Most of us probably do not enjoy hearing appeals for money at church. One of the biggest criticisms people have about church is that they are always asking for money. We admit that money is necessary for the work of the church to continue. If we want to have a pastor, support missionaries, run programs, and keep the heat up and the lights on, we need money. And these funds come from the generous giving of the people who attend the services of the church. The only way for a church to function and to grow is for people to give of their resources to support the work of the church.

In the life of our church, we’ve gone through financial ups and downs over the years. For a while, we were barely hanging on financially. But then things changed and we started doing better financially, thanks to the generous, sacrificial giving of the people of our church. The church has benefitted from the rich generosity of our people.

The theme of 2 Corinthians 8-9 is rich generosity. Paul was collecting an offering to help the poverty-stricken Christians at Jerusalem. He had collected funds from several of the churches already, and he expected the people at Corinth to participate in this offering as well. In fact, the people had previously committed to collect an offering, but they had not yet made their contribution. In this passage, Paul is exhorting them to stop procrastinating and collect this offering.

The theme in today’s passage is rich generosity (vs. 2). We’ve already seen several truths about this great theme from the previous section of the text, and this part of the passage tells us more about it.

Let’s learn a few more things about rich generosity.