I'd like to speak to you this morning
on the generosity of God.
Maybe you'd turn in your Bible to 1st
Timothy, chapter 6.
I'll read verse 17, but it's only the
last few words of the verse that I'll
be emphasizing.
1st Timothy, chapter 6, verse 17.
Command those who are rich in this present
age not to be haughty, nor to trust
in uncertain riches, but in the living God
who gives us richly all things to enjoy.
The living God who gives us richly all
things to enjoy.
We're familiar with many of the attributes of
God.
He's all-powerful.
He's all-knowing.
He's in all places at one and the
same time.
He's holy, righteous, just, and good.
But you seldom hear about the generosity of
God.
In fact, God is the most unappreciated person
in the universe.
He's the most maligned person in the universe,
the most blamed.
Man sins and reaps the terrible consequences of
his sin, and turns around and blames God.
But God is really the most unappreciated person
in the universe, this living God who gives
us richly all things to enjoy.
I'd like to think with you this morning
about the generosity of God in nature, and
then in the spiritual realm.
First of all is generosity in nature.
Think of the marvelous world in which he
has placed us.
I suppose it could have been like the
moon.
Wouldn't that have been dull if we had
been placed in a sphere like the moon?
But instead of that, he's placed us in
a world that has about 250,000 different
kinds of plants, seed-bearing plants.
Just think of that, 250,000 seed-bearing
plants, and of these 50,000 are trees.
How would you like to sit down and
try to design 250,000 different kinds of
plants?
You'd run out of ideas very soon.
Architects run out of ideas.
I suppose they're architects, I'd better be careful.
But you see these row houses, they all
look alike.
But God designed 250,000 different kinds of
seed-bearing plants, and of those 50,000
are trees.
Do you enjoy plants?
I know a lot of you do, and
I do too, and trees as well.
The marvel of it all.
There are 8,600 different kinds of flowers,
different kinds of flowers.
The orchid alone, there are 2,000 different
orchids.
That's not even, they only count one in
that 8,600, but there are 2,000
different kinds of orchids.
Just think of the beauty of any kind
of orchid, or think of a rose.
You get up in the morning, and you
look at the rose, and there's a little
crystal drop of water on the petal of
a rose.
And you look at it, and you marvel.
It's so beautiful, isn't it?
How much we owe to God for the
beauty of such a creation.
Think of the fruit trees and berry bushes
that God has made.
Think of the delight that mankind has taken
in the apple alone.
Or have you ever gone out into an
orchard, where those Bartlett pears were just becoming
ripe?
And you pick a pear, you bite into
it, and the juice runs down your chin,
and that's part of the joy of it.
Really, the flavor of a Bartlett pear is
incomparable.
There's no other flavor like it.
Or have you ever been on a farm
at harvest time, when the men are out
all day long working in the fields, and
the housewife is home baking pies.
And they come in, and she has this
blueberry pie, and she cuts into it, and
the juice is flowing there at the bottom
of the pie plate.
And there's nothing like it, really.
But that's only one type of berry that
God has made.
Think of the birds.
There are 10,000 species of birds in
the world in which God has placed us.
Do you enjoy them?
I think of the hummingbird.
I never cease to get over the wonder
of a hummingbird.
That little body.
Did you know that a hummingbird can fly
across the Gulf of Mexico without stopping to
refuel?
It's marvelous, isn't it?
Sometimes we take these things for granted.
That's what I say.
God is so unappreciated.
He placed all these wonders right within our
sight.
People care little about it.
You go into a restaurant, do you see
many people bow their heads to give thanks
for the food?
I mean, it's a rarity.
Did I ever tell you the story about
Evelyn Varder's father?
I don't know whether it happened to him,
but he told the story.
A servant of the Lord was out on
itinerant evangelism, and he had no money.
But he felt that God wanted him to
eat, and so he went into a restaurant,
and he ordered a meal on faith, and
he ate the meal, and then he prepared
his little speech to give to the man
at the cash register.
He went up to the man at the
cash register, and before he could open his
mouth, the man said, no sir, dad, when
I opened this restaurant, I said that the
first one who bowed his head and gave
thanks for the food would get his meal
free, and you're the first one.
This is in a book called Memorials of
a Quiet Life by Evelyn Varder's father.
Very few people bow their heads and give
thanks for the food.
The beauty of God's creation.
I was thinking of a canary.
Do you think you could ever become so
attached to a canary that when it died
you'd cry?
Well, I've known people who did that.
I think of the seagulls which we see
in profusion down here at the bay and
at the Pacific, and I never look at
a seagull without thinking of the marvel of
God's creation.
I've crossed the Atlantic on an ocean liner,
and you get out in the middle of
the Atlantic, and there are seagulls there.
What do they drink?
They drink salt water.
No creature can live drinking salt water.
Salt water will kill you.
How did God get around that little difficulty?
Well, I'll tell you how.
The seagull takes the salt water up, and
it goes through a filter membrane.
Fresh water goes down into the gullet of
the seagull, and the salt comes out as
a teardrop in its eye.
The wonder of God's creation.
And I think of the little sparrow scratching
around in your yard, and how God could,
how the Lord Jesus could look at that
sparrow and see a spiritual lesson in it
for us.
I think of the fish.
There are 20,000 bony fish that God
has made.
20,000.
The total number of fish is 45,000.
Mike, he could have done less, couldn't he?
That's why it says he's given us richly
all things to enjoy.
He's lavish in his kindness toward his people.
How many animals do you think he designed?
1,250,000.
It's an estimate.
There could be a lot more.
1,250,000.
Do you like animals?
Do you like a dog?
I was thinking this morning of the dog.
I think of that seeing-eye dog guiding
around our blind friend.
It's wonderful, isn't it?
I think of a watchdog in a home.
They seem to know what their job is.
I think of the sheepdog, and how the
shepherd can just use them.
They just know what they're supposed to do.
You don't have to reward them.
Their reward is doing the work of herding
the sheep.
That's all they have, just to do the
work.
And then I think of those Irish setters
whom God just put in the world to
teach us how to worship.
That's all.
They sure know how to love a person.
Mentally, they probably should see a psychologist, but
they really know how to love.
Think of the many different strains of dogs
alone in the world, and of horses.
A million, two hundred and fifty thousand animals
in the world.
Maybe I shouldn't talk about insects.
There are two to five million different types
of insects.
But they play an important part, don't they?
A very important part in the balance of
nature.
Stars.
I hope we're not too spiritual to look
up at night and enjoy God's creation in
the firmament.
There are billions of stars that you and
I will never see.
Isn't that amazing?
Billions of stars that you and I will
never see.
I think of God's kindness to us in
inventing flavors.
Did you know it was God who invented
chocolate?
It was.
To say nothing of all the wonderful flavors.
He could have made everything taste like soda.
He didn't.
And the fragrances that the Lord has given
to mankind.
Think of the beauty of a sunset.
The majesty of the mountains.
Or the great expanse of the seas.
The generosity of God.
But if you really want to know something
about the generosity of God, you've got to
move over into the spiritual realm.
The natural is only a picture of the
spiritual.
Psalm 139 verse 18.
I'd like you to look at that for
just a minute.
Psalm 139 and verse
18.
Well, I should begin with verse 17.
How precious also are your thoughts to me,
O God.
How great is the sum of them.
Listen, if I should count them, they would
be more in number than the sand when
I awake.
I am still with you.
Now, we read that and we don't appreciate
what it's saying.
God's thoughts of love and kindness and generosity
to us are more numerous than all the
grains of sand of all the seashores of
the world.
Marvelous, isn't it?
You just go down to Alameda, to the
beach there.
You couldn't take a handful of sand and
count the grains, could you?
I wouldn't want to.
I'd get too tired.
But that's what this verse says.
Psalm 139 verse 18.
His thoughts toward his people are more numerous
than the sand of the sea.
James chapter 1 verse 5 says that he
gives to all men liberally what wisdom.
He gives wisdom liberally to all who ask
for it.
He never scolds us for asking.
If any man lack wisdom, let him ask
of God who give it to all men
liberally and upbraideth none.
It's good in reading your bible to come
across those words, adverbs like liberally, abundantly, exceedingly,
because you find the Spirit of God ranging
over the world of adjectives and adverbs to
give some impression of the great generosity of
God.
Psalm 68 verse 19 says he daily loads
us with benefits.
He daily loads us with benefits.
We take them for granted.
We take for granted things like memory, appetite,
sight, hearing, smell, all of these things.
But they are blessings with which he daily
loads us to say nothing of the blessings
of a sound body and a sound mind.
But you know, the greatest display of generosity
that the world has ever known occurred 2
,000 years ago when God gave his only
begotten son.
When God emptied heaven of its very best
for earth's worst, there never was generosity like
that.
When God gave Jesus, he couldn't give anything
more, and he couldn't give anything better, and
he didn't have to do it.
You wouldn't do it.
If you had an only son, it wouldn't
give him to die for a person who
was morally dissolute, a drunkard.
God did it.
His generosity was fully told out at Calvary's
cross, and linked with that was the generosity
of the Lord Jesus.
When he saw a world of lost mankind,
he was willing to give himself.
That's why Paul says, in 2 Corinthians, we
know the grace, and incidentally, grace in that
verse really is a synonym for generosity.
I think you get the real meaning of
the verse if you put the word generosity
in it.
We know the generosity of our Lord Jesus
Christ, though he was rich, yet for your
sakes he became poor, that ye through his
poverty might be rich.
There never was generosity like that, and yet
the only thanks the Lord Jesus ever gets
for it comes from redeemed lips, and there
aren't many of those in the world.
The generosity of the Lord Jesus Christ.
When we're born again, we read that he
pours out his spirit on us abundantly.
Schaeffer, I think he counts about 35 things
that happen to a person when he's born
again, and one of them is the gift
of the Spirit, the gift of the Holy
Spirit.
When you think of the numerous ministries of
the Holy Spirit which become ours the moment
we're saved, we're indwelt by the Holy Spirit.
We receive the seal of the Spirit, marking
us out as belonging to God.
We receive the earnest of the Spirit, the
pledge of our future redemption.
Many, many ministries of the Spirit, and then
the Lord Jesus gives us life more abundantly.
He said, he himself said, the thief cometh
not but for to steal and to kill
and to destroy.
I am come that they might have life,
and that they might have it more abundantly.
And you never really do know the abundant
life until you come to know the Lord
Jesus.
God is generous in his grace, his kindness
to people who are not only unworthy, but
who deserve the very opposite.
Paul says where sin abounded, grace super abounded.
You think of sin abounding in the world,
it's incredible, isn't it?
It's incredible the sin that's in the world
today.
God's grace is greater.
God's grace is like an ocean without shores,
and we're like little children with a thimble
scooping out the water of the ocean.
We'll never drain it dry.
Throughout all eternity, the generous grace of God.
Paul describes his grace in 1 Timothy 1
.14 as exceedingly abundant.
It's wonderful how he ransacks vocabulary for superlatives
in describing the grace of God.
And God's mercy is abundant, too.
1 Peter 1.
Verse 3.
Blessed be the God and Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to his abundant
mercy, has begotten us again to a living
hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from
the dead.
Notice the expression, according to his abundant mercy.
There's no shortage of mercy with God.
God's grace is giving us what we don't
deserve.
God's mercy is not giving us what we
do deserve.
God's grace gives us forgiveness of sin and
everlasting life.
God's mercy spares us from hell, the punishment
we do deserve.
And all through the Christian life, God is
pouring out his grace upon us, his consolation.
You say, well, brother, we have rough places
in life.
We have sorrows in life.
We have trials and tribulations in life.
And yet, Paul reminds us in 2 Corinthians
1 that even when we do have tribulations,
God's comfort and consolation superabounds over the trials.
2 Corinthians 1.
And verse 15.
And Paul could speak about this with great
confidence because he had been through the fire.
And even in this chapter, he's telling about
what he has suffered for Christ.
2 Corinthians 1.
Well, let me read verse 3.
Blessed be the God and Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and
God of all comfort, who comforts us in
all our tribulations, that we may be able
to comfort those who are in any trouble
with the comfort with which we ourselves are
comforted by God.
Notice, for as the sufferings of Christ abound
in us, so our consolation also abounds through
Christ.
What that really is saying is that suffering
and affliction and trials never come alone.
They're always accompanied by a corresponding consolation from
God.
Have you experienced that?
Have you gone through some dark valley in
life?
If you had anticipated it ahead of time,
you say, I never could have taken it.
If you go through it, you find you're
not alone in it.
The Lord is there.
He's more present, more near than you ever
thought possible.
He pours in the comfort and he pours
in the consolation.
And after it's all over, you say, well,
I never would have chosen it, but I
wouldn't give up the experience for anything.
We get to know the Lord in a
way in which we never knew him before.
So he's generous with the consolations that he
gives to us.
Paul tells us in Philippians chapter four, God
supplies all our needs, listen, according to his
riches in glory by Christ Jesus.
That's wonderful, isn't it?
Is he rich in glory?
I should say that's the way he supplies
our needs, according to his riches in glory
by Christ Jesus.
And then in second Corinthians chapter nine and
verse eight, Paul tells us that the Lord
provides us with everything that we would ever
need in order that we might do good
works, all sufficiency in all things so that
we may have an abundance for every good
work.
That's typical of the New Testament, all sufficiency
in all things that we may have an
abundance of good works.
And I think Paul hits a mountain peak
in Ephesians chapter three, verse 20, when he
says that God is able to do yet
exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or
think according to the power that works in
us.
Just think of that.
God is able to do exceedingly abundantly above
all that we ask or think according to
the power that works in us.
And finally, at the end of the journey,
Peter tells us that God is able to
supply an abundant entrance into the everlasting kingdom
of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
What a wonderful thing.
An abundant entrance into the everlasting kingdom of
our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
The generosity of God.
Years ago, there's a woman in jail in
Detroit.
Her name was Dorothy Grimes.
She wrote this little poem.
She called it God's Extravagance.
More sky than man can see.
More sea than he can sail.
More sun than he can bear to watch.
More stars than he can scale.
More breath than he can breathe.
More yield than he can sew.
More grace than he can comprehend.
More love than he can know.
God's Extravagance.
Shall we thank him?
Father, we do thank you this morning for
your wonderful generosity to the sons and daughters
of men.
Forgive us, O Lord, for taking these things
for granted, and we would thank you, especially
this morning, for the gift of your love,
the Lord Jesus.
Gift of all gifts.
All are the gifts in one.
You gave your only begotten son, and we
will be endlessly thankful, endlessly grateful to you
for pouring out such love, for lavishing such
affection in us, who deserve the very opposite.
We give our thanks to the Savior's name.
Amen.