The Aroma of Generosity | Philippians 4:15–20

Well, as you think about our topic this morning and the text we're going to be looking at, will you do something a little odd with me? If you're a guest, forgive me, it will be a little cheesy. You've got a cold right now or you're kind of struggling with some allergies, you'll find it difficult. But can you just kind of like do what you do when you pass a bakery or your spouse makes a wonderful sweet thing? Can you just, yeah, I want you to picture in your mind when you've done that and the aroma was just beautiful, like my wife's chocolate chip cookies.

When I walk in and she's making those, it's beautiful, it's a great moment, right? I just keep doing that. If you've ever walked near a bakery or a bread shop, and that's not as common in this city or perhaps even in this area, but if you go out of the country, I remember my first trip to Istanbul. We left the hotel or to go visit some of our partners.

We were there for a trip to visit them and connect with them. And we weren't a hundred yards outside of the hotel and the bread carts and the bread shops. I mean, it is the aroma is all over every sidewalk and street.

And so we were kind of hit with it. We took in a deep smell of that. And it just invites you in like you suddenly want bread, you know, these long rolls and they're selling it.

There's so much out there. On that trip and in that morning, I remember thinking about how that aroma drew my attention to multiple things. I thought about all of us on the outside of the shops and the outside of the carts and being drawn in.

I thought about the customers who were already in some of these sidewalk shops enjoying the bread that was just made. I thought about the business owner or the baker who's receiving the benefits of the customers who are inside and the future benefit of those on the outside. In other words, this one aroma had multiple effects.

You catching this? One loaf, one act of baking. But multiple effects. That's the way it is with generosity.

It is one act, but it has multiple results. It moves in multiple directions. This is the picture Philippians 4 so beautifully paints for us about generosity.

So when you take your Bibles, get some paper, you can take some notes with a pen or a pencil, and let's explore six verses that will give us some really good insight into this topic of generosity, of giving. Now, as you're finding Philippians, I want to give as a prelude to tackling these six verses an answer to a question that's probably circulating in your mind. You're probably wondering, why are we taking a week off from Exodus to talk about generosity? It seems like we've done that more in the last year or two.

So Todd, what's up with this more regular nudge towards generosity? If you're a guest, you may be saying, man, I'm a visitor to church and they're going to talk about giving. What's up with that, right? Let me answer that question. It's a fair question.

Let me give you a fair answer. Our mission here is to develop devoted followers of Jesus. Generosity is at the heart of God.

Generosity is the lifestyle Jesus lives. So we talk about it because it's part of the curriculum of learning to walk with Jesus. It's part of a disciple's life.

So to ignore it would be pastoral neglect on your pastor's, plural, part, and so we want to engage in this subject in front of us at periodic times. What does it look like to be a devoted follower who embraces the heart of God and is generous, who lives a life of giving to what matters most? Now that answer begs this next natural question, how are we doing then? If that's part of being a disciple and our job is to develop devoted followers of Christ as disciples, well, Todd, how's it going with generosity in the lives of our people? Another fair question. Can I give you a fair answer? Can I give you a snapshot look at perhaps some data from our body? Again, this is just a prelude to the six verses we're going to see.

It's kind of prepping us for the surgery to come, all right? Let me just share with you some things about our own generosity profile within this body. The best we can tell, about 65 to 70% of our members are regular givers. I'll define what that means briefly.

It means that from what we can tell, 65 to 70% of our members show a pattern of giving. Some realtors and farmers, they give quarterly. Some even give annually.

But you can look and see there's a pattern. Some give weekly. Some give monthly.

You don't find sporadic giving. You find pattern giving. So that's a regular giver.

Make sense? About 65 to 70% of our members are regular givers. That means that for every 10 people, excuse me, for every 10 members, three are takers, not givers. Now you may hear that and think, Todd, that's pretty good.

I mean, batting average of 650 or 700? I think we're all stars. You could say that. You could look at it that way.

You could look at it this way, that if you were at 70% oxygen saturation, you'd have a medical emergency. If you had 70% blockage in an artery, you're potentially in a life-threatening situation. If you're about to cross a bridge and you realize it's at 70% structural integrity, you're probably finding a detour.

If you're in an airplane and the pilot says suddenly, our engines are now only operating at 70% capacity, you're probably thinking you've got a major concern. If you decide to jump from that airplane and your parachute only opens at 70%, prepare for a difficult landing. If you're in a marriage with 70% faithfulness, you've got a relational dashboard with major red blinking lights.

If you're depending on a GPS that's correct only 70% of the time, you're missing a lot of important moments or at least late to most of them. So I'm not sure how you see it, but here's how I see it. I think 70% sends this message, we've got some work to do.

That's not an accusation, it's not meant to be a prod for guilt, it's an assessment based on some numbers, it's a picture of our reality. So I want you to have that. That explains why we want to continue to teach on generosity.

Now, a few more points of data about generosity at First Family, about ourselves. Let's talk more specifically for a moment again, just as prelude to the six verses. Let's talk more about the 65 to 70% who are regular givers.

If I took these past seven months and compared them to the seven months a year ago, here's what we're seeing. Our regular give up about seven and a half percent, and that's a blessing from the Lord. I want to thank you for that.

In dollar amount, that's about $124,000. And so thank you for giving more and for giving in a deeper way for the work of God's mission, both here locally, regionally, globally, within our body. Your elders and your leadership want to thank you for that.

We've also seen in these past seven months, 60 new givers. But even better than that is this, out of those 60 new givers, 45 of them became what we call tenured givers, which means after their initial gift, they gave at least three more times. They begin to develop the habit of generosity, 45 of those in the last seven months.

Hallelujah. Probably explains a lot of the seven and a half percent increase. So we're really thankful for how that's happened.

Fifty four percent of our givers within that 65 to 70 percent have made a move to the right. Now use this air quotes or square quotes, scare quotes around the phrase move to the right because it's a phrase we taught you about a year ago, a little less. We began to teach more about generosity.

We encouraged all of us to humbly evaluate our current giving and ask, is this generous? And if not, then move to the right. We showed you a chart, 1 percent, 2 percent, 3 percent, and then various income levels and just what that amount would be. And we just simply encouraged you.

Would you be willing to evaluate and move to the right? And 54 percent of those who are regular givers did that. We're very thankful for that. Hallelujah.

They humbly and courageously chose deeper generosity. That also means there's a little less than half who didn't make any moves at all or went backwards. Now we don't know all the reasons there.

Some may be valid. We don't know. So again, no accusations, not pinpointing or trying to produce guilt.

I'm just simply giving you some raw data. It helps you understand really the level of or the status of generosity in our church. Perhaps the last stat that I think is very insightful and encouraging and also holds the greatest opportunity would be this one, that out of the 65 to 70 percent of regular givers in our church, 17 percent of that group gives 54 percent of our offerings, which means over 80 percent are giving about a little less than half of the money, and less than 20 percent are giving about a little more than half or so of our offering.

That's a little out of balance, wouldn't you say? So that's a little convicting, like we've got some work to do to share the load. But here's what's encouraging. You guys beat the national average.

In most churches, the national average is that over half of the offerings are given by between 8 to 10 percent of the givers. So I want to commend you for at least according to the national average being above that level. But would you agree with me, without feeling guilty or trying to run and hide or anything like that, not a manufactured moment here to try to squeeze somebody or pinpoint anyone or corner you, just the raw data would say we could use some more discipling and generosity because that is part of following Jesus.

So that's our aim today. We're going to look at six verses in Philippians 4 for our discipling in this arena. It's Philippians chapter 4, we're going to begin in verse 15.

As you're going to locate that, put your eye and a finger on it. Just be aware this is an actual letter written by Paul to a church in a city that he planted. You'll find the story of this plant in Acts chapter 16.

I think Philippi and the church at Philippi were Paul's deepest and most generous partner in ministry. They really gave, they were very liberal and generous in their support, and so he writes this letter to them, which is essentially a thank-you letter. I spoke through Philippians and preached through it several, just a few years ago.

If you want to hear that, you'll find that my main theme in all those messages was really about Paul's thankfulness for their partnership. This six-verse excerpt is just an example of that. You'll find that if you go back and read Acts 16, the corollary narrative for this, it does involve a prison experience, an earthquake, and a very wealthy businesswoman named Lydia who trusted Christ at the riverside, and she became instrumental in helping plant the church.

So all of that's kind of behind-the-scenes stuff to these six verses. I'll begin reading in 4.15, follow along with me. The Bible says this, and you Philippians know that in the early days of the gospel, when I left Macedonia, no church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving except you alone.

That's Acts 16. You can reference that for more of the story. But here he says, you were my sole supporting church.

For even in Thessalonica you sent gifts for my needs several times. Not that I seek the gift, but I seek the profit that is increasing to your account. For I have received everything in full, I have an abundance, I am fully supplied, having received from Epaphroditus what you provided, a fragrant offering.

Do this again, a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God, and my God will supply all of your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. Now to our God and Father be glory forever and ever, and all of God's people said, Amen. Now we could mine a number of truths and highlight them from this passage regarding generosity.

I want to just do two of them. I want to highlight and glean from the main metaphor in the passage for generosity. And then I want to look at the three-directional movement of generosity.

So let's start by seeing what is the main metaphor used for generosity in these six verses. It is essentially an offering. Do you see it there in verse 18, eyes on the text? You see what it says? It's a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, it's pleasing to God, and he's talking about what the Philippians did.

It's mentioned in the very word right before a fragrant offering. It's what they provided. Do you see that? You should circle and square that phrase, a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, something pleasing to God.

That's how Paul illustrates the gifts they provided. The metaphor is that of an offering, a sacrifice, it's something spiritual, it's an act of worship. You see, the Philippians may have thought, hey, we just sent Paul some money.

He said, no, no, no, you sent God an offering, and it affected me. So Paul is really using a lot of Old Testament, we may call it tabernacle language here, temple language. It's a language that really goes back to the time in which they would offer the sacrifices at the tabernacle, the tent of meeting, the soon-to-be temple.

We're talking about that in Exodus right now. We're seeing a lot of that beginning. And so this is hearkening back to some of those phrases, some of those concepts.

In fact, this idea of a fragrant offering or a pleasing aroma and acceptable sacrifices, those are words used throughout the Bible, not just in the tabernacle era. Did you know that that phrase, a pleasing aroma or a fragrant offering, is used of Noah's offering in Genesis chapter 8? It's also used, of course, of the peace offering and the burnt offering. Leviticus chapter 3 is one example, verse 5, that offering there is described as a pleasing aroma.

One of my favorites is in Ezekiel, after God's people are brought back from their captivity, which was a judgment, when they returned in repentance, God refers to His people as a pleasing aroma. In other words, their return, their repentance was a sacrifice to God, was an offering. They were the offering.

God saw them as a pleasing aroma. And of course, the ultimate one is Ephesians 5, too, where Christ Himself is described as a fragrant offering. His crucifixion is a sacrifice to God.

And God, I want to be very respectful here, but here's what God did. And He smiled because it was a fragrant aroma. It was a generous sacrifice.

Now, listen very carefully to me. If generosity stinks to you, if a generous lifestyle smells odd to you, you're distant from the heart of God regarding generosity. Could it be that maybe you've never taken in the beautiful aroma of Christ's sacrifice, His once-for-all satisfaction of God's wrath against sin on your behalf? And because you've never really accepted that and received that, you have no spiritual ability to sense any kind of beautiful aroma when it comes to sacrifice and generosity.

The Holy Spirit's not changed your senses, and so you don't smell well. Your spiritual nostrils don't work. And so to you, generosity just, it's got an odor to it.

Why do they want more of my money? Why are they after my time? Why do they try to keep getting my stuff? Yeah, to you, generosity stinks. Christ at the riverside, a God who gave us Himself in the second person of the Trinity to die in our place and pay our penalty, the Bible says that's the ultimate in fragrant offerings. So I just want to challenge you, first of all, that the metaphor used for generosity isn't something we're doing to fundraise.

It's not paying somebody off. It's not like a payment for a blessing. You're not buying favor.

It's sweet and sacrificial and satisfying. It's an offering of worship to God that's got a beautiful aroma. I think the more we adopt that understanding and metaphor, the looser our hands will be on the resources God's given us.

So that's the main metaphor. It's visible, vertical worship. That's what generosity is.

Now look at the text with me about the three-directional movement of generosity. He lays this out in the text. He talks about an upward way, an outward way, and an inward way, and this is very important because if we're not careful, we'll read the text and we'll almost only see what actually is in the text when Paul does say, you sent a gift through Epaphroditus and I got it.

We'll think it's unidirectional. It's one-way. That's all it is, Todd.

It's just a one-way transaction. So yes, Paul does talk about how this worked functionally. The church gave a gift.

It was sent by Epaphroditus and it got to Paul, but that's just the logistics of it. That's just the way it traveled. The impact of this offering, this fragrant offering, this acceptable sacrifice, is threefold.

It's three-dimensional. It's three-directional. Notice, first of all, it's upward.

I'll go back to verse 18. I won't spend long here because we've just said a lot about this. I'll make one more nugget.

I'll give one more nugget to you, but it is a vertical direction first. It's an offering to God. It's a fragrant offering.

It's an acceptable sacrifice. And this one more nugget I want to add is this. In the Bible, generosity and worship, they are inseparably connected.

That's why it's called an offering. It's a fragrant one. They're connected.

So it's natural, it's consistent to realize that when we give treasure to something, that means we worship that. Maybe I should say it like this. When we give a lot of our treasure to something, when it's the thing that gets our generosity, when something gets most of what we have, that's an indication that we worship it.

That's why I want to say this to you. Generosity not only reveals our heart, generosity, because it's worship, it reshapes our heart. This is why Jesus would say in Matthew 6 that where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Because he knows it reveals and it reshapes. It reorients us. This is why we can say about all of us, where you put your time and money is what you love.

It's just a diagnostic question and it's a diagnostic test. And it's a pretty no-fail quiz. Just check your checkbook, if you know what that is.

Check your phone, your Venmo, whatever app you want to use, right? I'm old, sorry. And check your calendar. Both of these are on your phone now, right? So they'll just say, check your phone.

You'll find out who your God is. Where do you spend your time? Where do you spend your money? It's a pretty no-fail way to find out. So this is why a lot of folks, you're very generous to your travel teams, to your sports clubs, your hobbies, your hunting habits, your summer vacation spots.

I don't think those things are sinful, by the way, but they were never made to be your God. But you give to them like they are. You're turning them into a little G-God.

How do we know? Because of your level of generosity. And because you've done that over a period of time, you have reoriented and reshaped your heart to love that thing. The same habit can occur spiritually.

As you, with discipline through the Holy Spirit's power, give towards causes, the mission of God that matter most, your heart begins to be reshaped and reoriented, and you begin to love what you're generous towards. And in time, what has reshaped you is revealed that, oh, this is really what you care about. So I just want to challenge you.

I'm not saying quit your life, exit every hobby. I'm not saying that. We've spent money as a family on different teams, different vacations, like many of you have.

But you have to ask yourself, what is the bulk of my time and the bulk of my money? And in this case, when I'm at generosity, where does the bulk of my discretionary money go? Where am I first willing to say I want to be more generous here and more generous there? I would encourage you to make sure it's things related to the mission of God, because that outlasts every season. It will outlast every trophy, every accolade. The mission of God will remain.

This is why I consistently ask you and urge you, make sure you're leaning the ladder of your life against the wall that really matters. That's the wall of God's mission. Every nation, language, tribe, and tongue, hearing the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So our church gives heavily to that. We are invested in that, both locally, globally. Our mission is to develop devoted followers.

If you're part of this faith family, that's your mission. You've signed on to that. So when we ask you to consider deeper generosity, to move to the right, we talk about what is it you worship.

We're not saying move to Montana, put your head in the sand, and never do anything. But we're saying make sure you prioritize your life so that your resources, your time, how you raise your kids, what you focus on, your budget, it shows, it evidences the ladder of your life as leaning against the wall of God's mission. Because the first direction of generosity is always upward.

Now I've mentioned this phrase, move to the right. I talked to you about the chart we showed you several months ago. I'll just review this with you briefly.

Here's the chart we were talking about. Here's what it looks like. It has an example of income levels and, of course, percentages of giving.

If you want to copy this, you can take a picture now, or you can just call the office, email us, and we'll make sure you get a copy. I don't think we have the actual handouts present today that we used a couple months ago. I found this very helpful.

Jewel and I both sat down, evaluated our income, our giving, like how can we be more generous? And so I just want to encourage you, ask yourself, should we move to the right a certain percentage so that we are leaning our lives and our resources against the wall that matters most? Well, notice direction number two, can you? It's found in verses 15 and 16. Generosity has an upward direction, also has an outward direction. It's outward and horizontal service.

Notice verses 15 and 16, Paul here says, "...you partnered with me in the matter of giving and receiving." By the way, the word partnered there is the word for fellowship. So don't think of something disjointed. The word is koinonia . Think of something joined together.

So when the Philippian church supported Paul and sent gifts, yes, it was upward, but it was also outward and it was very connected. They did more than just send some money. They participated.

That's what the word means. They were part of the ministry. Verse 16 says they sent gifts for his needs several times.

And then in verse 14, which we didn't read, you see the word koinonia again through the word partnering. So they were participants in the ministry, joined partners. They shared in the advancement of the gospel and kingdom fruit, ministry impact.

And how did they share this? How were they joined together with Paul in his ministry? The planting of churches, the sending of missionaries. It was through their generosity, their giving. And in this case, I think it's very fair to say the Philippians gave to and through their local church.

Now their means was a guy named Epaphras who took the funds to Paul, but it was the funds collected by the church. So we often say at First Family, give to and through your church. It doesn't mean you can't give to other causes, other nonprofits, other good things that lean against that wall.

I'd encourage you to. But I will say as a personal opinion that I think I can give some pretty strong biblical support for, you and I practice this. We think we see the greatest amount of return when we give to and through our local church first.

So we give the most and are first to the church because when it's pooled with your resources and then this church's resources are pooled with the resources from 47,000 other churches, that's an incredible amount of resources that can move the needle that I can never do on my own. Are you with me? So I can't give you a verse that says you can only give to your church, but I will say to you, practically speaking, you should highly consider the avenues where you're investing your generosity and see that you're getting the greatest return possible. And I do think personally, as in this example, it's to and through your local church.

We can pull things together and maximum impact can occur. Let me give you an example. I'll just pick one of our agencies.

We prayed for our partners earlier. Some are in this room. They have different agencies.

In fact, we require every single partner that leaves the country or that stays here to help other folks leave the country to have an agency they work with and that we work with them. So it's a good kind of a trifecta of relationships, accountability, support, that we work with them. So it's a good national mission board.

And so we are part of what we call a cooperative program. So we give every month a portion of your offerings. It goes into a I'll use the word pot.

That forty seven thousand other churches contribute to as well. And so out of that pot, part of it is the funds that help the International Mission Board be the largest sending agency in the world. Over thirty five hundred international missionaries that include their kids.

So we're part of that. Did you know that between the years 2019 and 2025, I just found this out two weeks ago, this is staggering. Between 2019 and 2025, the International Mission Board moved the needle with eight hundred language groups.

Let me tell you how this is staggering. In the mission world, there are some terms and figures we use. They're not in the Bible.

I want to say that up front. But they're helpful. They're thresholds.

They're metrics. They're not in the Bible, but they do. They're based on data and historical surveys.

I think they're helpful. I kind of accept them. I use them.

One of them is called like unengaged, unreached people groups or language groups. An unengaged language group is a group of people with a known language that from all we can tell has no engagement with the gospel at all. There's no believer living with them, among them.

There's no church. There's nothing. They just exist.

There's a language, but they have no understanding of the gospel at all, not even a believer with them anywhere. And there's thousands of those. In those six years, the IMB was able to take 479 unengaged language groups and see movement so that they now are engaged or someone living among them, either with a copy of the Bible or as a believer in 479 unengaged language groups over a six year period.

Now wait, it gets better. There's also unreached language groups, which are groups that are known to have at least some believers, but they have not yet got 2% of that language group as a believing unit to establish a church. History seems to say that if you can get to 2% of a language group as believers, they can then be responsible for reaching their own.

In other words, accessibility is not an issue anymore. And I personally, our church as a whole, would say that practically we want to invest in areas where there's less access. If someone's got 2% or more, we want to help them.

I'm not saying we don't have missionaries there, but our priority is on places with less access from a practical standpoint. We've had that for years. I think it makes sense.

And so we do give heavily to places where there's very little access, where there's less than 2% people who are believers. This is the practical priorities, all it is. In those six years, 19 to 25, the IMB actually saw 373 language groups move from unreached to reached.

So watch this. In a six-year period, what you contributed to and were part of, what you participated in, what you were partnered with, moved the needle for almost 800 language groups when it comes to the gospel. Isn't that fantastic? Praise God.

And I verified that information last week when I first heard it a couple of weeks ago. I was like, is that true? Because I checked in with some sources, I'm pretty connected to the Nashville headquarters, and I just said, hey, is this true? It's verified. And I was so grateful, not only for all of our agencies, but I'm grateful that we're partnering with this one because you joined in with that.

And outwardly, in service to others who need the gospel, it moved the needle. So what you gave rose to God in worship. What you gave moved outward in service to others.

And then lastly, what you give returns inward and is the personal promise that God will meet your needs. Do you see verse 19 and verse 17? These are both verses that really, the phrases really point back to what giving does in a boomerang effect. See verse 17, I seek the profit that's increasing to your account.

That's kind of a crazy phrase. Can we just admit that? In other words, Paul's saying, I'm glad you gave, but I'm not seeking your gift. What I'm seeking is what happens to your gift in your account in heaven.

In other words, this puts compound interest to shame. You with me? Paul's saying this, when you give to me, I'm thankful, but what I'm most happy about is that in your eternal account, the dividends are really growing. That's amazing.

We're not trying to breed selfishness. We're not trying to create any greediness. Paul just simply says, what I'm really after is that your account in heaven grows.

And then this phrase next in verse 19, that my God will supply all your needs according to his riches in glory. Isn't this beautiful? This promise. And so really these two phrases, they point to a couple of aspects.

There's an eternal aspect to the promise that giving has a boomerang effect, but there's an inward return, there's an inward direction, there's an eternal aspect in the sense that there is an account you have in heaven, and you can see its dividends grow. How? Watch this, through your generosity. This is why Jesus says, do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust corrupt it.

Instead, lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where they're never corrupted. So you really have a choice. And I think we can do both to some degree.

The point of the passage is, don't make sure your fidelity account grows, or your vanguard account, or your works matching 401k or 403b, like utilize those, but if that's all you're concerned about, that's going to rust and rot. Your main concern should be your heavenly account and making sure those dividends are growing because that lasts forever. So do you get the whole idea now of like lending our life against the wall that matters most, making God's mission really our priority? Because that's the account that you'll have forever, and those are the dividends that matter.

Then there's the earthly aspect of this set of phrases as well. It's verse 19. It's very reminiscent again of covenant language.

My God will supply all of your needs in glory by Christ Jesus. Paul here is extending really the same covenant promise we saw last week to Israel, when God said, I'll give you water, I'll give you food, I'll take care of all your enemies. Like I've got you for all of your ordained days, I will meet every one of your needs.

That's God's promise to his people. Here Paul reiterates that my God will supply all of your needs according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. Now to help you think about your eternal account, your eternal investing, your generosity, God's promises that you're standing on, I want to recommend this book right here.

I'm in the middle of it. I just received it about a week ago, began to read it. I've really enjoyed it.

Giving is the Good Life by Randy Alcorn. I'd pick it up if I were you. It will be a great tool for further discipling in this subject of generosity and especially in regards to your heavenly account.

So Giving is the Good Life by Randy Alcorn. I would urge you to remember this. As we talk about giving and its boomerang effect, which is biblical, we're not saying that the reason we give is so that we can get more.

We're not veering into prosperity theology. We're not trying to maneuver God with wrong motives. We're simply trying to stand on what Scripture says in the right way.

That God will never abandon His people. So trust Him and live generously. Now I want to add one more little caveat to that.

I want to do this cautiously and humbly. This verse, in the same way sometimes it can be used to leverage God by those who have false motives, it can be perhaps unintentionally used as a promise when perhaps it shouldn't be. Let me explain what I mean.

To be textually honest with you, this promise, which is rooted in God's character, He provides for His people, is wrapped within a context of a generous church giving Christians, supporting God's mission. So I want to say this to you kindly, boldly, and somewhat cautiously. If all you know is selfishness and the only person in the crosshairs of your finances is you, and then you hit hard times and suddenly you're like, hey God, you said you'd take care of me.

I don't know if God actually promised you that. I want to be cautious here. This promise is embedded in the context of generosity and God's character, yes.

But if you're going to stand on that promise and say, God, you said you'd take care of me, you'd better make sure that you were obeying what the scriptures here say are underneath the feet of that person, which is a generous lifestyle of supporting God's mission. Can you hear that okay? I just don't think we can pull verses out and slap them somewhere and say, hey, I'm going to claim that when I need it. There's some context here that I think we should at least think about and grapple with.

And it really causes my heart to really embrace generosity because of who God has promised. And so lots here, let's just see if we can do some summary work here, can we? Some summarizing. We've seen there's one main metaphor, it's an offering.

We've seen that there's three directions that this offering moves, upward, outward, and inward. So let's put all this in a single sentence in addition to the simple diagram. Here's the shortest take-home truth I've ever had, at least for the last 10 years.

It's this right here. Generosity is one offering that blesses in three directions. Can you believe it's just a small amount of words? That's great.

This is one offering that blesses in three directions. As you contemplate that, as you have a picture, jot it down, put it in your pocket, tuck it away in your memory. Will you say it with me? I think you probably already got it memorized.

Generosity is one offering that blesses in three directions. It's vertical worship, it's horizontal service, it's a personal promise. Yes, generosity rises upward, it moves outward, it returns inward, it touches heaven, helps people, and anchors our hearts.

That's generosity. It's part of discipleship. It's a living for and like Jesus, and that's why we're teaching on it more regularly, because it matters in our following of Jesus.

A few people understood this better than a guy named R.G. Letourneau. You may not have heard of him. Some of you have.

He was born in the late 1800s, was a businessman, inventor, and entrepreneur. He lived until about the late 1960s. He was known in the early days as the dean of earth-moving equipment.

In fact, he was so successful at designing and inventing earth-moving equipment in the early 1900s that he actually owned, later in his business, 229 patents for earth-moving equipment. During World War II, his company actually manufactured 75% of the machines used by the Allied forces. That's a pretty good graph of market share, wouldn't you say? He was a Christian as well, and when you make him a Christian, history tells us that he began to look out at what God had blessed him with, and began to realize this is really the means by which he should bless others.

So he began to give pretty extravagantly, to the point where it was known that R.G. Letourneau would live on 10% and give away 90%. He did the inverse of what often churches teach. He lived on 10%, gave away 90%.

When asked about it one day, he said, I just shovel out the money, and God shovels it back. I'm just glad God's got a bigger shovel, that's what he said. Here's what he actually knew, that he was responsible to make sure that he leaned his resources against the wall that matters most and lasts the longest, the wall of God's mission.

So he started schools, I think there's a school in Texas called Letourneau University, it's a Christian university, I believe. He's funded missionaries, he's sent people, he's got a great legacy of how his wealth has worked for him and for God. Because he knew this, generosity is not first about what leaves your hand, it's first about what rises from your heart.

And he knew generosity was first and foremost a fragrant aroma to God, that God would then spread in multiple directions and even use in the life of the giver. Will you embrace the fragrant aroma of generosity with your brothers and sisters at First Family Church? Will you have the courage to perhaps evaluate your current level of investment in your eternal account and see if you can move to the right? Will you be willing to give and respond? And can we see God continue to be glorified, people continue to be saved and discipled, and your eternal account grow? Because we're lifting the vertical offering of generosity to God who sees it as a pleasing aroma.