How to Know if You Understand Christmas (2 Corinthians 8:1-15)

This morning I'd like to take a few minutes with you to look at how you can know if you really understand Christmas.

You being in church a few days before Christmas likely means you understand the meaning of Christmas. Many of us are familiar with the Christmas story from the Bible. The Holy Spirit came to Mary, and she had a son without being with a man. Angels appeared to different people to tell them about the importance of this birth. Astrologers from the East came to honor this baby who was born in a manger. But just because you know the facts of Christmas doesn't mean that you really understand Christmas.

If you don't consider yourself to be someone who understands or buys into this, then that's okay. I want to explain what you should expect from people who follow Jesus Christ, even though it may not seem fair to give you this test. I invite you to listen and think about whether what I'm going to say makes sense if you believe in the Christmas story as told by Christians. You can even hold us accountable.

I want to talk about a simple test to see if we understand Christmas. It's found in the passage that we just read in 2 Corinthians 8. Let me give you the test, and then explain where I got it from.

Here's the simple test: You know you understand Christmas if it motivates you to give generously to the poor.

Let me say that again: You know you understand Christmas if it motivates you to give generously to the poor. If you understand Christmas, you will be generous with the poor. If you aren't generous with the poor, it shows that you don't understand Christmas at all.

That's a pretty audacious statement to make. Let me give you a bit of background. Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, which was a wealthy church in a world where many people were not wealthy. When Paul wrote this letter, there was really no such thing as a middle class. Just over 1 out of every 10 people lived well. 70% of the population in the Mediterranean at that time was at or below the subsistence level – most of them below. When Paul wrote this letter, "dirt poor" was not just a saying. Most of the people in that day were literally dirt poor. One writer who lived around this time described it this way: "Toiling and moiling from morning till night, doubled over their tasks, they merely eke out a bare existence."

When Paul wrote 2 Corinthians, there was a special need among the Christians in Jerusalem. We don't know why. It could have been a result of persecution or bad harvests. All we know is that things were in bad shape, and the church in Jerusalem needed help.

So Paul faced the same situation that we face today. We are, in a lot of ways, like the Corinthians. We may not feel like it, but we are the "have's". For whatever reason, we live in a country where there is lots of opportunity, and we have a lot compared to the rest of the world.

Paul was trying to raise money to help, just like we're trying to do for the water project. Others are in need. In Paul's day, the need was for money to help with food. Today, the need we're focusing on is the need for water for the 1.1 billion people who don't have any clean water. If you took the number of people who are in this building right now and multiplied it by 200, that is the number of people who are going to die today from water-born diseases.

How do you raise money among the relatively rich to help those who have next to nothing? It's interesting what Paul doesn't do.

He doesn't once mention money. In this entire passage he doesn't use any of the Greek words for money. It's unbelievable. Money isn't the issue.

He doesn't whip up human sympathy for a project. Nothing wrong with talking about the suffering of people as a way to highlight a need, but he doesn't do that.

He doesn't make people feel guilty that they have money that others need.

And lastly, he doesn't encourage them to give so that they'll gain social prestige or get anything out of giving.

Here's what he does. He reminds them of God's grace. He says that if they really understand God's grace, then generosity is the necessary outcome. Christian giving is more than a display of compassion. It's more than a readiness to help those in distress, as good as that is. Christian giving is always a response to God's grace, demonstrated in the Christmas story. If we understand, really understand, the Christmas story, we'll respond with generosity to those in need. If we aren't generous to those in need, it shows that we don't understand Christmas at all.

Just a few highlights from this passage. In the first 7 verses, Paul describes a group of churches that did get it. They were the churches of Macedonia, that included Philippi, Thessalonica, and Berea. You know what's interesting about these churches? Verse 2 says that they were experiencing a severe trial and extreme poverty. These churches weren't generous because they had a lot. They were generous and gave beyond their abilities and beyond expectation, and actually pleaded with Paul for the privilege of giving, because of "overflowing joy". They didn't just give money; verse 5 says that they gave "themselves first of all to the Lord," and this resulted in generosity.

What causes a group of poor people to plead for the privilege of giving beyond what is reasonable or expected to help other people? There's only one expectation: they understood God's grace.

Then in verses 8 to 15 Paul turns to the relatively rich Corinthians and says, "Isn't it about time that you completed your collection to help the poor in Jerusalem?" But he doesn't appeal, as I said, to sympathy, or to guilt, or to prestige. He doesn't even mention money. What he does mention is Christmas, because he knows that if you really understand Christmas, then radical generosity is the necessary outcome.

Read verses 8-9:

I am not commanding you, but I want to test the sincerity of your love by comparing it with the earnestness of others. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.

What will make us generous? Verse 9 tells us: really getting Christmas. When we really understand that the Lord Jesus Christ gave up the riches and glory and honor that was his in heaven, gave all of that up, and came to earth and lived poorly, humbly, and died shamefully for our sakes; when we grasp that the pre-existing Lord of glory became poor by choosing to accept our earthly life; when we really understand Christmas, how could we not follow his example and be generous? If Christ gave up that much for us, how could we not give up mere money to help others in need?

J. B. Phillips tells the story of a young angel being shown the splendors and glories of the universes by a senior and experienced angel. The little angel was beginning to be tired and a little bored.

He had been shown whirling galaxies and blazing suns, infinite distances in the deathly cold of inter-stellar space, and to his mind there seemed to be an awful lot of it all. Finally he was shown the galaxy of which our planetary system is but a small part. As the two of them drew near to the star which we call our sun and to its circling planets, the senior angel pointed to a small and rather insignificant sphere turning very slowly on its axis. It looked as dull as a dirty tennis-ball to the little angel, whose mind was filled with the size and glory of what he had seen.

"I want you to watch that one particularly," said the senior angel, pointing with his finger.

"Well, it looks very small and rather dirty to me," said the little angel. "What's special about that one?"

"That," replied his senior solemnly, "is the Visited Planet."

"Visited?" said the little one. "You don't mean visited by --——

"Indeed I do. That ball, which I have no doubt looks to you small and insignificant and not perhaps over-clean, has been visited by our young Prince of Glory." And at these words he bowed his head reverently.

"But how?" queried the younger one. "Do you mean that our great and glorious Prince, with all these wonders and splendors of His Creation, and millions more that I'm sure I haven't seen yet, went down in Person to this fifth-rate little ball? Why should He do a thing like that?"...

"Do you mean to tell me," he said, "that He stooped so low as to become one of those creeping, crawling creatures of that floating ball?"

"I do, and I don't think He would like you to call them 'creeping, crawling creatures' in that tone of voice. For, strange as it may seem to us, He loves them. He went down to visit them to lift them up to become like Him."

One hymn-writer writes:

Thou who wast rich beyond all splendor
All for love's sake becamest poor.

And another:

He has come on earth as poor
that he might have compassion for us
to make us rich in heaven
and like to his beloved angels.

The hymn-writers can’t stop writing about this.

He left His Father’s throne above;
So free, so infinite His grace.
Emptied Himself of all but love,
And bled for Adam’s helpless race.

Don't misunderstand me here. Generosity is not how we become Christians. You can be generous and still be lost in your sins. But it is impossible to grasp what Christ has done for us and remain stingy. This is the ultimate test of whether you understand Christmas.

Jesus said the same thing in Matthew 25. He said, "'Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these" — referring to feeding the hungry, giving water to the thirsty, clothing the naked, looking after the sick, visiting those in prison — "whatever you did not do for the least of these, you did not do for me" (Matthew 25:45). It's not how we are saved, but it's how we know we are saved.

Jonathan Edwards, the great preacher and brilliant theologian of the 18th century, said this:

It is the duty of the visible people of God to give for the supply of the needy, freely, and without grudging...

This is a duty to which God’s people are under very strict obligation. It is not merely a commendable thing for a man to be kind and bountiful to the poor, but our bounden duty, as much a duty as it is to pray, or to attend public worship, or anything else whatever. And the neglect of it brings great guilt upon any person...

This duty is absolutely commanded, and much insisted on, in the Word of God. Where have we any command in the Bible laid down in stronger terms, and in a more peremptory urgent manner, than the command of giving to the poor?... But by many it seems not to be looked upon as a duty of great importance.

Consider how much God hath done for us, how greatly he hath loved us, what he hath given us, when we were so unworthy, and when he could have no addition to his happiness by us. Consider that silver, and gold, and earthly crowns, were in his esteem but mean things to give us, and he hath therefore given us his own Son...How unsuitable is it for us, who live only by kindness, to be unkind!

Let everyone examine himself, whether he [does] not lie under guilt in this matter.

This morning we have the privilege of being generous to those who don't have clean water to drink. None of this money will go to benefit the church. 100% will be given to Living Water International to help with water projects in developing countries.

We are not here this morning to give out of guilt or obligation. We will fail this test if we, this morning or at other times, simply give a token amount so that we don't feel guilty. Nor are we expected to give more than what we have.

The reason we want to give this morning is that God has blessed us, and it is because there is a need. But the reason we want to give this morning is primarily because we want to enter the Christmas story. And if we understand, really understand, the Christmas story, we'll respond with generosity to those in need. If we aren't generous to those in need, it shows that we don't understand Christmas at all. You know you understand Christmas if it motivates you to give generously to the poor.

Let's pray.

Father, we bow and thank you for Jesus Christ. On that first Christmas morning he laid aside his crown.

He left His Father's throne above
So free, so infinite his grace.
Emptied himself of all but love,
And bled for Adam's helpless race.

I pray that you would really help every one of us to understand this Christmas story. And because we do, I pray that our overflowing joy will well up in rich generosity, and that we will give as much as we are able to help the least of these, all because of Jesus. In his name we pray. Amen.