Sermon text: Matthew 5:1-12
Today we are going to finish our Advent Conspiracy series and as I mentioned earlier, the topic is “Love All.”
I hope you have followed the progression we have tried to make here. Our theme has been an attempt to return Christmas to its rightful place as a remembrance and celebration of Jesus' birth. We began by saying that no matter what our culture has turned Christmas into, for us to take it back we must begin with worship. Every movement of our being must be oriented towards the worship of Jesus. And when it is, and we faithfully assess our culture, we find some alarming things.
In the Advent Conspiracy we discover that Americans spend billions and billions of dollars more on stuff during Christmas than would be needed to provide clean drinking water for the world. And these stats could go on and on. So we discussed the importance of spending less and spending wisely. That our culture has robbed us and tricked us into believing that we would find joy in consumption.
Once we spend less, we are urged to give more. The Creator of the World, God, is a giver. He gave us Himself. And we are told repeatedly throughout the Bible that we are to be people of deep generosity too.
Sermon text: 2 Corinthians 8:1-15
Last week we discussed how the messages that our culture has been giving us are lies. Our joy is not dependent upon our stuff. And we have to be vigilant, especially during the Christmas season, to identify the consumerist thieves and robbers around us and to run towards the true shepherd, who is the source of eternal and abundant life.Last we talked about spending less and that is good . . . but not enough. So you spend less and less and your income keeps coming and sometimes gets larger and larger . . . does your bank account, and your retirement, and your standard of living just get bigger and bigger too . . . or is there something more we are called to.
We are called to be people that give. When you hear this passage and think through what we are called to, you are probably always going to think about money . . . and that indeed a part of how we demonstrate our generosity . . . but it is not all of it. We want to also think about how God is calling us to be generous with our time, with our presence, and with our talents.