The Danger of Greed

Let's stand together all over cross the room. Hey, this morning, I want to encourage you just to rest and the promises of God. Remember who He is as we sing to Him today. Come on. ♪ You want that flower ♪ ♪ And all of it is ♪ ♪ I don't have to wonder ♪ You know what you're doing, way back, way back. So why would I worry at all? You're faithful to the serve, like always singing today. Everything I need, everything I need. My Father has it, my Father has it. Every single day, the wood will provide. My Father has it, my Father has it. Oh, we don't need a worry at all, we trust you. You've got to spare your love, my game for love. No fear of tomorrow, and what you will bring. Oh, no, we won't work. If I have you, I have it up. Your love will satisfy. Everything I need, everything I need. I know my Father has it, my Father has it. Every single day, the wood will provide. My Father has it, my Father has it. Say first, let me know, it's tragic, everything else will. I, all that I need, one you sing. I know the Lord will provide, we can trust Him today. 'Cause I know my God's one, if you can. He gives us blessings upon Christ.

I'll still believe Him. I know the Lord will provide. Singers, come on. Singers, they'll keep me in this place. Everything else will be added. All that I need and I know. I know the Lord will provide. I am concerned. I know my God's one, if you can. He gives us blessings upon Christ. I'll still believe Him. I know the Lord will provide. Come on, declare it today as we sing it. Everything I need, everything I need. My Father has it, my Father has it. Every single time, the wood will provide. My Father has it, my Father has it. Everything I need, everything I need. My Father has it, my Father has it. Every single time, the wood will provide. My Father has it. Singers, come on. Everything else will be added. Everything else will be added. I know the Lord will provide. I'll express you. I know my God's one, if you can. He gives us blessings upon Christ. I'll sing to Him. I know the Lord will provide.

I know the Lord will provide. ♪ I know my God's not empty handed ♪ ♪ He gives us blessings upon blessings ♪ ♪ I know my God's not empty handed ♪ ♪ He gives us blessings upon blessings ♪ ♪ And I know my God's not empty handed ♪ ♪ He gives us blessings upon blessings ♪ ♪ I'm still believing, come on down today ♪ ♪ That I know the Lord will provide ♪ ♪ I know the Lord will provide ♪ ♪ I know the Lord will provide ♪ ♪ I know the Lord will provide ♪ ♪ I know the Lord will provide ♪ ♪ I know the Lord will provide ♪ ♪ I know the Lord will provide ♪ ♪ I know the Lord will provide ♪ ♪ I know the Lord will provide ♪ - All right, good morning, everybody. Good to see you today. My name is Jeff and can we just say, again, how cool that was on the screen. Isn't that awesome? Thank you, church, for being an incredibly generous church. One of the things I get to do in addition to being one of your teaching pastors is I get to lead this effort that we call the Cross Theological Seminary. And I am super happy to report to you that this fall, we have 67 men and women who are degree students serving and participating and working on their master's degree here at Cross Theological Seminary.

And here's the cool thing about that, y'all, because of your generosity, they do not pay any tuition at all. You have prepaid their tuition, they get to go with no debt whatsoever. So thank you, Cross Church, for being really an extraordinary church. It's so good to be with you guys today. And I want to steer you to the book. And I wanna ask you to open your Bibles to first Corinthians, all right? We're at the end of this study that we've been in since August. You wanna find, you wanna find first Corinthians 16, all right? The last chapter of the letter. And if you got your journals, we're just at the very end of that first section. We have spent the whole fall, 11 weeks. This is week 11, studying the book of first Corinthians. And it was not easy to be a Christian in the ancient city of Corinth. It was a very secular city, a large city. All the stuff, all the stuff that you can think of that come in a big city. Today you have, people are people, doesn't matter winter where, back then you had all the stuff. And then people got saved. And then there was a church. And there was a price to pay to be a Christian back then. And so Paul wrote him a letter.

And he said, look, this is how you navigate living in a very secular world when it's really hard to be a Christian. This is how you do it. And these are some things you need to watch out for. We've called the series 11 dangers for every Christian. And we're at the last one today. And the last message for today, the last sermon title today, is we were calling it the danger of greed. The danger of greed. And I'm just going to, this is not complicated. I'm just going to say it this way. You know what the danger of greed is? The danger of greed is you get to miss out on the blessing of generosity, like what we just saw on that screen. And they're right? Greed and what you just saw, and greed and helping young men and women who are called to the ministry, prepare for ministry without any debt. That kind of generosity and the blessing of that generosity doesn't go with greed. You have greed in your heart. You miss the generosity, blessing. And today, we come to a message about generosity. I'm going to read four verses here in a second. And then we're going to talk about this today. So if you're ready, let's just get into it. Verses one through four, this is kind of the end of the book, the end of the letter, kind of like Paul's wrapping things up.

This is some of the final things he wants to say. So here we have it, and you can follow with me on the screen. Paul says this, now concerning the collection for the saints. As I directed the churches of Galatia, so you also are to do. On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside, stored up, as he may prosper, so that there will be no collecting when I come. And when I arrive, I will send those whom And if it seems advisable that I should go also, they will accompany me. We'll stop right there. This is the section. This is what we want to look at today. And as I said, you know, we're at the end of the letter, and you know, when you get to the end of these letters, and Paul wrote so many letters, like most of the New Testament is a collection of letters that Paul wrote to all of these churches that he planted in, it's pretty common that when he gets to the end and he starts wrapping things up, he's kind of got these final words, final thoughts in his mind. He sends encouragements. He says, hey, sometimes he'll name people. Sometimes somebody with him will say, oh, so-and-so who's with me? He says to say, hey, to so-and-so there. I mean, he just kind of does all this little stuff to wrap it up. And he does that here in 1 Corinthians 16.

But as part of the wrap-up, we get this. We get this instruction about a financial collection. And what we have here, and I'm gonna unpack this for us, what we have here and what the text is referring to right here that I just read, it's really one of the most significant financial projects in the entire New Testament he's referring to. A Paul actually talks about this collection, this gift in other letters that he writes. Now you get a real sense that this is actually kind of like a life project for him. And once again, I'll get into this. And here's what's going on. So he's like, what's going on? What are we collecting money for? This was a relief effort. He's collecting money for a relief effort for Christians who are living in the city of Jerusalem. But there's a lot more going on here, like in between the lines. This is a gospel project that Paul is about right here. This is a gospel project where he is seeking to bring together Jewish people and Greek people, that's Corinth, he's trying to bring together these groups of people who traditionally don't really like each other. And he's bringing them under the banner of Jesus Christ to do something significant financially, something great for the kingdom of God. And I wanna say to us today that this is important stuff

that we're talking about. It's important because there are going to be times in our generation, in the year 2026. And there's gonna be times where we, and when I say we cross church, listen, we've got four campuses, but just in this room, right now, in this moment, the diversity in this room is pretty astonishing and pretty cool, actually. We've got people right in this room of different generations, different ethnicities, some from different countries, some different languages, different financial statuses and situations, different education levels, different parts of the country, different backgrounds, I mean, different political persuasions perhaps, I mean different, different, different, all right here in this room, under the banner of Christ. And there are going to be times in our generation, just like there were in Paul's generation, where we have an opportunity under the banner of Christ to come together to do something great for the kingdom of God. So we're gonna lean into this and learn from this, amen? So since this involves money, we're going to pray, okay? Because I know how people get funny about money, I've been doing this a while. So listen, everybody relax, but pay attention, and let's just pray and ask God to bless us. Can we do that? Oh God, we come before you today and thank you for this opportunity

to be together here in Fayetteville in this room in this moment for this time. God, would you help me, help me? I'm a man and I can mess up, and I've prepared, but I do need your help. I don't want to say anything today that you don't want me to say. So just help me to stay away from stuff I don't need to get into. I want to be sure I say all that you want me to say, so guide me. I pray for my brothers and my sisters and my friends in this room right now. God, would you give us eyes to see some things today that we've never seen before? Give us ears to hear things that we've never heard before. Would you give us But God, most importantly, would you open our hearts to receive what you want to give us today? Bless us now, bless this message. In the name of Jesus Christ, I pray. And everybody said, amen, amen. All right. Where's my note takers? Do I got note takers in the room? Can I see your hand? So if you've got a journal, you've got notes, you've got paper, you've got something. It's note taking time. I've got some things that you can write down if you want to write them down. So let's go back to this financial relief effort in Jerusalem.

What's going on? I mean, we're talking about Jerusalem, right? Like this is the home base of Christianity, like everything that came after started there. What could possibly be wrong in Jerusalem? Two things are wrong in Jerusalem that have led to this gospel project. Number one, there is a severe regional famine. So what that means is people are hungry. We don't operate today like they did back then. This is a very agrarian culture, a lot of farming, a lot of cattle. Farms don't do well. Animals can't eat, so you don't have meat, no vegetables, severe, severe, severe famine. And here's what's interesting. This was actually predicted. And it's kind of cool how this works together. I want to put this on the screen. You don't have to turn there. But way back in the book of Acts, God sent a prophet to tell the Christians and the people in the area that this was actually going to happen. Look at this on the screen. It says, "In these days, prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch, and one of them was named Agabus. He stood up and he foretold by the Spirit that there would be a great famine over all the world, and it took place in the days of Claudius." That's Caesar Claudius, so it happened. The disciples determined everyone according to his ability to send relief to the brothers living in Judea. And they did so, sending it to the elders by the hand of Barnabas and Saul, Saul, Saul. That's Paul. That's the guy riding to us today. See, Saul, Paul, he's been connected to this project all the way back from the very beginning

and it was predicted. This famine is a big deal, a famine back then would be sort of like a massive stock market crash today. The market is down. People have lost thousands of dollars. They've lost their savings. They've lost their retirements. Inflation is up, up, up. Gas is $4 a gallon, milk, bread, eggs, everything's up. It's hard to find certain. Remember during COVID when none of us could find toilet paper, all right? It's like a crash in every way you can think about the economy has crashed and everybody is suffering. That's number one. That's number one going on in Jude. And that really affects everybody, not just the Christians, number two affects the Christians. Because this is what else was happening. In the middle of all of it, it's hard for everybody already. And in the middle of all of that, you have severe persecution specifically of Christians. And you might be like, "What does that mean, like what's going on? Listen to me." You've got to remember that the people running Jerusalem at this time, these are the same people that killed Jesus. These are the same people that after Jesus came back to life, weren't too happy about that by the way. These are the same people that beat and put in prison in Jerusalem those who follow Jesus. These are not nice people. They don't like it when Jewish people follow Jesus. They don't like it at all. And so what happened was you have a massive persecution of Jewish people who had become

Christians. If you are a Jew living in the first century in Jerusalem and you made the decision that you were going to follow Jesus, it would cost you. Your job, your career, your finances, your relation, you could potentially lose everything. You know, persecution is a word that we hear about biblically. You hear about it sometimes around the world in other places. And I don't know that it really touches us. I mean, there's pressure points for being a Christian today. I don't like we experience what they experience back then. But I'll tell you this, this whole idea of what it was really like took on a new meaning for me years ago when I was a young man then in my twenties. I had the opportunity to go to Amarillo, Texas to do a student ministry retreat. We were going to a retreat center out from Amarillo and flew into Amarillo and spent forget Michael Greenberg. An older gentleman in the church loved the Lord. He took me out to dinner, he had a great time, he was going to host me at his house overnight, had to give me a bedroom to sleep in, and after dinner we went to his place and we just sat up all night just talking. He wanted to know about me, I wanted to know about him. And man, the story he told me has just never left me. Michael Greenberg, that's a Jewish name. And before Michael was a Christian, Michael was a Jew, generationally, family, all Jewish. He grew up in the boroughs of New York. And I'm like, how did you become a Christian? He says, you know, when I was a senior in high school, some friends of mine invited me to church, teenagers invite your friends to church. And so I went on Wednesday nights. And then eventually I got saved on a Wednesday night. And man, he said, I was so nervous to tell my parents because I knew they weren't going to like it. But here's one of the things about being a Christian, we don't hide it under a bushel. No, right? I'm going to let it shine. We tell people, we're public about our faith. That's the whole baptism thing. Baptism is a public expression of what God has done on the inside. It's your profession of faith. So, you know, he knew he needed to let his family know. And he says, he said, you know, so I sat on it for a couple of weeks. And then finally, I got up the gumption. I knew that this was going to be the day I'm going to come home from school. I'm going to sit in the living

room. And my parents are going to, when they get home, I'm just going to have a talk with them. And so he did. He sat there in the living room. His parents came home from work. He said, mom and dad, I need to tell you something has happened to me. I've been going to church with some friends and I have become a Christian. He said, he said, Jeff, I did not expect what would happen next. I knew they weren't going to be happy. But he said, what happened was my mom got up without saying a word and went to her bedroom and closed the door. My father got up and he went to the kitchen and he made a phone call. When he got off of the phone, he came back in and he said, your grandmother will be here shortly. And then he went to the bedroom and closed the door. He said, my grandmother showed up shortly at 30th minutes, hour, whatever, got out of her car and she's wearing a black dress with a veil. She walks in the house, doesn't say anything to me. My parents come out. My dad's dressed in a black suit. My mom's in a black dress. They got candles. They set all this stuff up and he said, Jeff, in front of me, without even acknowledging my presence, they performed a funeral service for me. And then my parents went and they bought a funeral plot at the cemetery locally and they purchased a headstone with my birth date and my death date. And for the rest of my senior year, my parent, until I left home after graduating, my parents did not acknowledge my presence or speak to me at all. The only acknowledgement I had was, he said, I'd come home from school. I'd go to my bedroom and every night, at dinner time, a plate of food would appear outside my door. I would take it into my room. I'd eat by myself. I'd put the plate of empty plate back outside. That's the only acknowledgement that I existed. And I thought that is a price to pay to follow Jesus. So when I say severe persecution, this is what we're talking about. And you put all of this together and here's what you've got. You've got a humanitarian crisis in Jerusalem. Even though it's Jerusalem, even though it's the birthplace of Christianity, what you had, you had a situation during Paul's day when the church in Jerusalem, it was the poorest Christian community in the entire first century. And Paul's like, you know what? We got to do something about this and we're going to do something about this. And this brings me to my big, big point. I'm going to put this on the screen. This is the big point of the message today. Are you ready? Here we go. Listen to me. Spiritual blessings received lead to material blessings given. I want to put that on the screen. I want you to look at it. If you are a note-taker, this is a good

one to write down. Spiritual blessings received lead to material blessings given. I know what some of you might be thinking, "Oh, here we go. Here comes the money portion, part of the sermon." Listen, I'm trying to be very biblical here. I'm trying to lean very hard into the Bible here and not my personal preferences. And I'm going to tell you where I got this. I got this from Paul, from the writings, I told you that he's talked about this financial project he's working on. And I want to show you this in the book of Romans. This came from the book of Romans. Look at this on the screen. This is Paul writing to the church in Romans about this financial project he's working on. Paul says this in chapter 15, verse 25. He says, "Before I come," 'cause he wants to come to Rome. "Before I come to you in Rome, "I must go to Jerusalem to take a gift to the believers there, "for you see the believers in Macedonia," that's Greece, that's Corinth. "The believers in Macedonia and Achaia, "they have eagerly taken up an offering "for the poor among the believers in Jerusalem." Check this out, verse 27. "They were glad to do this "because they feel that they owe a real debt to them "since the Gentiles received the spiritual blessings "of the good news from the believers in Jerusalem, "they feel that the least that they can do in return "is to help them financially." Yes, listen to me. Spiritual blessings received lead

to material blessings given. This is what the gospel does, y'all. The gospel, it destroys barriers. You've got these two groups of people, Jews and Greeks, and I alluded to it a moment ago. But I gotta tell you, they didn't like each other. They didn't like each other at all. Their customs were different. Their language was different. They did not eat at the same restaurants. They didn't eat the same food. One group called the other group unclean. One group called the other group pagan. Like massive, prejudicial division. And then you have Jesus. Jesus enters the picture and everything changes, amen? Everything changes, which is why Paul is able to say in Galatians, some of you sing this, listen. There is no Jew or Greek. There is no slave or free. There is no male or female. You are all one, one, in Christ Jesus, amen? How many of y'all heard that old saying, put your money where your mouth is? Y'all heard that before? Yup. Okay, come on. How many of you have heard, put your money? All right, there we go.

All right. Listen, nothing hits closer to home than the spending or the holding of our money, right? Nothing hits closer to home. All right, listen, I've been doing this a while. People get nervous when we do sermons on money. The church gets a bad rap. Oh, all that church wants is our money. This is, by the way, this is why we have what we call the Malachi Challenge. You're like, what are you talking about? Go read it later today, Malachi chapter three. It's the only place in the Bible, the only place that God gives us permission to test him. And it's about money because God knows money's hard for us. So he's like, okay, you can test me on this one thing, just to see how it works out, right? So what you got here now is this, we've got this story from Paul, this great gospel project. And so let's just kind of bring it together and land the plane here. What can we learn when we put it all together for us today in the year 2026, especially given what's coming next week? And I would say a few things and I'll be done. Number one, number one, Christians run to need, especially financial need. Listen, y'all, we have seen this from the beginning of Christianity. There's just something about those of us who follow Jesus.

We tend to run into the fire when everybody else is running out of the fire. You can see it throughout history, whenever there's disease, whenever there's pandemics, epidemics, the plagues, Christians run towards the disease, when everybody else is fleeing the disease. Whenever there's a financial burden, Christians are the ones. Nobody, governments don't do it. They pretend to do it and they reallocate money, but it's the Christians that are the ones really boots on the ground running towards all of that. It's just who we are, first Corinthians 16. Number two, giving should be regular and normal. This is not extraordinary stuff. It's just what we do. Paul says it in the text on the first day of every week. It's just what you do. Put something aside, on the first day, or considered much until I really got into this text for this message. So I'm going to say it this way on the screen. Generosity should equal generosity. You know, we're not talking about the tithe in this message today. The tithe is something that we teach, that we believe in strongly. We believe it's for everybody. We believe it's plan A. God is very generous to us. Everything we have, everything Jeff Crawford has, God gave me. And what God says is, Jeff, I'm going to ask you to steward this. You don't own it, you just steward it. It's mine, and I'm letting you borrow it to take care of. And part of the taking care of is God wants me to give him back 10%. That's the tithe. So this is not a sermon about all of that. This is a sermon about what comes after the tithe. Generosity should equal generosity. Paul says it this way, as he may prosper. You know, God has been generous to all of us. And in God's economy, God has been very, very generous to some people. And

there are some people in our church that God's been very, very generous to you. I'm not going to quantify that. I'm going to let you just sit with that and soak on it. But I think what the text is saying here is that the level to which God has been generous to you, we should be generous back as we may prosper. Number four, number four, I put it this way for the purpose of just writing it down. Give with a plan. We got to give with a plan. You know, we don't give with nothing out there. The tithe is part of that plan, but they're going to come extra opportunities in life. They're going to come extra needs, extra vision, like opportunities to do big things for the kingdom of God. And what you've got to have for that is a plan. And here's how Paul says it in the text, he says, so that there will be no collecting when I come. He's like, hey, put aside something every week, store it up, you know, pre-give so that when I come, we're not like scrambling to pull it all together last minute. That's not a plan. The plan is, here's the plan, here's the vision, and let's work to put it together so that when the time comes, we are ready. So let me tell you something. Next week, what you're going to get next week, I'm just a little bit of a preview, okay? I'm not going to go very far because I won't spoil it for Pastor Knippet, but what you're going to get next week is a plan. You're going to get a vision, you're going to get an opportunity to look at what could be. And here's the deal, this is kind of how it works around here. Mark was correct on the video about what Pastor Knipp just telegraphs to all of us all the time. We really do move at the speed of generosity at our church. And what that means is we give you the plan and we'll give you the vision, you get to decide the generosity. We don't have giving goals at our church. And I got to tell you, it's the first church I've ever been a part of, ever. Never been a part of a church that when they do something financially, don't have a goal. I've never been a part of that kind of church. This church, we don't have a goal. There is no financial goal we're trying to hit next week. Because what you give, that's up to you, man. That's not up to me. It's not up to Pastor Knippet. It's totally between you and God. So no goal, what we do have is a participation goal. Our participation goal is that everybody participates, 100% participation. But what you give, totally up to you. And I'm going to tell you why, why we have a 100% participation goal. It's because there is a danger in greed. And the danger is you miss the blessing of generosity. Which is why we, it's why we tell these stories, stories of your generosity, things you've prepaid for that we can do when they come up. So thank you. And next week, you're going to see another

vision painted and then you just get to decide. You get to get with God. And figure out what God says to do. And this brings to the last bit and will be done. Number five, and I get this from the I want you to know that we recognize that. You know, man is sinful, and money has gotten many a man in trouble. And may it not be so with our church, amen. So here's what the text says that I read to you earlier. The text says this, "To those whom you accredit by letter will carry your gift to Jerusalem." And Paul goes on to say, "If it seems wise that I should go with them, I'll go. But it didn't have to be about me." So Paul's like, "Hey, listen, this is important stuff. You need to pick people you trust, and give them a letter, a sign, and a credit to it, and send them with the gift." So there's accountability and trustworthiness involved because accountability is absolutely necessary. So I just want to say, and I want you guys to know here at Cross Church, we try to be fully transparent financially. We have a pastor's council of laypeople that you vote and you vote and elect. And every month, they look at the financials of our church every month. Every year, we invite an outside, independent, accredited auditor to come in and look at all of our books for anything that looks funny. And I'm happy to report to you that in my 20-some-odd years of this church, there's never been anything funny with the money, amen, because we really do try to be accountable because it's so necessary. So I'll leave all that with you, you and God. But I do want to end this way today. Here's how I want to end today. I want to end today not talking about us so much, but about our God. And I want to end today, maybe not talking so much about our bank accounts, but God's make account. Listen, y'all.

See, the God we serve is unparalleled. Most famous verse in the entire Bible, most famous verse in the entire Bible, y'all already know what it is, John 3, 16. What kind of God do we serve for God so loved the world that He gave? For God so loved you that He gave. That's it. That is who God is. And I'm going to tell you, in my experience, I have never been able to outgive God. His bank account is far, far larger than mine. And He is far more generous than I have ever been in my attempts at generosity. It's who He is. And what that means is this. It means that if you need God today, He's there to give to you what you need. That's what it means. Anybody in here struggling relationally in a marriage, or with parents, or with family, or with your kids, and you need God, God to give you something right now that you just don't have, for God so loved you, He's ready to give to you. Anybody in here suffering today, are you in pain? I mean, maybe physical pain because of some chronic something, and you need relief, God can you give me relief? Anybody in here suffering from disease? Anybody weighed down by the burdens of life and family and job and school for God so loved the world that He gave? Anybody in here in here need God to give a little today? Could you just use a little dose of God's gracious generosity? I would ask that you bow your head and close your eyes and just really think today about where you are with your relationship with God and what do you need? What do you need? And I'm convinced that God loves you so much that He wants to give to you in your life today. Our altar is going to be open in a moment where I would invite you to just come pray

if you have a need. If you want to pray with someone, I'll tell you, our staff team, they're the best. They love God, they love people, they love you and I don't know, I've found in life sometimes it's easier to pray with somebody and we would love to pray with you, be a privilege to pray with you. You could just say, you don't have to be specific, you could just say, you could just literally say pray for me and we'll pray for you. Anybody in here need the free gift of eternal life. everlasting life. That's a generous God. Your sins can be forgiven today. Today you can be saved. Today you can have the free gift of an eternal life. If that is you today, if you've never said you come. I'm going to pray, but then we stand and you come to the front. Just grab the hand of one of these men or women and say, "I'm ready. I need to be saved and I'll pray with you right here right now." And a generous God will just fall all over you. Father God, in this moment right now, would you bless us? I pray for all those in this room, anyone who is in need. May they come to you, the God who gives, anyone who's lost. May they come to the God who saves. In Jesus' name I pray, amen.