Called To Give Faithfully

This is our last week traveling with Paul. Next week, we turn towards the cross and begin a Lenten Season of prayer. We have travelled with Paul across four missionary journeys from Asia Minor to Jerusalem and up to Rome. We travelled with Paul from persecuting Christians to inspiring other to know Christ. We travelled with Paul as he discovered calls on his life to serve God and discovered that we, too, have calls on our lives. As we complete this series, let us again turn to see Adam Hamilton in Rome.

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He had run the good race and fought the good fight, by the time Paul made it to Rome. His legacy of faith was filtering out to those who had only heard of him from a friend of a friend, and still came to the transforming God whom Paul met on the road to Damascus in Jesus. Paul considered and re-considered his legacy and the legacy of the Christian communities he was supporting over and over and over again. Sharing the Gospel was God’s call on this life – how would that call be recognized beyond his life – his legacy. Our legacy is about our youth years and our golden years, our working years and our playing years. Legacy is how you and what you seek to share will last beyond yourself.

In Deuteronomy, God tells God’s people that the legacy of their faith is vital. Our Jewish brothers and sisters cherish these instructions to this day. The words of 6th chapter of Deuteronomy are memorized and lived out. They wear them on their bodies in clothes that remind them of God. The legacy of faith is not intended to be haphazard. In order to make sure that children grow up in the faith, keep them, recite them, talk about them, set them around your house. Make sure that you have shared the vital words of God; it is your legacy and it is God’s!

Legacy is not only what we intend to share, but what we are caught sharing. I want to ask you – what is the legacy that your family taught you about money? And what is the legacy of money you caught from how they behaved? Many families intend to share legacies of giving and sharing, attentiveness and smarts. However, our behaviors often convey that money is something that you fight about, you sigh about, you avoid talking about all together.
We are in our third week of Financial Peace University with 18 people. Some of whom are currently a part of church community, and someone of whom are not. I give thanks to God for those people who are taking this incredible step of faith to live out their money with biblical principles. I also have to share that what I noticed this week is 10 children! Ten children who will grow up thinking my parents think that learning about money is so important that they go to classes and do homework. And they do it in the church! Not only is okay to talk about money in the church, the church is the place to learn about how to manage your finances. The Bible to say about money and my parents are working together to serve God. Ten children are receiving the gift of their parents’ legacies that faith has a lot to say about money and serving God!

Have you considered what is your legacy? Long after you are gone how will you be remembered? Will you be remembered as someone who took their faith seriously and lived out the Bible as they understood it? Will you be remembered as someone who’s life always pointed people to God? Our passage from Acts, pans in on the last days of Paul making sense of the lived that he has lived. As he inventoried his life, he shared earnestly that he had taught the gospel with vigor and determination. His legacy would extend of God’s transforming power would last long beyond his years. And yet, he says there are those who have listened, but not understood, looked but no perceived. His commitment remained to proclaim the Kingdom of God and teach Jesus with boldness and without hindrance.

Every time, Paul found a new community of those whose hearts were open to Jesus, he taught them the Gospel, caring for them through all of the challenges of living into a new Gospel life. In his correspondence with the church at Corinth, we hear the last of our three passages for this morning as Paul says our legacy is our whole life. This means we who sow bountifully, reap bountifully. Those who sow sparingly will have sparing results to reap. Paul calls the people to consider how they will give, not if they will give, but how. Because the Christian life hinges on giving. Paul says be then cheerful about how you set your mind to give. Your legacy matters.

Today, we stand on the legacy of those who those 150 years ago offered their living room as a meeting place for Methodists to gather in West Grove. Dot Weeks can still tell us the stories of her grandparents who’s legacy has lived beyond themselves of faith beginning at home and taking root here in West Grove. Today, we stand on the legacy of those who stepped out in faith to build a church in the heart of West Grove on Prospect Ave. They baked pies and saved pennies to build a space for the people of God to meet and share faith, to grow faith and be faithful in the community. Today, we stand on the legacy of those who had a vision to move from the borough out to acres by route 1. Those who designed a building with classrooms for preschool children to be loved and educated, community groups to use, and spiritual formation to happen on Sunday and throughout the week. Those who dreamed of a day in which the building of the Lord would offer shelter to those most in need – most in need of housing, most in need of care, most in need of Jesus. Those who gave so that some that had not even met yet could know the gospel of Christ. Those who called the fund harvest because they imagined that they might not see the full reaping of what they were sowing. Those who gave faithfully and generously so that this congregation might take root more fully in the community.
Your giving is part of your legacy – How will you and the Gospel of Christ be known in twenty, fifty, one hundred years? How will you share the gospel boldly and without hindrance?
This is the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, thanks be to God, Amen.

New Testament Lesson: 2 Corinthians 9:6-15
The point is this: the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work. As it is written, “He scatters abroad, he gives to the poor; his righteousness endures forever.” He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way for your great generosity, which will produce thanksgiving to God through us; for the rendering of this ministry not only supplies the needs of the saints but also overflows with many thanksgivings to God. Through the testing of this ministry you glorify God by your obedience to the confession of the gospel of Christ and by the generosity of your sharing with them and with all others, while they long for you and pray for you because of the surpassing grace of God that he has given you. Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!

New Testament Lesson: Acts 28:24-31
Some were convinced by what he had said, while others refused to believe. So they disagreed with each other; and as they were leaving, Paul made one further statement: “The Holy Spirit was right in saying to your ancestors through the prophet Isaiah, ‘Go to this people and say, You will indeed listen, but never understand, and you will indeed look, but never perceive. For this people’s heart has grown dull, and their ears are hard of hearing, and they have shut their eyes; so that they might not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and understand with their heart and turn— and I would heal them.’
Let it be known to you then that this salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles; they will listen.”
He lived there two whole years at his own expense and welcomed all who came to him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance.

Old Testament Lesson: Deuteronomy 6: 1-9
Now this is the commandment—the statutes and the ordinances—that the Lord your God charged me to teach you to observe in the land that you are about to cross into and occupy, so that you and your children and your children’s children may fear the Lord your God all the days of your life, and keep all his decrees and his commandments that I am commanding you, so that your days may be long. Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe them diligently, so that it may go well with you, and so that you may multiply greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, has promised you.

Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Meditations For Your Week
Sunday, February 7 ~ Saturday, February 13

Sunday: “The point is this: the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.” 2 Corinthians 6:6. How are you invested in God’s way? Are you willing to invest bountifully?

Monday: “And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work.” 2 Corinthians 6:8 How are you living in anticipation of sharing God’s abundance with others?

Tuesday: “You will be enriched in every way for your great generosity, which will produce thanksgiving to God through us; for the rendering of this ministry not only supplies the needs of the saints but also overflows with many thanksgivings to God.” 2 Corinthians 6:11-12. Prayerfully, consider how God is using you to supply the needs of the saints.

Wednesday: “Let it be known to you then that this salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles; they will listen.’” Acts 28:28. This was most shocking to those who could not understand why “out-siders” would be able to know God. Who are the “out-siders” in your life who point you to God?

Thursday: “He lived there for two whole years at his own expense and welcomed all who came to him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance.” Acts 28:30-31. Paul gives us an example of abundant living. Where is God calling you to teach Christ with boldness and without hindrance?

Friday: “So that you and your children and your children’s children may fear the Lord your God all the days of your life, and keep all his decrees and his commandments that I am commanding you, so that your days may be long” Deuteronomy 6:2. God’s faithfulness is not just to us as individuals, but to the whole of the human community.

Saturday: “Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise.” Deuteronomy 6:6-7. Our faith legacy is sharing what we have learned about God with others. Pray that you have opportunities to share your legacy and hear the legacies of others.