrating, is rejoicing over when he talks to the Philippian Christians. He says, “Look. I can rejoice. Look at what you’ve done because I didn’t ask for this and yet, what you did when you identified it. You said, ‘I want to share in your struggle, Paul. I want to share in your pain.’” It’s a step beyond the normal into this great timing and the great peace of this maturity of faith and they said they want to share in that.

I always hesitate to give you an example; I’ve given you a personal example, not because I believe I’m trying to elevate myself and not because I want you to do exactly as I have done but maybe to serve as an example, just to be able to see that there are needs and there are ways to fill them. Two years ago, I came into the Des Moines area and I looked around and there were all kinds of needs. There were all kinds of broken individuals and there were broken situations. There was a lot of need. I myself looked around and said, “I don’t know what to do about all the needs.” I sat down with my family and we looked at different ways. “How are we going to fulfill the needs of our community, of our neighborhood?”

There is a campaign here every winter starting in the fall. It’s called Share the Heat through Joppa Ministries. They work with the downtown homeless. There was just a moment, there was a glimpse of what I caught when I was talking with Joe, who is the director of that. He said, “There are people out there. They are not complaining about being in the midst of the elements.” He said, “But they’re out there dying.” He said, “In the extreme heat in the summer and in the extreme cold in the winter, we have people who die every year.” He said, “When we fail to act, these people end up dying.”

And I truly don’t believe that it was a moment of guilt. I don’t believe that he was trying to guilt me into doing something, but I saw his heart and I saw his heart for those people who are out there, right here in the Des Moines area, who are dying. I said, “Well, what can we do?” I told him, “I don’t have a lot of resources, but what is a way that I can help you?” So as we set aside time, as I sat down with my wife and we sat together, we said, “We need to schedule an opportunity to be with these people.” And that’s what it took. We sat down together. We identified the need and we said, “How are we going to meet it?”

I don’t think it’s a matter of us looking around and saying, “I don’t know where the need is.” Need surrounds us. I was just at a leadership conference the last two days, Thursday and Friday, and after every speaker, after every break, there was always something. There was always a campaign. There was always an organization that needed help. There are the organizations that are helping children go to school, that are feeding children in poorest nations and they’re always looking for help and the need surrounds me. It breaks my heart when I know that I can’t help everybody.

I don’t believe anybody says, “I haven’t seen need.” We’ve all seen need. What I truly believe is that we become paralyzed by the needs of our world, become paralyzed because there’s so much of it. There’s so much of it that comes in. There’s so much of it that we try to filter through our own minds to say, “What can I do? How do I even start to sort out the needs of our world? There’s so much. Where do I start? Where do I begin?”

I think it’s a moment that, as a people, we need to sit down. We’re a busy people. We’re always having our schedules full and yet, maybe it’s a moment that we say, “You know what, I’m going to schedule a time to sit down and figure out the needs of my world and how I can act on them.” Maybe it’s as an individual, saying, “What do I do?” Maybe it’s as a family and you sit down together and say, “How can we as a family go and meet the needs of our community?” Maybe it’s a small group who comes together and says, “What can we do as a group to meet the needs that we see every day?”

It’s not a matter of not seeing the needs. It’s a matter of whether we’re going to allow ourselves to be paralyzed by it. Paul rejoices. He rejoices when he sees a reaction that goes beyond the normal. There are reasons to rejoice when we can see these things in action.

There was just a small story of how this gentleman was in a drug-infested neighborhood, drugs, gangs, violence, death all around him. The neighborhood was run down. Nobody had pride in where they lived. And he was an old retired city worker. On his retirement funding, he just got this new lawnmower. And he’s looking around at his neighbors. He sees a lot of need, but he doesn’t know what to do. He’s paralyzed by his own fear. But
there’s an empty lot that’s right across the way from him. Weeds, grass as tall as him. He says, “What can I do? I’ll take this brand new mower that I got and I’m going to go over there and I’m going to mow down this grass.”

And so week after week, he went across to that little piece of property and he mowed down the grass and he pulled the weeds and he tried to make this little piece beautiful, in the midst of all this danger. People started to identify with what he was doing. They started to see that even this individual, being one individual, was able to go and do something to beautify his neighborhood. Other people started to take action. Other people started to say the same thing. “I can also take pride in my neighborhood,” and soon, the drug dealers had no place to go. They moved out to a different area. People took pride in the place they lived. It was just one act, one act that we can say, “Well, what good did that do?” Well, it did a lot of good for that neighborhood.

What are we looking at? Are we being able to identify the needs that are around us and not only to be able to identify the need but be able to say, “How is it I can sort through it so I don’t become paralyzed? What’s one thing I can do today that I don’t want to put off until tomorrow?” We have to stop saying, “I just don’t have time.” Nobody has time. Everybody’s schedule is full. What are we going to do to address the needs of our world?

Paul was rejoicing when he saw a people who identified a need and filled it. We can rejoice, too. We can rejoice, too, knowing that we can identify those different needs right around us and we can start to act. Amen.