Selfless Followers of a Self-Centered God or...

Self-centered followers of a selfless God?

I have been working on a sermon the last few days.  I get the opportunity to preach tomorrow morning at Shiloh Community Church in Franklin, Indiana.  The pastor gave me the option of preaching a favorite sermon - one that I've done before, but I really don't like to approach preaching that way (not that there's anything wrong with it). So it took me a long time to settle on a passage to preach.

Several leadings eventually caused me to land on 2 Corinthians 9:6-15.  I tried to avoid this passage, because it sounds just like the sort of thing you would EXPECT a missionary to preach on - it's Paul urging the Corinthian church to ready the financial gift they had promised to share with the poor.  And it has the familiar passage about "he who sows sparingly, reaps sparingly" and "he who sows bountifully, reaps bountifully".

One of the things I enjoy about preaching (and one of the reasons I don't tend to repeat sermons even in different locations) is that in studying and meditating on the preaching passage (if I do it right), I learn something new OR God crystallizes some right idea that has been floating aimlessly in my mind.  (My WORST sermons are the ones where I have some aspect of spirituality "figured out" ahead of time and cherry-pick a Scripture passage to fit it and then knock the congregation over the head with it.)

So I am looking and looking at Paul's line about sowing and reaping and it smacks so much of the prosperity gospel that I can hardly stomach it and yet I am trying hard to see it as the respectable self-motivation that even the more conservative commentaries acknowledge and I'm still not comfortable with it. 

Then it hits me.  I am reading this with 21st century American Christian eyes.  And I'm betting the Corinthian church was quite different from the American church.  Paul was not writing to a group of Christians who had grown accustomed to keeping a tight grip on their own wealth and who expected a solid, tangible return on every investment.  It's clear from the rest of the letter that Paul was addressing a group of sold out Christians whose first priority is God's will and not their own. 

If we read Paul's words with Corinthian eyes, it changes things.

Elsewhere in the New Testament, when we see references to sowing seeds and harvesting fields, we know those are symbolic for spreading the gospel among people and seeing some come to faith in Christ.  And Paul is asking the Corinthians in chapter 9 to give financially to spread the gospel and he assumes, since they are God-centered followers of Christ, that the bountiful harvest of souls will be a motivator for them!

This interpretation then makes sense of the next few verses.  For instance, verse 8 says, "And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work."  Notice, the promise is that the Corinthians (and we) will have "enough" and the reason that they (and we) will have enough is to enable "sharing" in "every good work".  

Sounds like God's top priority isn't our comfort and financial well-being as believers but rather the spreading of His kingdom!  Now THAT sounds right to my ears and heart. 

Look at verse 10: "He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness."  Like "sowing" and "harvesting", "bread" shows up elsewhere in the New Testament.  In the Lord's prayer, bread represents the tangible provisions sufficient for our daily needs.  God gives the seed and the bread.  The bread is for eating; the seed is for sowing. 

So in the midst of these lightbulbs going off, I arrived this morning at this passage in David Platt's book Radical Together:

"We are to be selfless followers of a self-centered God.  But the problem is that we often reverse this in the church.  We become self-centered followers of a selfless God.  We organize our churches as if God exists to meet our needs, cater to our comforts, and appeal to our preferences.  Discussions in the church more often revolve around what we want than what he wills.  Almost unknowingly, the church becomes a means of self-entertainment and a monument to self-sufficiency.  But something wonderful happens when we apply radical obedience to Christ in the regular practice of the church.  All of a sudden, we find ourselves engulfed in a community that finds deep and abiding pleasure in denial of self and dependence on God."

That'll preach!