Audio Transcript:

This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston, and our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com.

Good morning and welcome to Mosaic. I'm Jan one of the pastors here at Mosaic, along with Pastor Shane and Pastor Andy. We're so glad that you are with us. A couple things if you're new or even if you're not, I worshiped from the front today, and I did that... I usually worship from the back, because I'm like, I'm distracting and all this. But then Raquel who's on staff here. My girl Raquel, she said, "Do you want to teach the men at the church to worship God, and start worshiping God from the front?" And then she sent me a haka dance. She's like, "That's the way you're supposed to worship God." I'll be doing that once in a while. I'll switch things up.

Second thing I want to communicate is my T-shirt. I've been trying to speak from the heart and it's hard. So I'm going to wear what I want to say. I'm going to wear it on my heart, and I'm going to switch this up. If you've got a T-shirt that you're like, "Pastor Jan, this should be on your heart." Just give me that T-shirt. So this one, the Holy Spirit sent me this week. It's an astronaut and he's holding the Earth and it says love. And it's meaningful to me because Elon Musk believes that the world is so broken, that the only way to save humanity is to go to Mars. And I want to call Elon to repentance and to tithe. But repentance in particular because no, if God hasn't given up yet, then we shouldn't either. And there's power to fixing, the power is the love of God poured out through the Holy Spirit.

With that said, would you please pray with me. And I wrote up prayer, a pastoral prayer. Heavenly Father we come to you in the name of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. We pray that you stir our hearts to love, and stir our hearts for good works. Make us a church that seeks to stir up one another lovingly, but courageously to live lives of absurd generosity. The kingdom of God, the Gospel work in this region of the nation. Lord, I pray that you stir up every member of this church, every Christian attender, every former member, and every former attender, anyone who loves and cares for this church, and for this spiritually dark part of the nation. Lord stir us up to be ridiculously, nonsensically, extravagantly, holistically, generous, and only your Holy Spirit can do this. And Jesus, we look to your sacrifice on our behalf. We see that you sacrificed everything in obedience to the Father to save us, to pay our debts, to give us access to the throne room of God, access to the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints.

And we pray turn our theological, our theoretical generosity into true, practical, genuine, real generosity. Where we are ready to cut fat checks, where we are ready to make sizable wire transfers, where we truly go all in. Burn in sin, greed, and covetist, and selfishness, and fear of future out of our hearts, engulf our hearts with the Holy Spirit. God you are a giver. You have everything. And you have given everything to save us because you love us. So make us Godly givers who are ready to give everything to you because everything is yours to begin with. And we pray all this in the name of the Father and of the Son of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

I've sent out a study guide. It was seven pages. I wrote it from the heart. I wrote my own commentary. I did all the exegesis. Chloe was so kind as to format it and make it look pretty. I also have a 13-page manuscript of all my thoughts and they're coherent. If you'd like the whole thing, I'll send that to you as well. And I'm just going to speak from the heart today. We'll see how it goes. I pray the Holy Spirit stirs your heart as well. My wife told me, Tanya, she came to church today, praise God. We had a little situation because I wore a T-shirt last week. But she liked this T-shirt, she liked the sermon. It was tremendous. And she said to me, "What are you preaching on?" I said, "I'm preaching on money. I'm preaching on..." She said, "Don't preach about money. So you're stirring stuff up already. Why are you preaching on?"

I'm like, "It's the next text? I'm just going verse by verse." And she said, "But everyone is going to think that you're trying to get them to give you their money." And I went like this because I go like this when I'm trying to explain something. When I get really sad, and then I'm angry, and then I pray for the Holy Spirit of baptize the anger and turn it into the zeal. And when I explain it, I was like, "Tanya, do you know what opportunity cost is?" Opportunity cost is when you're 23 making 75 grand a year in 2006, and you quit everything because you came up with a crazy idea that God called you, but God called you. And then you're like, "The CIA can't win the battle for hearts and mind, so let's do it. So we are going to do it ourselves."

And opportunity cost is like all the income that you give up because you go to seminary, and then you got to pay for the seminar. You got to live while you're in seminary, you can have a baby in seminary, and then you go another seminary, and then you go third seminary. Opportunity cost. The point is, I'm not doing it for the money. It doesn't pay that well. I am doing this to be faithful to the Lord. He called me and He said, "I got a word for you and I will prophesy from this word." Whatever the fallout, I care, but I don't. I care too much about what's best for you, so I don't care about ruffling just some of the feelings because no one has ever hurt your feelings. To tell you the truth I'm here to hurt some feelings. So okay, you get the point.

We are in a tremendously... Oh, the other thing I was going to say, I forgot this in the first service. If you don't get anything that I say read the study guide, and read the text, and then re-listen to the sermon because I realized that I make a much better second impression. Sometimes I make a better third impression. So just listen and just hear my heart. That's the first thing. The other thing I told Tanya, I was like, "Hey Jesus, talked more about money than about hell because if you love money more than God you are going to hell." So I'm calling every one of us to repent of greed and covetness. That we're a tremendously filled, Holy Spirit filled sermon series through 2nd Corinthians, if you don't believe me go back and listen to it. It's really tremendous. I've been really blessed by Holy Spirit stirring something in my heart.

And so the context of this book is, and we called it prodigal church because St Paul plants this church in court, they get saved. And they get saved miraculously. They live in a very pagan town, sexually immoral, driven by greed and money, money, money, money, money is at the center of everything. These people get saved. St. Paul leaves, and what happens is the church goes prodigal. They were in the Father's house. They were enjoying the Father's riches, His lavish grace, His lavish forgiveness, His lavish generosity. And then they decided to take God's grace, His riches, and then go live a life of sorted sin because they believe, "Well, God forgives me anyway." And they took God's genuine lavish grace, and they made it cheap grace. So St. Paul writes them and he calls them back to repentance. And he is like, "Hey, you don't understand grace. Grace isn't just a get out of hell free card, so you can sin as much as you want, live any way you want. You come back to Jesus whenever you choose."

So God allows the prodigal sometimes to end up in a pig stay, to come to his senses, to run back to God. God is waiting, arms wide open. And he welcomes the guy in, His younger son into a party. So that's at the heart of everything St. Paul is saying. So he writes them again in 2nd Corinthians, and he is like, "It's time church that we grow up from being takers." Take, take, take, take, take, mooches, and turn into givers. From being prodigal children taking from the father to prodigal children, the true definition of the word giving. Giving to the work of God. My wife and I, we have four daughters. And anytime we meet anyone who has fewer than four children, we usually hear a comment like this. "Oh, they're going to be so happy when they grow up, because they're going to have each other."

And it's true and I try to teach my girls, "Hey, you got to be generous with one another." Bible story last night, before we pray and go to sleep, it was this. God loves a cheerful giver. "Be cheerful givers to one another girls, because there'll be a time that mom and dad are not here. Be generous to one another." Well, the family of God is just like that. So if you are an only child, and you join this church family, we will love you like family, like siblings. You're my brother. You're my sister. You have needs. Let us help. That's what the family of God is. We're a family after all, aren't we? So that's where St. Paul starts. And he starts with the assumption that you've been saved because of Jesus Christ.

He though being rich became poor so that you might become rich for his name sake, rich in every way that matters. We're going to walk through the text together verse by verse. 2nd Corinthians chapter nine, verse one. "Now it is superfluous for me to write to you about the ministry for the saints." Superfluous means redundant, means unnecessary. If you don't know what that word means, go on my Facebook or Instagram. I got a picture where I wear... In 2011 where my neck was really thin, and I used to hide it with a scarf, and they called it, and you wrap it around. They called a superfluous scarf. You don't need that. It's redundant. And he says, "I don't have to write to you about the ministry for the saints. You already know. You already know." This is what I'm trying to communicate to the church, Mosaic, you know so much.

And if you're like, "I don't think I know enough." There's 10 years of sermons online where I pour my heart and soul, Pastor Shane, Pastor Andy, we pour our heart and soul into those sermons. You want to know more, go listen. That's why in the newsletter I did that sermon from Nehemiah from 2012. It blessed my heart. I was listening to it, and my daughters Sophia came downstairs and she's like, "Hey, can you put the pastor down because I'm trying to sleep?" I was like, "Sophia. Who is that?" She's like, "Oh no, dad. No. Tell me that's not you." "Yeah, that's me." I talk like this now, because that's what Boston does to you.

"It's superfluous for me to write to you about the ministry for the saints." Ministry is the service. And he's talking about generosity, that's ministry. So if people are like, "Well, you're in ministry, your..." Every single one of us, every member ministry. And he's talking about for the needs of the saints, ministry for the saints. Who is he talking about? He's talking about the church in Jerusalem. The church in Jerusalem where it all started. Where the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost poured out his Holy Spirit upon the church, transformed their lives. They started selling real estate. They started selling their land. They started selling everything, and bringing it to the apostle's feet. Because they're like, "It changed my life. The world needs the Gospel. Here you go."

And I'm not saying you should sell everything and bring it to the feet of Christ, but I am. Because if every single one of us, we actually sold everything that we have and pulled our money together we'd finally get the church building that we need, with a school. It's a campus now. The vision is growing in my heart. It's a campus. It's like Harvard. We just own the whole thing. And we have housing for every member. If you're a member of the church, this is just my dream, bear with me, where it's free housing for couples, for singles. But if you are a married couple and if you want to live here, well you have to adopt an orphan from the city, and you have to raise them in the Lord, and you have to disciple them, and you have to send them to our school.

The MBA, Mosaic Boston Academy. That's what I call it. Where did you go? I got an MBA from MBA. It's in my heart. Imagine if we actually believed that the Gospel changes everything. You know what I was thinking of this week? If everybody became a Christian, we could fix all the problems in the world. And Christian is the only one that can do it. The only one. If you imagine any other world religion. Okay. Everybody is a member of that religion. Is that a world I want to live in? Everyone is a spirit filled Christian. So men are spirit filled, so that dad don't have to worry about you doing something to one of their daughters. My daughter Sophia was telling me about health class. And the teacher, her health teacher was teaching them about date rape drugs. Like, "Hey class, if you ever go to a party and someone gives you a drink, say no thank you, because they might have slipped a drug in it."

I was like, "Sophia, get me in the class please. And I'm going to tell, "Girls, how about this? How about we don't go to parties where someone might offer you a drink with a drug to then rape you."" I used to say, I don't believe in litigating morality. I don't believe that anymore. I don't believe that anymore. Because everyone is litigating morality. I believe in litigating morality because God gave us 10 commandments to litigate everyone's morality. They're right there. They're in the Hebrew. Look it up. Exodus. I want everyone to become a Christian. That's what I want. I evangelize to absolutely everyone I meet. Everyone I call them to Jesus. Please.

I'm at the point where I've been attending the Brookline town meetings on Zoom. And they were three meetings and I went to two of them. The first one, they let me speak what was on my heart. And they showed everyone in the room and I was just going and everyone is like, yeah, on the screen. So I can see the people are with me. I'm a man of the people. The second one, they blocked all of the screens, so I couldn't get that energy. The third one, they wouldn't let me speak because they can't handle the smoke. So now I'm at the point where it's like, "You know what? I think I'm going to run for the town board. I think I'm going to run for it." Because there's got to be a dad on the board who thinks like a dad and cares for the children of the town. Because the town members do not have children. They don't care about. They're making decisions that are impacting my children.

So the point is, the ministry for the saints we should care about. What's the saint? What is he talking about? He's not talking about people who are absolutely holy, but the very second you become a Christian, you are a saint. It's an office. He moves you into that office on the outside door. It says you are saint, and that is your ministry. The saints need help where the Gospel actually got started. Verse two, "For I know your readiness of which I boast you to the people of Macedonia saying that Achaia has been ready since last year, and your zeal has stirred up most of them." I know your readiness. The readiness here is a military term. But you are soldiers of God. You know what the mission is. When you live like that, you begin to understand...

A lot of people don't even understand Christianity because they think, "All right, I get saved. And now I have a book and I have to learn it, and I just got to be a nerd. And I got to be a scholar, a biblical scholar. That's what a Christian is." Pastor Andy, who I love with my whole heart. He called me today. Was the biggest compliment. It was kind of talking trash, but he loves me, so it was a compliment because when you really love someone, you tell them what you think. He called me a Russian Rhode Island, Guido, nerd, bro.

And I used to think of Christianity, yeah, it's very nerdy. You got to be a nerd to be a Christian. You got to study the Greek and the Hebrew, you got to do all this. And then I realized nerds don't change the world. Nerds do not transform the world unless you're Elon Musk. But even he started taking testosterone. What I'm saying is, you really have to believe. For Christianity to makes sense, you really have to believe that the very second you become a Christian you get thrown into the arena as a gladiator and God gives you a sword.

You're not thrown into a lecture hall. You're thrown a world where this only makes sense if you were actually doing it, if you're trying to do it and you realize how helpless you are apart from God. So your readiness of which I boast about you to the people of Macedonian. St. Paul knew their generosity, they got saved, and they were giving everything away. He goes to Macedonian plants the church there, and he tells them, "Hey, you know what happened in Corinth?" And no one could believe it because Corinth was like Boston. Whenever anyone comes to visit Mosaic from another part of the country, I always tell them, "Hey, when you go home, can you please send greetings from the saints in Boston?" And they always laugh. Because it's absurd to think of Bostonians as saints. You don't think of Bostonians as saints unless they got a gun to your head.

Saint Paul is saying, "I went to Macedonia. I told everyone you're saints. I told everyone you're generous, now please make sure that you actually live up to the zeal. Your zeal has stirred up most of them." You know what zeal is. It's a fiery passion for God. You're just on fire for God. Lord I really do want to be used by you. Lord I'm all in. Lord fill me with the spirit. Lord there's no part of my life that I am holding back from you. You take it all, take it. That's zeal. And when people see someone with zeal, you know I have happens? They're like, "Oh, maybe I should actually like care a little bit." You feel the zeal, and you're like...

The thing is when you feel zeal, you're not going to stir everyone. And this is fascinating. Your zeal has stirred up most of them. You're not going to stir everyone up. So this is why I say move with the movers and shake with the shakers. Jesus said that you go into a town and people reject the Gospel. He said dust off your boots and go to the next one. Don't let the haters kill your zeal. So zeal, stir each other up. That's what we're trying to do here. But I'm sending the brothers. He sends the men to go on mission, do the most dangerous work. I'm sending the brothers, so that are boasting about you may not prove empty, vain in this matter, so that you may be ready as I said you would be. And he does this in chapter eight where he talks about the brothers. And one of the brothers is Titus. One of the brothers is the brother who was famous for preaching the Gospel.

Which is fascinating because St. Paul doesn't name the guy. And I think he doesn't name the guy on purpose. So the guy doesn't get a big head because he's already famous for preaching the Gospel. So he's sending these brothers to go and to pick up the generous gift from the Corinthian church. And he says, "So that it wouldn't prove empty. My boasting about you." Continues that same thought in verse four. "Otherwise if some Macedonians come with me, and find that you are not ready, not military ready, you're not ready for the mission. We would be humiliated to say nothing of you for being so confident."

St. Paul thinks about humiliation, not in terms of fear of man. He thinks about humiliation in terms of, you didn't keep your promise. That's how you humiliated yourself. You promised to give and you didn't keep your promise. You broke your promise. And now because you broke your promise, people are going to suffer because you are not a man or a woman of your word. Don't humiliate me. Don't humiliate yourself. It's like when someone fathers a son or a daughter, and doesn't father them. That's humiliating. I heard of a guy who when his wife... This week his wife was pregnant with a fourth child and he just left her. And he left the children. He humiliated himself. And then he came back. He repented of a sin and he came back. St. Paul says, don't humiliate yourself by presenting yourself a facade, a mask of being a Christian when your heart is not in it.

What would people think if they found out how much you give? I don't know how much anyone gives here. Would you be humiliated if people found out how much you give to the work of the Lord? That's what he's saying. So I thought at verse five, I thought it necessary to urge the brothers, urge, stir, to go on ahead to you and arrange in advance for the gift you have promised. The word gift here is blessing, evlogía in the Greek so that it may be ready as a willing gift, not as an exaction. Because before they come, I want you to prepare in your hearts what you're going to give and prepare the gift. Actually set the money aside. So if it's in crypto, if it's in stocks, and if it's in whatever. That's what he's saying. When the time comes, have it ready, so that the presence of these brothers doesn't force you into generosity. Then you won't do it willingly. And it's going to feel like an exaction. And it's going to feel like you're extorting them.

St. Paul says, "No, no, prepare it ahead of time." And verse six is the point is this... And I love when pastors get to the point. It took him nine and a half chapters to get to the point. But he is like, finally, I get to the point. Here's the point. This is verse six. The point is this, whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. So he talks about, and this is fascinating. He talks about giving, not as losing. And this is so different than how the world talks about giving. You give and then it's lost. No, no. He views giving, giving by faith. He views giving as investing. And the image that he brings in is a farmer with a bag of grain, and he knows the winter is coming. And he can take the bag and eat off of it, eat well for the winter, or he can eat not as well, good enough, get by, and take the excess and invest it into his own future.

So he takes the bag of grain and he goes, and it doesn't take a generous farmer, a generous planter does not penny pinch, pinch the seed. He takes a full handful, swinging arm, and just cast it, just lavishly, generously because he knows the more he sows, the more bountiful the harvest will be. Is that how you view giving? Do you view giving as like penny pinching toward God and toward people? Well, Yeshua of Nazareth was not a penny pincher. As the great rapper said, I forgot his name. Who said that Vlad? Huh? That guy. Yeah. So that's what he's saying. He's like, "Do you invest like this into relationships? Do you invest like this into brothers and sisters?" And I'm telling you, I'm trying to grow in this. I'm not naturally like this. I come from an immigrant family. My dad, he's growing in generosity, I'm growing in generosity.

Because I'm good at math, and I'm good at numbers. And I'm like, "Yeah, if I give then I can't invest. And this gift of 100 bucks, isn't really 100 bucks, it's also... If I put in Shiba coin, in a year, it could be a lot more." And then I go through all of that, but the Lord is like, "But I give it to you now to give this person and meet this need." And it's not even yours Jan. That's the point. Do you give this generously? Two texts that I was thinking about today. Luke 19 you get the story of Zaccaeus. And I say this because giving doesn't get you saved. A lot of people think that if you come to the church and you cut God a check, you get God off your back. And now you can go and sin and live any way you want. And you think you have atoned for your sin. And doesn't work like that. So if someone brings in the check, and they're like, "This is to atone for my sins." Would I take the check?

We'd have to pray about it. I would call the person like, "Hey, this doesn't save you. This doesn't save you. You know what saves you? Repenting of your sins and trusting in Jesus Christ. God, please forgive me of all my sins." At the very second you submit your life to God, and you believe in him. You trust in Jesus. He died on the cross for your sin. And he didn't penny pinch his blood. He didn't tie this blood. He gave all of his blood to save you. The richness of his blood, of his... He died on a cross for you. Brutal. Was executed for you. Crown of thorns instead of a crown of gold. He did that for you. When you realize that he did that, Jesus died on the cross for my sin to pay all my debts, all of my trespasses, that changes your heart.

And then when you read the text, and God tells you to be generous, and you say, "How?" And He says, "As I've been generous to you." Jesus went all in and calls us to do the same. So Luke 19, I was thinking about Zaccaeus. He gets saved and after he gets saved, he was a tax collector. He extorted people, his own people. And he got exorbitantly rich. And then he finally hears the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Jesus was preaching. He was on a tree. And then he gets saved. He gets radically saved. God elects him sovereign regeneration. Zaccaeus comes down and says, "Lord, whatever I've stolen from anybody I'm going to return fourfold. And then from my wealth, I'm going to give away half."

Have you ever considered giving away half to the Lord? I have. I do. You know when? When I'm having fun, when church is fun, when ministry is fun, when life is fun, I'm like, "Yeah. Give it all way. This is so much fun." Because it's more blessed to give than to receive. So like you give and God sends blessing, and you're like, "Oh, this stuff is real. Yeah, it's real." And church has been tremendously fun recently. Pastor Shane and Pastor Andy came over my house two and a half hours. I grill them five steaks ribeye black angus from Maine. I grilled them up. They come down into my man cave, and Pastor Andy brought me a bottle of wine. And the reason why he bought that particular bottle of wine is because it had a cross on it as a sign from God. So what I'm saying is, when you're having fun, you're like, "Yeah. Life is so much more bigger, more enjoyable than just stuff, than just money."

Verse seven, "Each one must give as he has decided in his heart. Generosity is decided in the heart not reluctantly, not under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. God loves a cheerful giver." You want to give. And God loves when you want to give. Not under compulsion. You're not forced. Not reluctantly, like, "I don't really want to give this." Cheerful giver, because God is a cheerful giver, Jesus Christ is a cheerful giver, for the joy that was set before him, he went to the cross. All right, for God so loved the world that He, what? Let's say it together. He gave. God so loved the world that He gave his begotten son. He gave his son for us. God is loving, generous, giving God, so whosoever believes in him. If you're not a Christian, believe in him.

It's just that simple. Just believe in God. He changes your heart, and our sins are forgiven. Your eternity is secure. So why wouldn't we live generously for him? God loves a cheerful giver. Here I want to pause, and I want to talk about your favorite topic, tithing. And if it's not your favorite topic, hopefully it will be after I'm done. Read Matthew 23:23, dear Christian. This is a word for Christians. If you're not a Christian, I'm not talking to you. I mean I kind of are, so you know what you're getting yourself into. But Malachi three, read Malachi three. Read about how God feels when his people do not tithe. What is tithing? He calls it, you're robbing me. You robbed me.

God commands that we are to give him 10% of our income. The principle remains. It's like the principle of the Sabbath. We are to give one seventh of our time to the Lord, to devote one seventh of our time to Lord. That's why I'm giving you homework. Because I want you to take a Sabbath where you do homework and you study scripture. And that's why I'm preaching for a lot longer than you perhaps want me to preach. But I have the mic, and unless someone turns it off I'm going to keep going. But my favorite lectures in college were three hours. My favorite lecture in college was a guy named Serge Nikita Khrushchev, Serge Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev's son. And he taught for three hours once a week. And he assumed you did all the reading. He assumed you did all the writing. He assumed you thought.

And the lecture was just him speaking from his heart. It changed my life, the way I viewed the world. So yeah, I'm calling you to do that. I'm calling you to give your time. I'm calling you to give your life, and I'm calling you dear church to give your tithes. Why? Because... And I'm speaking to Mosaic, obviously I already expect this. I believe in you. That's why. So I expect things from you. The American church on average gives 2.3% of their income to the Lord. Like how can I talk about generosity when we're not even doing the basics. The basics. Read your Bible, pray, silence, solitude, fasting, share the Gospel, give 10%.

Before we talk about generosity. It's 10% of what? 10% of my take home. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. The tithe has enough thing to do with Uncle Sam. Uncle Sam is a pagan and I call him to repentance. Uncle Sam, I do. I don't trust Uncle Sam with my money. I don't trust Joe Biden with my money. I don't trust he's going to do the right thing with my money. I'd rather give it to the Lord, and see what the Lord does. So I'm saying taxes that's another conversation for another day. I'm talking about the tithe. It's all the Lords before it's FICAs.

So it's 10% of what you earn. And also it's 10% of what you earn off of your real estate, off of your stocks, off of your crypto, off of your side hustles, off of your Uber, off of your everything. So if you're going to tithe, you're going to sit down and you're going to say, "Okay, how much did God give me? How much did I earn? I'm going to give 10% of that." Imagine if the whole church, United States, imagine if the whole church tithed, we would change the world, would transform absolutely everything. And imagine if the church repented of not tithing, and said, "Lord, I've been robbing you for years, and now here's everything that I robbed you of with interest and inflation. Here you go, Lord." Is he serious? Yeah, maybe, I don't know. I'm saying it would change the world. And God loves a cheerful giver. He loves cheerful giving to his work, to his ministry. So we talked about tithe.

And then it's anything you give above tithe that's generosity. So I know of believers, members of the church who give to foreign missions, which is awesome. Give to foreign missions after you've given to foreign missions here, because this is a foreign mission field. The whole world is sending their children here to get brainwashed, and then we export the brainwashing to the rest of the world. Well, why don't we take Boston, and do it in such a way where we actually do impact the world. But what have you decided to give to the Lord in your heart? That's verse seven. Verse eight, "And God is able to make all grace abound to you." That's fascinating because there's grace that God is withholding from you. There's blessings that God is withholding from you because you're not ready for it.

If God blesses you right now and you don't have a generous heart, if God blesses you, and you don't have a generous heart, that blessing is going to turn into a curse. So yeah, God does withhold grace from some of his children who are disobedient. God does withhold some of his power, some of his presence from you because you're not ready for it. God is able to make all the grace abound so that having all sufficiency in all things and all times. Just satisfaction in everything. You may abound in every good work. You have all sufficiency in... Can you say that right now, and dear Christian? Because sufficiency is not a number, sufficiency is a state of heart. Is your heart right now satisfied in the Lord? Is it satisfied with what he has provided to you? And I wrestle with this, because I'm rich, but I'm Boston poor. You know what I'm saying?

Where it's like anywhere else I'd live, I'd have the car I want, I'd have a parking spot, I'd have a garage, but I live in Boston. So like I wrestle with the sufficiency part, and the satisfaction part. So this week I've been wrestling with this text, and I realized I am filthy rich. I am so rich. I have two washer dryers. I have two. I have not one fridge, I have two and a half. I have two full fridges. And I always thought, you know you've made it in life when you have a second full fridge. Because I go to my friend's house and they're like, "Yeah. There's a fridge in the kitchen, there's a fridge in the garage." I'm like, "You got a fridge in the garage." "Yeah." And I also have, on top of my two and a fridge, I have a freezer chock-full of black angus meat. I bought a half a cow from Maine. It's my love language. So if I love you, I'm going to give you a pound of ground beef, or whatever is at the top. I'd give you the ribeye.

I'm saying this is a sphere of generosity you want to cultivate here. My community group this week, we have a lot of people who don't have family around here. We're going to have a Thanksgiving meal. I hate turkey. I just despise turkey. If you know me, I got stories about turkeys. But it's what you got to do. And I'm like, "Yeah. But there's a reason why they had a Thanksgiving turkey because they couldn't catch anything else. Yeah." We're going to have turkey, but if it were up to me, we'd have steak. What I'm saying is, this is the season to be generous. This is the season to say, "God thank you. God thank you for the people in my life. I want to bless people. I want to be generous with everything that God has given me."

Verse nine, "As it is written, He has distributed freely, He has given to the poor. His righteousness endured forever." He's quoting from Psalm 112, which is... It's a song. It's a poem about a Christian philanthropist. About a person who is generous in everything that they do. Generous with their life. Generous with their children, generous with their spouse, generous with their neighbors. I met with a... Long story. I met with a realtor yesterday and she said, "We're looking for some space for a church." Long story. She said, she was talking about the neighbors, and she's like, "Ah, there's a spirit of generosity." She said. "There's a spirit of generosity in this neighborhood." And I was like, "Oh, isn't that something?" Imagine if there was a spirit of generosity in Massachusetts, the spirit of America. Imagine we could change the nation.

Verse 10. "And He, God, supplies seed to the sower, and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing, and increase the harvest of your righteousness." God supplies the seed, God supplies the bread. God will, if we're generous, if we're faithful, He will multiply your seeds for sowing, and increase the harvest of your righteousness. I pray about you all week. I pray this all week. I pray, "Lord bless the people of Mosaic. Bless them this week. Bless their souls. Bless their families. Lord provide for all of their... Provide them seed, provide than food. And Lord multiply. Lord God multiply the work of their hands. Lord God, every single bank account of every single person who goes to Mosaic, is a member, Lord multiply. I prophesy that over you. Lord multiply." And you're like, "Is this a name and claim church?" No. It's a biblical church. Come back next week. We're going to talk about church membership and church discipline. But today we're talking about generosity.

I pray God blesses your investments. I pray God blesses your crypto coins. I pray God blesses your businesses, your startups, your career, everything so that you can be even more generous to the world. And that changes things. And I love verse 11. This is a promise, friends. Like you can take God up on his promises. Look at this. You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way. Who doesn't want that? Do you want to be enriched in every single way? I do. Well, God promised, God says, "I want to enrich you in every single way. It starts with the Gospel. It starts with repenting of your sins." Including greed, friends. When is the last time you got on your knees and said, "God, please forgive me for greed, for being greedy, stingy."? For just mooching off of God. We are to repent. That's a sin. That's a sin. We are to repent of it.

And I'm calling the church of the United States to repent. I'm calling everybody to repent. That's my job. And myself, I've had to wrestle with this. I've had to repent of all kinds of brokenness in here when it comes to the sin of being greedy, of worrying that God will not provide. And then what happens when I start worrying, I start working more. And I start working now 40, 50, 80. I start working 100 hours because it doesn't look like the Lord is providing, so I'm going to do everything I possibly can with my own efforts. And that's not really helpful. And then things shut down. What I'm saying is the Lord is bringing healing in here, and I pray that he does the same with you, so that with our hearts together we can be generous toward God.

Verse 12, "For the ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints, but also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God." This ministry is not just to meet needs, He says, but it's to bring a crescendo of an orchestra of people worshiping God, just overflowing in many thanksgivings to God. That's the point. So when we serve, when we give to God, it's not to get a thank you from people. I ask that you pray, but it's to thank God. "God, thank you." And by the way, I do want to thank you for your generosity. Or those who faithfully give, and for those who faithfully serve, praise God.

I don't know how much you give, but I can tell who is giving because they care. Because when you're invested in a place, when you invest in a church, you show up, and you actually want to serve, and you want to do evangelism. You want to do... I had a couple come to me and they're like, "I'm so glad you talk about Thanksgiving dinner because we had Thanksgiving dinner yesterday." And she showed me a picture, and she said, "We had a turk, duck, chicken." It was a turkey stuffed with a duck, stuffed with a chicken. That blessed my heart. Like it's so absurd. That's how generous it is. So I'm saying, church, thank you for your generosity.

"By their approval of the service, they will glorify God because of your submission." So the people that you bless glorify God because you submitted your submission. And what does the submission flow from? Flowing from your confession of the Gospel of Christ, and the generosity of your contribution for them and for others. They're going to glorify... God is going to get more glory. God is going to get the glory he deserves if you don't just confess Jesus Christ with your mouth, but actually submit your life to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, to the word of Jesus Christ. And when you submit your life to Jesus Christ, everything changes. People actually glorify God. You know why David went against Goliath. Read the text. 1st Kings, I think 17. Because for 40 days and 40 nights Goliath would get up and defame the name of God. He would just get up and mock, and curse God, just cursed and...

And it's like in Boston when people using the name of Jesus Christ, it's usually to curse someone out. And then David finally, he's like, "Enough is enough. I'd rather die than this continue." And with generosity of his life, he put his life on the altar, and like, "God, all right, I got some stones, can you please direct one of them?" And God did it. This is the generosity of heart, where if you have this, if your heart is in the right place, if your heart is in it, everything changes. Verse 14, "While they long for you and pray for you because of the surpassing grace of God upon you, thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift."

And he ends here and this is fascinating. A sister from the church texted me yesterday and she's like, "Hey, you talked about evlogía, in the study guide it means blessing or gift, and it's used twice. Hey, what about the word at the very end? It says gift. It's a different Greek word. Why does St Paul do this? Is it just a synonym?" Well, the gift here, the blessing that gift means. Focus on the gift. Focus on the gift, don't focus on the giver because where people give God the glory, here's the gift. This one focuses on the giver. It's an inexpressible gift because the gift giver is God Himself, that's why it's inexpressible. And he's talking about the gift of Jesus Christ. He's talking about the gift of God, the Father sending His son Jesus Christ to die for our sins. It's an inexpressible gift.

Jesus Christ lived the most generous life that anyone has ever lived. And on top of that, he wasn't just generous in his life, he was generous in his death. Jesus Christ allowed himself to be crucified. He allowed himself to be flogged, scourged. He allowed that crown of thorns. He allowed himself to be put on a Roman cross that he carried. Now they put him on it, and they drove nail. They hammered nails through the most sensitive parts of his hands and his feet. He allowed all of that to happen. His blood poured out, his body broken for us. And then he gets put in a grave, and we think it's all over. And then he comes back from the dead. And the reason why there's Christianity today. And if you don't believe this, I dare you to explain how Christianity grew.

Other religions grew by the sword, Christianity grew despite the sword. What would make the early believers go to their death testifying to the Gospel? It's the same thing. What happened? It's the same thing that moved them to sell their real estate. It's the same thing that moved them to sell their land and bring it to the feet of the apostles. What moved them? They saw the resurrected Christ, and they felt the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. It changed absolutely everything. That's why Acts 2 is so important. Acts two says the following, Acts 2:42 through 47. "And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching." They, the early church after day Pentecost. And the breaking of bread, and the prayers, and all came upon every soul and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles, and all who believed were together, and had all things in common.

And they were selling their possessions and belongings, and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their home. They received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God, and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day. Those who were being saved. We believe in this so much, we sold everything to be together. We sold everything, get the Gospel out. And by the way, this is the craziest stuff ever, so we're having a good time. And when we're having a good time, other people want to have a good time, and that's how people got saved.

I'm working on the theology of fun. I'm working on it. So just bear with me, I'm verbal processing right now. Let me know what you think. I'm working on theology of fun because I've never heard anyone write about this. And the theology of fun goes like this. Who is more fun, God or Satan? And that's the battle over your heart. And what I'm here to tell you is, sin isn't fun. It's fun for like three seconds, and then you wake up the next morning. You know what is fun? It's a lot harder, but what is fun is following Jesus. There's nothing like it. There's nothing like the Holy Spirit stirring you, just miracle day after day, after day. There's nothing more fun.

So what I'm saying is the Jerusalem church did that so that the Gospel could get out, and the Gospel got where? To Corinth, and now Corinthian believers have finances that the Jerusalem church needs, and Corinth gives back to where the Gospel came from. So this is my appeal to you church, and my appeal to the church of the United States, which I do not understand. I don't understand the church in America. I don't understand the church in America because we're not thinking about the Gospel right. We're not thinking about the kingdom. We're not thinking strategically. We're not. If we were thinking strategically, and this is a global church as a whole, if we were thinking strategically about how to get the Gospel out, and how to fix the world, this is how we'd be thinking. We'd say, "As America goes, so goes the world."

How does America go? America goes as Boston goes. Boston is only a decade ahead of everyone else. And the American church sends their children here to get brainwashed and then export demonic ideologies to the churches of the United States. So what I'm saying is, it's time to take the head off the beast. Why doesn't the American church pull their finances together and say, "You know what? We're actually going to take Boston the way that we should have taken Boston. And we're going to send resources, and Pastor Jan is a nut, but he's effective." And so we together, we're going to build that campus. We're going to build Harvard the way it should be with a church in the middle, and a school, and the Mosaic Boston Academy, and an orphanage. And I want a cafeteria to feed absolutely everyone. And you get free meal if you listen to a 15-minute talk by me.

And then when you get saved, you start actually joining the church, and joining the community. This is my call to the church. And also, and by the way if you live here, stay here. And I am talking to all the former members of Mosaic. I'm talking to you. I know you guys listen. You text me. I know Drew. Yeah. You know. Yeah. I can call out the name. I'm calling you back. I'm calling all of you back, and I want every single the seat filled so that we're talking about third and fourth services. I'm calling you back. And if you don't come back, at least send your tithes and offerings to the church. But first give tithes to your local church, then be generous here.

And then here's what I also want to... All the time when I say Boston, we're going to take this city. And people are like, "Yeah. Real state is too expensive." Don't live in Boston. I'm not talking about Boston proper, I'm talking about Boston the idea. If you ask anyone from Worcester, where are you from? And they go to Texas. Where are you from? They're not going to say Worcester. No one knows what Worcester is. No one knows how to spell it. Everyone says Boston. Where are you from? Rhode Island, Long island? No, no, no. I'm from Boston. Everyone says Boston.

So if you're from Boston, New Hampshire, Maine. And Maine's only an hour away. I don't even... Just drive here. If you drive here like taking the T from the north end takes longer to get here than driving from Rhode Island. You know what I'm saying? So if you come here on a Sunday, if you can get here on a Sunday, start a commuting group wherever you at. We're taking the city. That's what I'm saying. And then if you're like, I don't have a fancy degree to live up here. Hey, do you know how to build anything? Because no one up here knows how to do anything with their hands. The only thing they do with their hands is type, that's it. So if you're a builder in the United States or from outside, if you're an immigrant, if you're from Russia, I'm calling all the builders, and we're going to rebuild the city together.

I'm going to help you establish your business. I know how. And then we're going to build a family home for the church. Have I said everything on my heart? Yes. 2nd Corinthians 9:15. Oh, by the way, if you're not a Christian today, would you become a Christian? Just repent your sin. Come on. Welcome to the team already. I've been doing this for too long to be like... That's why I'm switching up my style because I realized I don't want any barriers between who I am in my life, and when I get up here. I don't want to be like the different guy. This is how I live my life. I share the Gospel. I love the Lord. I read the word. I love my wife. We get in fights. She came to church today. We forgive each other. I love my daughters. I just want everyone to be a Christian.

And if you are a Christian, let's grow up together. That's what I'm saying, and haka dance to the Lord as we worship. 2nd Corinthians 9:15, "Thanks be to God for His inexpressible gift." Amen. Let's pray. Lord God please pour out your holy fire upon the hearts of your people. Burn in our hearts a desire to take the head off the beast like David took Goliath's in Jesus holy name. Amen.